The most record breaking tour of the century, the Eras Tour, has been going on since March 17, 2023, and just recently came to an end on December 8, 2024. Throughout this tour, Taylor Swift played 149 sold-out shows, featuring two United States legs, a European leg, a South American leg, and more. She traveled across five continents, and 21 countries. Swift even released three new albums along the course of the tour: Speak Now (Taylor’s Version), 1989 (Taylor’s Version), and her most recent album, The Tortured Poets Department. Swift has had several guest performers during her shows, including Gracie Abrams, Sabrina Carpenter, Jack Antonoff, Florence+the Machine, Ed She eran, and more. Every one of Swift’s shows is famous for something: earthquakes, special guests, stage malfunctions, new outfits, album announcements, etc. With the tour of a lifetime finally coming to an end after almost two years, let’s go through all that has happened during the distinguished Eras Tour.

To begin, the tour kicked off in Glendale, Arizona on March 17, 2023. During the time Swift was there, Arizona was referred to as ERAzona, and Glendale was referred to as Swift City. Swift was also given the title of honorary mayor in both Santa Clara, California and Tampa, Florida, with Santa Clara temporarily being called Swiftie Clara. Swift spent all of 2023 completing her first North American leg and her South American leg.

While so many amazing things happened on the Eras Tour, some devastating things happened as well. In Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Swift and her fans had to endure sweltering heat throughout her first two shows. The heat was so bad that Swift herself almost passed out on stage. Several fans passed out in the audience and sadly, on the first night, 23 year old Ana Clara Benevides passed away from heat exhaustion before the show. The third show was postponed to a day later when the heat was not quite as severe. In addition to this tragedy, Swift’s shows in Vienna, Austria were cancelled after a terrorist plot was discovered targeting the Eras Tour. This left many fans devastated, as many had already travelled to Vienna and were excited for the show. However, many fans made the best of it and partied down the Vienna streets to Taylor Swift music. 

Swift released an abundance of new music over the two years of the Eras tour. She announced Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) on May 5, 2023 in Nashville, TN and released it on July 7, 2023 in Kansas City, KS. On the day of its exciting release, Swift presented the music video for “I Can See You (Taylor’s Version)” and brought out the cast of Taylor Lautner, Joey King, and Presley Cash. Next up, Swift announced 1989 (Taylor’s Version) on the closing night of the US leg, August 9, 2023, in Las Angeles, CA. She then released on October 27, 2023 with five of her favorite new vault tracks ever. Then, during the break after the South American leg, she announced her brand new album, The Tortured Poets Department, at the Grammys after winning Album of the Year. It was then released on April 19, 2024, almost instantly becoming the most streamed album in a single day. When Swift released The Tortured Poets Department, she released it as a double album with The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology. This totaled up to 31 songs in the release and they covered the top spots on several different charts.

Following this release, Swift opened the European leg of the Eras Tour with a brand new rearranged show, combining Folklore and Evermore into one era and giving The Tortured Poets Department a lengthy section. She also cut out a few fan favorites to make room, including “Long Live,” “The Archer,” “Tolerate it,” and “Cardigan.” While this left many fans unhappy, the new Tortured Poets Department setlist left fans with their jaws on the floor. Swift gave a spectacular performance of seven songs with a new moving platform on the stage. She also debuted a whole new set of outfits that she kept and wore for the rest of the tour.

The most important and looked-forward-to part of the Eras Tour was, without a doubt, the acoustic surprise song section. When Swift began her tour, she stated that she would never play a surprise song twice, but as she added more shows, she quickly had to change the rules. She ended up eventually scraping all rules about surprise songs and decided that she could play whatever she wanted to. For about the whole first half of the tour, Swift only played two songs in this section: one on guitar and one on piano. This, however, changed for the second half, where she began to play mashups of multiple songs, leaving fans with anywhere from two to six surprise songs. Even though most songs were played only a few times, some of Swift’s obvious favorites were played several times. The evident few were “You’re on Your Own Kid” and “Maroon” from Midnights. The surprise song acoustic section will definitely be missed the most by Swifties all over the world.

The record breaking Eras Tour has now come to an end, and Swift herself has stated that it really is the end of an era. With the many ups and downs of this tour, it is truly astounding how Swift was able to perform at her best through it all. The Eras Tour truly will be remembered for centuries, and was a life changing experience for many who attended. Even though it is easy to miss this groundbreaking experience, always remember that with the end of an era, comes the start of an age.