Zac Brown Band has spent fifteen-plus years proving that the songs land hardest when there’s a band of multi-instrumentalists behind them and a crowd singing every word back — and on Friday, July 31, that machine pulls into downtown Albany. The group brings its 2026 Love & Fear Tour to MVP Arena, and for an act of this size, a mid-summer arena night is exactly the sort of show that anchors the Capital Region‘s concert calendar.
The run supports Love & Fear, the band’s seventh and most personal studio album, a record built around collaborations — duets with Dolly Parton, Marcus King, and Snoop Dogg among them. It arrived on the heels of an eight-show residency at Sphere in Las Vegas, where the band premiered the album in the venue’s signature wall-to-wall visuals. Whether that residency reads as a genuine artistic swing or a savvy career move probably depends on your relationship with the band’s recent catalog. What isn’t up for debate is the live show. Zac Brown Band built its reputation on stages long before the Sphere became a talking point, and the songs — “Chicken Fried,” “Colder Weather,” “Toes” — were engineered for exactly this kind of room.
Opening the Albany date is Old Crow Medicine Show, and that’s a pairing worth arriving early for. The string-band veterans bring a different texture to the bill — old-time fiddle-and-banjo energy, the kind of set that rewards anyone with a real interest in American roots music. As support acts on big country bills go, this is a generous one.
MVP Arena sits right on South Pearl Street in downtown Albany — walkable from the restaurants and bars off Pearl, which makes the pre-show easy and the after-show easier. The arena garage runs $25 if you’d rather park on site, though plenty of regulars know the side-street spots. It’s a room that has hosted enough of these summer touring runs to handle a full-production country-rock show without breaking a sweat, and Albany crowds tend to show up loud for this band.
Tickets are priced from $44 to $194. Buy tickets here. Doors and set times will be posted by the venue closer to showtime; the listed start is 7:00 PM.