The River Tour^[3] was a concert tour by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band in support of Springsteen's 2015 The Ties That Bind: The River Collection box set and in celebration of the 35th anniversary of Springsteen's 1980 album, The River.^[4] The River Tour ended in September 2016. Subsequently, the Summer '17 tour in Australia and New Zealand continued the tour using the same promotional image from the original legs.^[5]

The River Tour was the top grossing worldwide tour of 2016, pulling in $268.3 million globally, and was the highest-grossing tour since 2014 for any artist.^[6] Springsteen and the E Street Band also hold the biggest boxscore for 2016, with the May 27 and 29 shows at Dublin's Croke Park taking in $19,228,100 from 160,188 attendance for two sellout shows.^[7]

The tour marked the first tour in two years for Springsteen and the E Street Band. All shows on the first North American leg of tour and some shows from the second leg featured a full-length sequential performance of The River album. Other shows featured a large part of the album, albeit not always in album order.^[8] Many of the shows lasted over three and a half hours with around 33 songs performed. Springsteen's show on September 7, 2016, at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia clocked in at 4 hours and 4 minutes, his longest show in the United States and the second-longest ever in his career, at two minutes shy of his 2012 show in Helsinki.^[9]

The original River Tour began in October 1980 and continued through September 1981. With sets that regularly approached the four-hour range, the 140-date international tour firmly established a reputation for Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band as marathon performers.

Springsteen released The Ties That Bind: The River Collection on December 4, 2015. The box set features the original 1980 The River album along with many outtakes from the album's sessions.

The tour was announced on December 4, 2015, with tickets going on sale seven days later. It came unexpectedly, as Springsteen was working on a new solo album and planned to tour in support of that. However, with it already having been two years since his last tour with the E Street Band, Springsteen chose not to delay the next band tour even further. In November 2015, Springsteen's manager, Jon Landau, suggested performing The River at a few small shows in New York City and Los Angeles; however, Springsteen said it would take too long to rehearse and suggested doing twenty shows. Drummer Max Weinberg said he got the call from Springsteen on Thanksgiving, a week before the tour was announced to the public. "In all of my professional engagements, I have what I call the Springsteen Clause. It's inviolate. It's my own version of force majeure. It's an act of God or Bruce Springsteen. And it works all the time," Weinberg said. Nils Lofgren had to change dates on his solo tour, while Gary Tallent had to postpone his.^[10][11][12]

This was the first Springsteen tour in which all dates featured the same album performed in its entirety. Unlike the previous few tours, the touring lineup was downsized and did not feature a full horn section or backing vocalists.^[13] "I knew the basis of the show was going to be The River, and that was a small rock group. The tighter lineup feels much more like the old days", Springsteen said. Like previous tours, Patti Scialfa was not present at every show due to her responsibilities as a mother supporting her daughter in her equestrian career. Due to Scialfa's not being present at every show, along with no choir, Garry Tallent, standing in her spot on stage, sang backup vocals on a consistent basis on the front line.

Springsteen has been known for lengthy shows, and this tour continued that trend. The show on September 7, 2016, at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia, ran 4 hours and 4 minutes, which stands as Springsteen's longest show in the United States and second-longest ever after a 2012 show in Helsinki that ran two minutes longer.

As with previous Springsteen tours, ticket scalpers were a major problem when it came to buying tickets. Tickets for Springsteen's New York City shows began popping up on resale sites such as StubHub and eBay on December 7, 2015, four days before they went on sale to the public. Scalpers were re-selling tickets not yet available for as much as $5,000. This prompted New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman to launch an investigation into how this happened and to write a letter demanding that both companies immediately remove any listings for ticket sales.^[16] When tickets finally went on sale on December 11, many fans again were shut out from buying tickets as most venues sold out quickly; within minutes, tickets were appearing for hundreds to thousands of dollars more on resale sites.^[17] According to reports, Springsteen's shows sold out in record time. Springsteen's show in Newark, New Jersey, at the Prudential Center sold out in a few minutes. His previous 2012 show at the same venue took two hours to sell out.^[18]

All shows were professionally recorded and released on live.brucespringsteen.net. Many were also featured on E Street Radio.

This set list is representative of the average setlist of the tour's first North American leg as conducted by Setlist.fm, which represents all concerts for the duration of the tour's first leg. The full album performance was dropped following the first leg, although it was resurrected for a few shows on the second leg of the tour.^[19]

N/A

On April 8, 2016, Springsteen announced on his website that he was cancelling his concert, two days later, at the Greensboro Coliseum in North Carolina, in protest of the state legislature's new law, the HB2 (nicknamed the "Bathroom Bill"), which banned transgender people from using public restrooms of the gender with which they identify and overturned local laws that ban employers from discriminating against certain workers. "Some things are more important than a rock show", he remarked.^[22] Springsteen was forced to postpone his concert on September 3, 2016, in Virginia Beach due to inclement weather from Hurricane Hermine. The show was rescheduled for two days later.

• Peter Wolf – provided vocals on "Shout" at shows in Boston on February 4, 2016, and Foxborough on September 14.
• Joe Grushecky and Johnny Grushecky – provided vocals on "Born to Run" during the show in Cleveland on February 23, 2016, and on "Light of Day" in Pittsburgh on September 11.
• Eddie Vedder – provided vocals on "Bobby Jean" in Seattle on March 24, 2016.
• Bob Seger – provided vocals on "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out" and "Shout" during the show in Detroit on April 14, 2016.
• Bono – provided vocals on "Because the Night" during the show in Dublin on May 29, 2016.
• Elliott Murphy – played guitar on "Born to Run" in Paris on July 11, 2016.
• Tom Morello – played guitar on "Death to My Hometown", "American Skin (41 Shots)", "Badlands" and played guitar and provided co-lead vocals on "The Ghost of Tom Joad" during the show in East Rutherford on August 25, 2016.
• Rickie Lee Jones – provided vocals on "Spirit in the Night" in East Rutherford on August 30, 2016.
• Vini Lopez – performed "It's Hard to Be a Saint in the City" and "Spirit in the Night" in Philadelphia on September 9, 2016.
• Richie Sambora – performed on "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out" and "Shout" in Adelaide on January 30, 2017

• Counting Crows – (July 7, 2016)
• Jet – (Feb. 2, 2017; Feb. 11, 2017; Feb. 18, 2017; Feb. 21, 2017; Feb. 25, 2017)
• Diesel – (Feb. 11, 2017; Feb. 18, 2017)
• Marlon Williams and the Yarra Benders – (Feb. 21, 2017; Feb. 25, 2017)

• List of highest-grossing concert tours