Wynonna Judd brings The Hard Truth Tour to Oaklawn in February

The country great plays Oaklawn Event Center on Saturday, February 20, part of a newly added 2027 run that ends with her first headlining nights at the Ryman.

Late February in Hot Springs means the meet is running at Oaklawn, the town is full, and Central Avenue has that racing-season buzz. On one of those Saturday nights, the loudest thing in the building won't be coming from the track.

Wynonna Judd plays Oaklawn Event Center on Saturday, February 20, 2027, with music at 7pm. Tickets are through eTix. The date was announced October 26 as part of a new leg of The Hard Truth Tour, which adds 16 shows across the South, Midwest and Mid-Atlantic running into March, according to The Music Universe and TicketNews. Hot Springs sits in a February run that also takes her through San Antonio and Austin the week before.

The tour is named for her new solo album, The Hard Truth, which she announced alongside the original fall run in August; Pollstar and MusicRow covered that launch. Ahead of the release, iHeart framed it as her most personal work yet. That matters for a show like this. Wynonna has a catalog that could fill a night on its own, but a tour built around a new record tells you she is still coming to say something, not just to run the hits.

The bigger signal is where the run ends. The 2027 leg closes with back-to-back nights at Nashville's Ryman Auditorium on March 26 and 27, which the tour announcement bills as her first-ever headlining shows in that room. Hot Springs gets her about five weeks before that, which means a band in full stride, playing material that has been on the road since fall.

Oaklawn Event Center is the right size for it. It holds 1,500, which keeps one of the biggest voices in country music inside a room where you can actually see her face. And it isn't new territory for her: the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette covered her playing Oaklawn back in 2015. A return more than a decade later, with a new album in hand, is the kind of booking this town tends to show up for.

On tickets: the fan-club presale opened October 28 and the general sale followed on October 30, according to the tour coverage, so seats are on sale now. With a February Saturday in the middle of racing season, it is reasonable to expect the room to fill, and hotel rooms around town do too, so plan both early if you are coming in from out of town.

A tour built around a new record tells you she is still coming to say something, not just to run the hits.

Spend a winter afternoon at the track, grab dinner downtown, and then walk into a 1,500-seat room for a voice that has been filling arenas for forty years. That is about as good as a Hot Springs Saturday gets.

Sources: The Music Universe: Wynonna Judd expands The Hard Truth Tour into 2027 (themusicuniverse.com); TicketNews: Wynonna Judd adds 2027 Hard Truth Tour dates (ticketnews.com); Pollstar: Wynonna Judd announces The Hard Truth Tour (news.pollstar.com); MusicRow: Wynonna to launch The Hard Truth Tour in October (musicrow.com); iHeart: Wynonna Judd to unveil Hard Truth (iheart.com); Arkansas Democrat-Gazette: Wynonna to make big noise at Oaklawn (2015) (arkansasonline.com); eTix: Wynonna Judd – The Hard Truth Tour, Oaklawn Event Center (etix.com); Oaklawn Racing Calendar (oaklawn.com); Wynonna Judd - Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org)