It's been just over a month since the teasing of the revival of the Sick New World festival begun, with the flashing of the mascots on screen before System of a Down took the stage during their most recent set of stadium shows. After that, the official Sick New World website was renovated to include a place for fans to sign up for updates about the festival, further instigating return rumors to circulate.
The System of a Down connection continued, as frontman Serj Tankian confirmed at a recent signing event to a fan that the band will headline the 2026 iteration of the nu metal festival. Combine that with the fact that when drummer John Dolmayan posted about the cancellation of the 2025 edition of Sick New World, he stated that he knew it would make a return in the future, and that System of a Down would be apart of it. They would surely be a welcome addition, considering they headlined the first two festivals to much fanfare, and the one in which they were left off of the bill was scrutinized for not being sick, or new, or nu enough.
Now, we have yet another piece of an almost compete puzzle. A press application has been leaked which discloses the location and date for the next Sick New World. It has since been taken down, but this is the Internet, and screenshots of it have been floating around. The festival is scheduled to take place on April 25th, 2026 at the Las Vegas Festival Grounds in Las Vegas, Nevada. This checks out as the previous SNW events took place in April at the same venue. I can't help but wonder, this all has to be intentional, right? Surely Tankian wouldn't confirm it to a fan (let alone allow it to be captured on video for the world to see) if he wasn't allowed to, and this application had to have been leaked on purpose. The timing of these teases are spaced out enough so that just when you've forgotten about the rumors, another one comes around to reignite interest.
All we're waiting on now is the official post from the Sick New World social media accounts.
Airbnb booked 👌
by u/Screw78 in SickNewWorld
