Cody Johnson Opening Act 2026 — Who is the Support?

Who opens for Cody Johnson?

The Leather Tour set the current template for how Cody Johnson builds an opener bill, and that template has carried directly into the rolling post-Leather routing legs that followed: two openers, Texas-traditional and neo-traditional country-leaning, hand-picked from the dance-hall and neo-traditional country catalogues that Johnson personally listens to rather than the standard major-label country opener carousel. Jake Worthington — the George Strait-traditionalist Texas singer whose self-titled 2023 album was one of the strongest neo-traditional country debuts of the year — has anchored the direct-support slot on multiple legs and is the closest the modern Cody Johnson touring operation has to a regular co-headliner. Ian Munsick, the Wyoming-cowboy songwriter whose Boy from the Country EP and White Buffalo records built a working-cowboy audience without country radio, has worked the early-support slot on both U.S. and Canadian legs and is the opener fans walking in late most consistently regret missing. Randy Houser — the Mississippi country veteran whose How Country Feels record built a stadium audience in the 2010s and whose Note to Self album returned him to the Texas-country center — has held the direct-support slot on amphitheater swings, drawing a slightly older country-radio audience that pairs well with Johnson's deep-catalogue dance-hall material. Drake Milligan, the George Strait-revival Texas singer whose Sounds Like Something I'd Do debut put him on the Texas dance-hall headlining circuit, has done the festival-style 30-minute opener role on rodeo nights where the bill leans heavier toward classic country. On every leg Johnson has also rotated in Tanner Adell, Pat Green, Whiskey Myers, the Turnpike Troubadours and Charles Wesley Godwin on individual nights — the curatorial logic is consistent across the entire tour. What that means for a newer Cody Johnson fan: do not skip the openers. Doors open 90 minutes before showtime on most Leather Tour arena dates, the first opener takes the stage 60 minutes after doors and plays a tight 30-to-40-minute set, the direct support runs 50 to 60 minutes, and Johnson hits the stage at roughly 9:00 local. The confirmed opener for any specific date is listed on the Ticketmaster event page above once announced — usually four to eight weeks ahead of show day for arena routings. Your Cody Johnson ticket covers every performer on the bill on the same night at the same venue; there is no separate opener ticket and no separate opener entry line. The practical advice for an arena night is to arrive at doors, grab a drink in the concourse before the first opener, and use the first-opener slot to find your seats and orient before the room fills.

How Cody Johnson Tour Openers Get Announced

Most Cody Johnsontour openers aren't named when tickets go on sale. The supporting act is locked in per-region (sometimes per-show) and surfaces on the official Ticketmaster show page in the weeks before each stop. Click any date above to see whether the opener is confirmed yet — Catch Movement pulls live show pages daily, so the listed support act updates as soon as Ticketmaster does.

For headliners at Cody Johnson's scale, expect a single opener doing a 30 to 45 minute set, sometimes with a regional rotation (a Canadian opener for CA dates, a US opener for the American leg). The opener slot doesn't require a separate ticket — your Cody Johnson ticket covers the full show.

How to Find the Confirmed Cody Johnson Opener for Your City

1. Pick your city from the tour-date list above.
2. Click through to that show's Ticketmaster page.
3. Check the listing — confirmed openers appear under the headline name once added.
4. Watch for updates — openers are sometimes added 2 to 4 weeks out, so check back if it's still TBA.

Do I Need a Separate Ticket for the Opener?

No. The Cody Johnson ticket you buy from Ticketmaster covers the entire show — opener + headliner — at the same venue, same night. Doors usually open 60 to 90 minutes before the advertised start time; the opener typically performs first, with a 20 to 30 minute changeover before Cody Johnson takes the stage.

Cody Johnson Opening Act — FAQ

About Cody Johnson

Cody Wayne Johnson was born May 18, 1987 in Sebastopol, Texas — an unincorporated community in the East Texas pines about an hour and a half north of Houston — and raised between Huntsville and the rodeo grounds his father took him to as soon as he could climb a fence. He picked up a guitar in his early teens, picked up bull riding around the same time, and rode the Texas amateur rodeo circuit through high school and into his early twenties as a working bull rider with serious enough chops to chase a pro card. The day job that funded the music for the first eight years of the career was a corrections officer at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice in Huntsville, the prison-town the East Texas Department runs out of; Johnson worked the gates and the towers in uniform from 2008 through about 2013 while gigging four and five nights a week at the dance halls — Gruene Hall in New Braunfels, Billy Bob's in Fort Worth, the Houston honky-tonks — and self-releasing studio records under his own CoJo Music imprint. Black and White and Six Strings (2006) was the first record; Cowboy Like Me (2010), A Different Day (2011), Cowboy Like Me Deluxe (2013), Cowboy Like Me Bonus (2014), Gotta Be Me (2016) and Cowboy Like Me's various reissues followed across the next decade. By 2014 the Texas country radio format had Johnson at the top of its airplay chart and Billy Bob's Fort Worth on its books for sold-out multi-night runs; the major-label conversation that Nashville had spent five years not having with him finally happened in early 2018 when Warner Music Nashville signed Johnson on a deal that — unusually for a Music Row contract — let him keep his band, his producer Trent Willmon and his publishing imprint intact.

Ain't Nothin' to It came out in January 2019 and debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Top Country Albums chart, the largest country debut of the year. The Cowboy Like Me dance-hall material that Johnson had been chart-topping the Texas regional format with for a decade was the spine of the record; "On My Way to You" was the lead single and his first national No. 1. Human: The Double Album arrived in October 2021 as a sprawling double-album set with seventeen tracks across two discs, and "'Til You Can't" — the song that flipped the catalogue from regional Texas-country headliner to stadium-tier — landed as the lead single. The song ran to No. 1 on the Billboard country airplay chart, won the 2022 CMA Song of the Year and Single of the Year, picked up the 2023 Grammy nomination for Best Country Song, and put Johnson on the front row of the country format's award-circuit conversation for the first time. "The Painter" — the love song he wrote for his wife Brandi Johnson, the high-school sweetheart he has been married to since 2011 and with whom he has three daughters — followed as the next No. 1; "Human" anchored the next cycle. Leather arrived in November 2023 with the title track and "The Fall" as the two anchor singles, extended the Texas dance-hall material into another platinum-selling record, and built out the Leather Tour stadium-and-arena routing that has rolled continuously since. A CMA Award winner, an ACM-recognised touring operation, and one of the very few Texas-traditional country headliners selling rodeo grounds and arenas at scale, Johnson remains based out of Huntsville with Brandi and the daughters and runs the CoJo Music imprint as his publishing home.

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