Warsaw (AFP) – A Kanye West concert scheduled to take place in a stadium in Poland in June was cancelled by the venue on Friday, following condemnation of antisemitic remarks by the US rapper. “The concert by Ye (Kanye West), scheduled for 19 June 2026 at the Superauto.pl Silesian Stadium, will not take place due to formal and legal reasons,” venue director Adam Strzyzewski announced in a press release on the stadium’s website.
The Polish culture ministry previously said in a statement, received by AFP, that it was seeking to bar West from performing in the country. “The widely discussed actions of Kanye West, linked to his promotion of Nazism, are in manifest contradiction with Poland’s values,” Culture Minister Marta Cienkowska said. She went on to express her “clearly negative position” about the June 19 concert going ahead and called on its organisers “not to make public space available to promoters of a criminal ideology.”
Quoted by the Polish Press Agency PAP, Cienkowska said that she “cannot imagine” such a concert being held in Poland, “a country where people were murdered in German Nazi extermination camps.” She condemned West — now legally known as Ye — as an artist who “openly declares he loves Hitler, who promotes Nazi ideology and makes money by selling T-shirts emblazoned with the swastika.”
She added that Warsaw had the means to bar the entry of undesirable individuals and, if necessary, it “will resort to them.” West announced on Tuesday that a concert he had planned to give in the French city of Marseille had been postponed after authorities voiced opposition. Last week, Britain said it has blocked West from entering the country, leading to the cancellation of a London music festival where he had been scheduled to perform over three nights in July.
The 48-year-old musician has lost fans and several sponsorships in recent years following inflammatory comments and actions. He has previously said “I love Nazis,” sold t-shirts featuring a swastika on his website, and last year released a track titled “Heil Hitler,” which was banned by main streaming platforms. In January this year, he took out a full-page advert in the Wall Street Journal to declare “I am not a Nazi or an antisemite” and “I love Jewish people.” He attributed his controversial behaviour to a “manic episode” brought on by bipolar disorder.
© 2024 AFP
