Key Takeaways
- A promoter has canceled Kanye West's October 10 and 11 concerts at St. Petersburg’s Gazprom Arena after weeks of uncertainty over the venue.
- Say Agency said the shows could not proceed as scheduled and promised refunds, while the 80,000-capacity arena maintained that it never signed a rental agreement.
- The cancellations add to Ye's scrapped 2026 dates in India, Poland, France, and at the UK’s Wireless Festival.
Kanye West's scheduled stadium shows in St. Petersburg, Russia, have been cancelled, the promoter behind the shows has confirmed.
As reported by BBC News, Ye's scheduled performances at the Gazprom Arena in St. Petersburg on October 10 and 11 have been officially canceled. The news comes after weeks of uncertainty surrounding the shows.
"The Ye concerts in St. Petersburg will not be able to take place on the scheduled dates," promotion agency Say Agency confirmed on the messaging app Telegram. "We will issue an official statement regarding the status of the project and our plans in the near future."
Say Agency announced that it will also be going through the process to issue refunds to the shows.
In August, Gazprom Arena, an 80,000-capacity venue, announced that it had not signed any contracts for the stadium rental. "There is no such agreement… Accordingly, the concert cannot take place on our site," the venue announced on social media.
Say Agency expressed surprise at the news, indicating that they learned about the cancellation at the same time as everyone else. However, they stressed that the concert wasn’t canceled at that time, and they were actively trying to resolve the issue.
While he faced criticism in Russia for the shows, including from a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, there’s no indication that the shows were called off because of Ye's extended history of antisemitic comments, which he publicly apologized for earlier this year in a full-page ad published in the Wall Street Journal.
Despite his history of antisemitism, Ye has successfully played shows throughout the year in the United States, the Netherlands, Turkey, Albania, Spain, Portugal, and Kazakhstan.
Several of his shows have been canceled this year, however, including a pair of shows in India, shows in Poland and France, and his headlining performance at Wireless Festival in the UK.
