Despite cold weather and high winds, Wisconsin is already looking ahead to summer. This morning, the Killers announced that they will be headlining at the American Family Insurance Amphitheater on June 27th. Tickets for the show will be going on sale this Friday, January 31st at 10 a.m., available for purchase online or in person at the Am Fam box office.
The Summerfest 2025 lineup is growing. Other groups set to headline at the Am Fam theater include Def Leppard, Hozier, James Taylor, Lainey Wilson, and Megan Thee Stallion. Additional artists are expected to be announced in the upcoming months. Several other performers have also been added to the lineup on other festival stages, including George Thorogood & the Destroyers, Chicago, Cake, and Ginuwine.
The Killers were founded in Las Vegas in 2001, and have been popular since their first album Hot Fuss which featured the breakout hit “Mr. Brightside”. Despite being a worldwide sensation that has sold more than 28 million records, the band has a strong connection with Wisconsin. In 2018, the Killers performed at the grand opening of the iconic Fiserv Forum. The show also featured the Milwaukee-native rock band, the Violent Femmes, a pairing which showed respect and appreciation for Wisconsin’s musical history. During the show, Alice Cooper appeared in a pre-recorded short film parodying his appearance in the movie Wayne’s World, in which Cooper humorously shows off his knowledge of the city of “Mee-lee-wah-kay”. The Killers ended their premiere at the Fiserv Forum by playing a cover of the “Laverne and Shirley” theme song onstage beside the Violent Femmes. The show was well reviewed and considered by some to be an opening which “doesn’t get more perfect than that”.
This year’s Summerfest is slated to take place over the course of three different weekends: June 19-21, June 26-28, and July 3-5. The three weekend format has been the new norm since 2021. Prior to then, Summerfest had always been an eleven day period that went all week long. This was a tradition held by the festival since its first year of operation in 1968. Despite this change, the event is still considered to be “The World’s Largest Music Festival”, a title bestowed upon it in 1999 by Guiness World Records.