No Bots, No Transfers: Noah Kahan Announces 2026 Tour With New Presale Policies
Folk and pop singer/songwriter, Grammy-nominated artist Noah Kahan has just announced his 2026 summer tour and upcoming album, The Great Divide, set to be released April 24th. Along with this tour announcement, Kahan and his team also announced they would be making extensive efforts to keep the tickets in the hands of fans and out of the scalpers’ reach.
Photo Credit: Kaitlyn Hungerford (@kaitlynhungerford.jpg)
When entering the “Tour” page of Kahan’s site, a video of him explaining regulations for the presale sign-up is front and center, with a paragraph of stipulations below. In the video, it is explained that when signing up for presale dates, there may be an identity verification process. “We’ve also added some more safety measures during presale sign-ups,” Noah says. “Just a heads up, you might have to submit a selfie to verify that you’re a human, or in rare cases, submit your ID.” In addition to these thorough verification steps, ticket transfer has also been turned off for the sale, and face-value exchange turned on, to combat scalpers.
Overall, the response to these ticket regulations was positive and had thousands of fans excited to have an even better opportunity to obtain tickets to his highly sought-after shows. Fans like @AESTRONOMIES on X wrote, “YOU HAVE TO SHOW PROOF OF ID AND UPLOAD A SELFIE TO ACCESS NOAH’S PRESALE WOW LIFE IS SO BEAUTIFUL GOODBYE BOTS !!!!!” Another fan, @hannameera13, echoed the excitement, saying on X, “Noah Kahan making people photo verify they are human for presale is EXACTLY what the fans wanna see.” Thousands of fans lose tickets to scalpers every year, and those scalpers significantly increase prices, making it difficult for true fans to afford and obtain tickets to their favorite artists. With this in mind, it’s no surprise that fans are ecstatic about the measures Kahan and his team are taking to get tickets into the hands of true fans.
However, on the other side of the coin, many fans and concert-goers are skeptical about the regulations being put in place. Though the measures to protect tickets from scalpers are appreciated, some fans are concerned about the security measures, such as uploading identification, and how this could be dangerous information to share with Ticketmaster. “Oh this just gave me the major ick,” X user @hbwtightrope wrote in response to a post about ID upload options in the presale. “It’s so bad with everything going on, and especially considering this is just manufacturing consent for when the government inevitably forces us to upload our information into a system to access anything,” they added, in reference to the current political climate within the US and how mass access to this information could be dangerous. With Ticketmaster previously confirming its 2024 data breach, which stated there was unauthorized activity within their database that holds personal information about its customers (Ticketmaster, 2024), it leaves many concerned about where their data could be going, despite the good intent behind it.
Despite the concerns, ultimately, Kahan and his team are placing these regulations for the sole purpose of getting tickets out of the hands of scalpers and into the hands of fans. Through identity verification, disabling transfers, and prioritizing face-value exchanges, Kahan and his team are doing everything they can to help solve a long-time problem between fans and the ticketing industry. Now that he has done it, this sparks a larger conversation: will other artists follow suit and continue to combat the ticketing industry?