Photo Credit: Candace McDaniel
With most of his European shows cancelled, including Poland and Switzerland, will Kanye West’s entire European tour get called off? Here’s the latest.
It started with the UK government barring Kanye West’s entry to the country after he was announced as the headliner for Wireless Festival, which was then cancelled. Then, with the French government poised to cancel his Marseille gig, the rapper said he had postponed it. Now, venues in both Poland and Switzerland have turned him away.
“We cannot pretend that this is just entertainment,” said Polish Culture Minister Marta Cienkowska. “We are talking about an artist who has publicly made antisemitic remarks, relativized crimes, and profited from selling T-shirts with a swastika. These are not ‘controversies.’ This is a deliberate crossing of a boundary and a normalization of hate.”
The remaining European dates include Turkey on May 30, the Netherlands on June 8, Italy on July 18, Spain on July 30, and Portugal on August 8. He’s also got a show in India scheduled for May 23.
But with so many cancellations and being denied entry to the UK altogether, speculation abounds that the entire European leg of the tour might end up being cancelled altogether.
West, who now goes by Ye, began a rampant descent into antisemitism and hate-mongering in 2022, when he made numerous offensive posts on social media, which saw him suspended from Instagram and then-Twitter. He was also booted by his talent agency and lost lucrative brand deals with Adidas and Balenciaga.
But the once-celebrated rapper doubled down, declaring himself a Nazi, rescinded a previous apology to the Jewish community, and posted pictures of KKK robes. In 2025, he escalated things further, selling swastika T-shirts on his merch store and releasing a song titled “Heil Hitler.”
That led to his visa to enter Australia being revoked, while Brazilian authorities promised to arrest him if he entered the country to perform a planned show in São Paulo.
This year, West apologized yet again, this time by taking out a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal. He blamed his behavior on a “four-month-long manic episode of psychotic, paranoid, and impulsive behavior.” He also blamed the car accident he was in over 20 years ago that led to his having jaw surgery.
But the timing of his most recent apology coincides with the release of his new album, Bully, which has caused many critics to denounce the move as an effort to jumpstart his broken-down career. Moreover, the album hasn’t sold as well as his previous efforts, partially due to coming out at the same time as BTS’ comeback album, ARIRANG.
Whether West will cancel the rest of his European tour remains to be seen, but the slew of cancellations has undoubtedly done more harm than good to his already shaky attempt at a comeback.
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