Alex Van Halen Gets Knighted, Reunites With David Lee Roth, Calls Sammy Hagar “A Complete Idiot”

Van Halen Had Quite the Summer. On Tuesday (Sept. 1), Alex Van Halen was knighted in The Netherlands. The Van Halen drummer was appointed a Knight in the Order of the Netherlands Lion, one of the country's highest civilian honors, during a ceremony in Nijmegen, the city where Alex and his brother Eddie spent much of their childhood before their family moved to the United States. Mayor Hubert Bruls presented Alex with the royal honor at the Berchmanianum, the academy building of Radboud University.And that seems like as good a place as any to start, because the past few months have been busy for Van Halen news.On July 30, Alex Van Halen appeared alongside David Lee Roth at TEDxFargo, marking the first public appearance together by the former bandmates since Van Halen's final show in 2015. The two were interviewed by artist Robert Vargas, who said the conversation will eventually be released on YouTube. For Van Halen fans, simply seeing Alex and Diamond Dave together again was notable enough, but the timing made the appearance even more interesting.Just one week earlier, Roth cancelled all his remaining 2026 tour dates, reportedly because of low ticket sales. The one exception was his previously scheduled appearance at the annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally on August 7.Roth already made headlines earlier in the year when he joined Teddy Swims onstage at both Coachella and Stagecoach in April. Those appearances put the former Van Halen frontman back in front of some very large audiences, but his subsequent tour cancellations suggested that a full-scale return to the road wasn't going as planned.On the same day Roth's cancellations were announced, his former Van Halen rival Sammy Hagar extended an unexpected invitation. Hagar publicly asked Roth to join his upcoming Las Vegas residency, which is scheduled for late September and also features Van Halen bassist Michael Anthony.Considering the complicated history between Roth, Hagar and the Van Halen camp, it's difficult to imagine a more intriguing potential guest appearance. Whether Diamond Dave actually accepts the invitation remains to be seen, but the idea alone was enough to get Van Halen fans talking.Of course, if Alex Van Halen has anything to say about it, the relationship between the band's various eras remains as complicated as ever. Back in 2024, Alex spoke to Billboard about Hagar and Michael Anthony's "Best Of All Worlds" shows and said he felt they "weren't doing the band justice."Now, in a newly published interview with Roadie Crew, Alex has taken an even more direct shot at Hagar. Asked about Hagar's 2011 memoir Red, Alex responded: "In my opinion, Sammy Hagar is a complete idiot." Not much to interpret there.But the latest round of Van Halen news isn't all about old rivalries. Rhino announced that the band's final studio album A Different Kind Of Truth, will be reissued on October 23. Released in 2012, A Different Kind Of Truth reunited David Lee Roth with Eddie Van Halen, Alex Van Halen and Wolfgang Van Halen. It was the first Van Halen studio album with Roth since 1984 and, ultimately, the band's final studio record.The upcoming reissue follows the expanded 40th anniversary edition of 5150, which was released in May and celebrated the first Van Halen album to feature Sammy Hagar as frontman.And then there's Wolfgang Van Halen, who has spent the years since his father's death carving out his own path with Mammoth. A couple of weeks ago, Wolfgang revisited a comment from a hater who, five years earlier, had predicted that "in 5 years he'll be playing all VH." Apparently unwilling to let the moment pass unnoticed, Wolfie had actually created a calendar event so he would remember the date. Five years later, he was able to point out that he had won the bet.And that's pretty much the state of Van Halen as summer 2026 comes to a close. Alex Van Halen, drummer and co-founder of the legendary rock band Van Halen, has been made Knight of the Order of the Netherlands Lion in Nijmegen, where he grew up. The 73-year-old Nijmegen native received the royal honour for his impressive career. ?? https://t.co/6eCmaCNoS5 pic.twitter.com/LEywzcXHxI— Klaas Meijer (@klaasm67) September 2, 2026