Ed Sheeran Macklemore Tour Meltdown: All Openers Quit

Every opening act on the Ed Sheeran Macklemore tour quit this week. It started when Macklemore was dropped from the Loop tour after he voiced support for Palestine on stage, and then Finneas, Aaron Rowe, Beoga, and Lukas Graham all walked off the bill in solidarity. Sheeran says the call was not his. The openers left anyway.

The trigger was a show at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey on September 4. Macklemore told the crowd that a big part of why he joined the tour was so he could stand in stadiums and say two words: "Free Palestine." He used the moment to criticize Israel's military campaign in Gaza and its occupation of the West Bank. Within days, the reaction had engulfed the rest of the tour.

On September 14, Messina Touring Group, the promoter behind the US leg, confirmed that Macklemore was cut from all remaining dates, according to Reuters. The company told Rolling Stone that venues on the upcoming run had said they would not allow a concert to happen with Macklemore on the lineup, which would have meant canceling shows outright and disappointing hundreds of thousands of ticket holders.

Then the dispute reached the stadium owners. On Monday, Robert Kraft, the billionaire owner of the New England Patriots, announced Macklemore would not be allowed to perform at Gillette Stadium for the September 25 and 26 shows. Kraft said in a statement that the decision rested on Macklemore's onstage material from the New Jersey shows and what he described as a "broader history of antisemitic rhetoric and imagery" he said had been deeply offensive and hurtful to the Jewish community. Macklemore publicly apologized back in 2014 after performing in a hooked false nose, wig, and fake beard, a costume widely read as an antisemitic caricature, according to CNN's reporting. Kraft declined to say which past incidents he was referring to.

Sheeran responded on Tuesday. He wrote in a post on Instagram: "Macklemore coming off tour was the promoter's decision, it was not mine." He said stadium owners on the upcoming dates had threatened to block any further shows with Macklemore on the bill, and that he had tried to mediate a resolution, "but the venue's and promoter's decision was final."

The response did not stop the walkouts. On Tuesday, all four remaining acts announced they were quitting.

The openers walk out

Finneas, the 29-year-old Grammy-winning producer and Billie Eilish's brother, was supposed to join Sheeran for six South American shows in November and December. In an Instagram post announcing his withdrawal, he wrote: "Artists must not be silenced when they speak up for the oppressed. I stand with Palestine and its people."

Aaron Rowe, the Irish singer-songwriter, was the first to announce. Rowe wrote on Instagram that he did not take the decision lightly and thanked Sheeran for changing his life, then named the people he blames. "I cannot stand by and allow billionaires to use their position of power to silence the rightful voices of those who speak up against Israeli genocide and who highlight the savage murder of children," Rowe wrote. "I would lose all respect for myself to carry on as normal."

Beoga, the Irish folk group that also plays as Sheeran's backing band, posted that they were leaving over what they called "the silencing of Macklemore by Zionist lobbies." The Danish duo Lukas Graham, made up of vocalist Lukas Forchhammer and drummer Mark Falgren, said they were withdrawing from their remaining US dates too. The Ed Sheeran Macklemore tour picks back up on September 19 in Philadelphia, and it is not clear who, if anyone, will open the show.

Why music keeps colliding with Gaza

This is far from the only music event the Gaza conflict has upended this year. Ireland has announced it will boycott the 2027 Eurovision Song Contest over the crisis, and petitions have trailed artists through festival season. For Gen Z concertgoers, the politics of who gets to speak on stage is now part of the ticket price conversation.

Macklemore has been one of the most outspoken American artists on Palestinian rights, putting out protest music and speaking at rallies long before this tour. The pro-Israel lobby group the Israeli-American Council ran a petition urging Sheeran to drop him, and stadium owners like Kraft are now using venue power to decide which artists' politics they will tolerate at their buildings.

The uncomfortable part is how little of this sits with the headliner. When a promoter and a few billionaire venue owners can remove an opener over his views, the name on the poster matters less than the contracts behind it. Sheeran is finding that out in public, and his former openers underlined the point.

Tours have turned into political stages before. Bruce Springsteen opened his tour with a fiery anti-Trump declaration, covered in an earlier story on the site, and new music is still arriving through the chaos, as this week's New Music Friday roundup shows.