Macklemore will not appear at any of the remaining dates on Ed Sheeran’s US Loop Tour, a little more than a week after he led a MetLife Stadium crowd in chants of “Free Palestine” from the opening slot. The removal was confirmed on Monday by Messina Touring Group, the promoter behind the American leg of the tour.
“As the concert promoter for Ed Sheeran’s U.S. Loop Tour, we have been notified by venues on the upcoming U.S. tour dates that they will not allow a concert to take place with Macklemore on the lineup, which would result in the cancellation of the tour and impact hundreds of thousands of fans,” the company said in a statement to Rolling Stone. “After discussions with stakeholders, Macklemore will not be performing on the remaining support dates.”
The rapper had been scheduled to open eight more shows. The tour picks back up on Friday in Philadelphia. As of Monday, neither Macklemore nor Sheeran had publicly addressed the lineup change.
How it started
The speech that set this off came during a pair of shows at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, in early September. Macklemore told the crowd that taking the support slot had been deliberate.
“One of the reasons why I wanted to come on this tour was because I wanted to stand up here on stages in stadiums across America and say two words that are very near and dear to my heart: ‘Free Palestine,'” he said, according to Consequence. “I want those words to be loud and clear so that people from Gaza, all the way to the occupied West Bank know that we have not forgotten them.”
He then introduced “Hind’s Hall,” the protest track he released in 2024, telling the audience it was inspired by the Columbia University students who led the campus encampment movement, and thanking Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace by name.
Macklemore also addressed the reaction he expected. “To all of my Jewish brothers and sisters: Criticism of Israel, criticism of apartheid, being against genocide in no way is a criticism of you,” he said. “My message is for peace. Love. For all human beings to be treated with dignity, respect, and equality.”
He has not softened since. Posting a clip of the speech to Instagram, he wrote that “wanting all humans to be treated equal should never be controversial.”
The campaign to remove him
The first organized push came from the Israeli American Council, which launched a petition demanding Sheeran drop Macklemore from the rest of the run. The petition framed the objection as one of platform rather than belief: “The issue is not whether Macklemore has the right to hold political views. The question is where the line should be drawn when an opening act uses a global concert platform to advance a one-sided political agenda.”
Two well-known musicians weighed in against him. Pink reshared a post from the advocacy group StopAntisemitism that characterized claims of genocide in Gaza as false and called for concertgoers to be given apologies and refunds. She later expanded on her position, criticizing Macklemore for standing “in front of a stadium full of music-loving families, with violent images from a war on the screens,” dedicating a song to a cause of his choosing, and then telling Jewish attendees it was not about them.
Boy George went after both men, posting an AI-generated image of Sheeran in a shirt reading “Wkack Mack No More” and writing on X that he had “never been an @Edsheeran fan and nothing has changed.” Boy George has his own recent history in this argument, having released a pro-Israel song made with AI earlier in the year.
Where the accounts do not line up
The most interesting gap in this story is the question of who actually made the decision, and the available statements do not settle it.
The campaign was aimed squarely at Sheeran — the petition asked him to drop his opening act. But the explanation that arrived on Monday came from his promoter, not from him, and it attributes the outcome to venues rather than to the headliner: Messina says it was told that stadiums would not host a show with Macklemore on the bill, and that the alternative was losing the tour altogether.
That framing casts the removal as a commercial necessity forced from outside rather than a judgment by anyone on the tour. It is also unverifiable at present. Messina did not name the venues in its statement, and no venue has publicly confirmed issuing such a warning. Reporting by Variety, TheWrap and Complex all rests on the same single promoter statement.
Sheeran’s silence is doing a lot of work here. He has not commented since the speech itself, through a week of public pressure, and he has not commented on the removal. Whether that reflects agreement, reluctance, or a decision genuinely taken above him is not something anyone outside the tour can currently answer.
What happens next
Eight dates on the US leg remain, beginning Friday in Philadelphia, and they will now go ahead without an opening act announced in Macklemore’s place. Neither camp has indicated whether anything further is coming — no statement from Macklemore about the removal itself, no word from Sheeran, and no response yet to the outlets that have approached both.
For Macklemore, the practical cost is eight stadium crowds he will not now play to. He has shown no sign of regarding that as a reason to change what he said.
