Ghost frontman Tobias Forge has opened up about the band’s decision to go on hiatus following the Skeletour. He revealed why he turned down a series of tempting offers rather than compromise on the show’s presentation, according to Kerrang.
Forge explained that promoters had approached the band about taking their elaborate stage production outdoors. He said doing so on a festival circuit would have meant sacrificing the quality and consistency of the show across different markets.
“If I want to instil some hope into whomever is hoping anything, a year back when we were talking about how the tour was gonna end, we found ourselves in a little bit of a weird crossroad situation, where some promoters were very keen on us basically taking the show that we did, and putting it into an outdoor setting,” Forge said. “Just for the record, that works. You could have put the entire Skeletour onto an outdoor setting. But you can’t do that on a festival – it needs to be your own stage, or a stage that you could control for several days. Now I’m getting technical here, but you need to reconfigure the whole stage layout.”
Forge went on to describe some of the specific opportunities the band passed up, including a potential stadium show in England. He explained that he was unwilling to offer a diminished experience to some fans in order to secure bigger shows for others.
“I’m not gonna posthumously announce shows that didn’t happen, but some of them were dream-come-true outdoor stadium shows. There was a handful – five or six of them – and one, actually, in England,” he continued. “But it was like, ‘If you want to do that, you need to do these 15 festivals.’ And it was like, ‘F*ck that.’ I’m not gonna go and give, like, Sweden, Norway, Poland, this country, this country and England the big show, and then we’re gonna go to all these other festivals where it’s a skin-and-bones thing. That’s not cool, and it’s not fair, at least in my head.”
Despite turning down these opportunities, Forge said he remains optimistic about achieving similar milestones in the future. He views the offers themselves as a sign of the band’s growth.
“I’d run the risk of maybe not being offered that in five years, rather than doing something that will just tick everyone off. But on a positive note, at least I know that I was very close to getting it, and that is the sign I’m making it, too,” he said. “You have the promoter saying, ‘We think we can do two nights here. We think we can do one night here in this fucking amazing football stadium…’ My wish is one day I can do that. But if it doesn’t happen, I’m still very happy with what we achieved.”
These comments arrive against the backdrop of a sprawling, two-year touring cycle that has now come to a close. They offer fuller context on just how demanding the Skeletour truly was and why Forge felt the need to step away once it wrapped.
The Skeletour ran across 55 dates in support of Ghost’s 2025 album Skeletá. It kicked off at Manchester’s AO Arena on April 15, 2025. The European leg carried through to late May. A North American run followed that summer, and the trek concluded its 2025 shows in Mexico City that September.
The tour resumed for a North American leg in January 2026. It ultimately wrapped on February 23 at the Intuit Dome in Inglewood, California. That final show marked the end of the road for a production Forge has described as one of the band’s most technically demanding to date. This underscores why replicating it in a scaled-down festival format was never a viable option.
In the wake of that closing performance, Forge confirmed that Ghost currently has nothing else planned beyond the tour. He said no new studio sessions are lined up. He has framed the break not as a permanent end but as a chance to recharge and find new creative direction after years of near-constant touring.
Forge has been candid about his reasoning for stepping back. He told reporters that the extended run left him needing genuine time away from the road.
“I’m out of tiles, I’m out of wood, I just don’t have it, so the only way for me to come up with a new idea and get some new inspiration is to just step away,” Forge said, according to MusicRadar.
