Where The Bands Are (Zach Bryan 31 May 2026, Berlin

If you caught my last post, you know Oliver and I just spent a loud, legendary evening surrounded by 94,000 metalheads watching Metallica at the Olympiastadion. But the very next day, May 31st, brought a completely surreal shift in vibe. We went from heavy metal to heartland country, heading over to see Zach Bryan for his only German show on the tour, 2026 With Heaven on Tour.

The afternoon didn’t exactly go to plan. We were supposed to meet our friends Alex and Andreas at a café beforehand, but we had to detour back to the hotel because I needed to grab my earplugs and a rain poncho. Oliver forgot his poncho completely, so we also had to run into a sports shop at the main station to buy him one. To make matters worse, on our way back out, the train ground to a halt because of “unauthorized people on the tracks.” We ended up terribly late, so we texted our friends and decided it was smarter to just meet directly at the venue instead

We knew we had to eat, so we decided to find somewhere relatively close to the venue. We found a place called Preußisches Wirtshaus near the Olympiastadion, which was just one stop before the venue itself. I wanted typical German food and ordered the Preußische Kutscherpfanne, while Oliver went with the currywurst, which felt a bit redundant since it was on our hotel’s breakfast buffet and I had already been eating it every single day. As we sat there, it was hilarious to look around the pub and see the other guests fully decked out in their Zach Bryan attire. All of a sudden, the dark clouds started puking rain, so we had to stay huddled underneath the umbrella for quite a while, waiting it out before we could finally head over to the venue.

The venue, Waldbühne, itself was incredible. It was probably the most beautiful venue I had ever been to. It is built into a natural, bowl-shaped valley on the slopes of Murellenberg, and its design is inspired by the ancient Greek theatre. The seating tiers rose higher the further they got from the stage, which not only looked stunning but created excellent acoustics. A tent-like roof was placed above the stage.

To get down to the GA area, we had to walk all the way down the massive, sweeping stairs. It was still raining a bit when we arrived, but they were handing out free rain ponchos at the entrance. So much for my frantic detour back to the hotel to grab mine, and Oliver’s rush to buy one at the station 🥴.

Once we got down to the bottom of the ”bowl”, we finally reunited with our friends, Alex and Andreas. They had seats, while we had tickets for the standing GA area right in front of the stage. Together, we settled in for the two support acts: Keenan O’Meara and Ben Howard. O’Meara was pretty bland and didn’t really succeed in catching anyone’s interest. I had heard Ben Howard before and thought he was good, but his style of music probably fits better in a small, intimate indoor venue rather than a massive outdoor amphitheater.

About half an hour before the main act was scheduled to start, I decided to brave all those stairs again and climbed all the way back up to the top to hit the merch stand. I wanted to buy myself a t-shirt and the line was quite long. By the time I finally made it back down to our spot, it was just about time for the show to start. By then, the atmosphere was getting charged.

Oliver and I had discussed earlier whether Zach had been at the Metallica show the night before. Oliver thought he had been, while I was skeptical. The second he walked out on stage, Oliver was proven right: Zach was wearing a Metallica shirt. I have read afterwards that James Hetfield himself had been in the crowd watching him right back. Another fun fact: one of Zach’s fiddle players spent the whole night wearing an SC Freiburg football jersey. Freiburg is nowhere near Berlin, so how he got his hands on that jersey beats me.

Musically, the sound was full and powerful. He had a large backing band featuring horns and a group of fiddle players. The crowd skewed surprisingly young and knew a lot of the words, turning tracks like Something in the Orange, Oklahoma Smokeshow and Godspeed into loud stadium sing-alongs. Having seen him in North America, the most spectacular impression over there was that absolutely everyone (and I mean everyone) knew every single lyric, creating an almost deafening experience. While the crowd in Berlin was much better than I had expected, it couldn’t quite compete with that level of intensity.

They ended the night with a raucous, 17-minute version of Revival, which was easily the highlight of the evening. It’s a incredibly fun song that works like a rolling band introduction, where he highlights each member between repetitions of the chorus. While the crowd was jumping and dancing their asses off, Alex suddenly appeared right next to me, jumping along. She and Andreas had climbed over the low stone wall dividing the stands from the GA floor to join us. It was her very first Zach Bryan show, and she seemed to enjoy it.

The only real downside of the concert was the length. The show clocked in at exactly two hours, and then it was over. Having seen him perform in New York and Vancouver back in 2024, I knew his North American shows usually last closer to three hours. Cutting the set down to two hours felt way too short, especially since the Berlin crowd was matching the intensity of any US or Canadian audience and definitely deserved a longer set.

That being said, it was still a great night and luckily, the rain held off for the entire concert. Another cool detail was seeing Zach Bryan’s wife standing by the side of the stage, watching the whole show and singing along. If anyone still thinks country music is just a tiny, hidden niche in Europe, this concert completely proved them wrong. He clearly has a dedicated fanbase here now.