Sick New World Festival 2025 has been cancelled

In a shocking announcement, the Las Vegas, Nevada-based metal festival Sick New World has announced it is canceling its 2025 event. This announcement comes just two months after the festival unveiled its massively ambitious lineup for 2025, which included headliners Metallica and Linkin Park alongside other notable bands such as Queens of the Stone Age, AFI, Evanescence and Gojira, among others.

Sick New World announces that it has been cancelled

The festival organizers broadcast the following statement on Sick New World‘s official website and social media pages:

“It is with great disappointment that we announce that Sick New World will no longer take place in Las Vegas on April 12, 2025. Despite our best efforts, we have encountered unforeseen circumstances that we are unable to overcome for next year’s show.We thank all the dedicated SNW fans who had made plans to join us for another cultural celebration of hard rock, goth, alternative and heavy music.Stay tuned for more and future information about Sick New World.

Tickets purchased directly from Front Gate Tickets will be automatically refunded to the original payment method in as little as 30 days.”

What happened?

While it is unclear exactly why festival organizers decided to cancel the event for 2025, many similar festivals this year have made the decision to cancel indefinitely, with much speculation pointing to poor ticket sales. This could certainly be the case Sick New Worldas general admission tickets were originally priced at a steep $400 and had apparently risen to an even steeper $450 as of yesterday.

By comparison, the festival back in 2023 had general access tickets at $250. Whether poor ticket sales were the driving force behind it Sick New World‘s 2025 cancellation is still unclear, but hopefully festival organizers will share more details in the coming weeks about what led to this decision.

After all, Sick New World2025’s lineup was easily the best in the festival’s three-year history. But a lineup featuring Metallica, Linkin Park, Gojira and Queens of the Stone Age can create significant buzz online, ticket, travel and accommodation prices are always crucial factors concertgoers consider before attending massive festivals like this. If the price of a festival ticket is almost the same as a hotel for a night or airfare, it becomes drastically more challenging for the average fan to attend these kinds of events.

Bottom line

As originally mentioned, Sick New World isn’t the first festival to cancel its plans for next year, and it most likely won’t be the last. Tickets for Vans Warped Tour 2025 went on sale in October, despite festival organizers still not announcing the lineup for the limited number of dates they have planned for 2025. It will be interesting to see in the coming months whether Warped Tour and others like-minded rock festivals can avoid making the same mistakes regarding ticket prices. Or maybe Warped Tours’ long-established and revered reputation in the scene is enough to drive ticket sales regardless of their price.