Nick Jonas Quit the Jonas Brothers Two Days Before a Tour, and It Left the Whole Family “Shaken Up”

17 Sep 2026, 13:24 · Thought Catalog

AFP / AFP via Getty Images

Updated 5 minutes ago, September 17, 2026

Every band has a breaking point. For the Jonas Brothers, it arrived in a room in late 2013, when Nick sat down with Kevin and Joe and told them he no longer wanted to be in the group that had made all three of them famous. Their upcoming tour was canceled on the spot, and the brothers scattered into separate careers for the next six years.

Madison Square Garden hosted the Jonas Brothers’ Burning Up Tour All Over Again on August 20, 2026, with Nick, Joe, and Kevin Jonas performing together in New York City. Photo by Theo Wargo / Getty Images.

The fallout was immediate. “It left the family kind of shaken up for a little while,” Nick told Andy Cohen on Watch What Happens Live in 2016. “I mean, we were about to start a tour. We were two days from starting a tour.”

Nick Jonas takes the stage at Madison Square Garden during the Jonas Brothers’ Burning Up Tour All Over Again on August 20, 2026. Photo by Theo Wargo / Getty Images.

The years apart proved harder than any of them anticipated. A source who spoke to Radar in 2023 said the distance took a quiet toll: “Nick, Joe and Kevin needed some time apart, but they also felt lost and lonely without each other.”

Nick, who turns 34 this week, has never pretended the decision was easy. He’s called the split “a very tough conversation,” even as he insists it was the right one. “It’s good that it happened because I think we all grew from it, but it was very challenging for a little while.”

Kevin, Nick, and Joe Jonas backstage at MTV’s Total Request Live in New York City in March 2006. Photo by Scott Gries / Getty Images.

When the band reunited in 2019 with singles including “Sucker,” “Cool,” and “Only Human,” the comeback looked effortless from the outside. It wasn’t. “We literally spent a year basically doing therapy, working through some things, and figuring out what this chapter would look like,” Nick said on The Late Late Show with James Corden. What they found, all three eventually realized, was “a magic that we felt like we were missing.”

Kevin, Nick, and Joe Jonas step out together for the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in Washington, DC in April 2008. Photo by AFP via Getty Images.

Even after the work, Nick couldn’t shake his nerves the night they returned to the stage. “I was so paranoid those first few two or three songs they would be mad at me after this, that I was not able to enjoy it,” he recalled. “Then at a certain point I looked at them and thought, ‘This is amazing. I’m going to have the best time ever.'”

Thank you for reading. Catch all of Thought Catalog’s latest on Facebook and our website.