Ed Sheeran's Tour Dropped Macklemore Over Gaza. Sheeran Owes Him the Stage.

Every opening act quit the Loop Tour, and the headliner who stayed now shares the politics that got Macklemore removed.

Ed Sheeran played Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia alone on Saturday, September 19, 2026, and called the devastation in Gaza unjustifiable from the stage. He also apologized to the crowd for making mistakes during a week of hard calls, TheWrap reported. It was his first Loop Tour show since the rapper Macklemore was removed from the bill for saying something close to it.

Macklemore is the one who paid. He was cut from the United States leg after pro-Palestinian comments at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey on September 4 and 5, 2026, and then Finneas, Aaron Rowe, Lukas Graham and Sheeran's backing band Beoga all walked off the tour behind him. Sheeran kept the stadiums.

So the politics stayed on the tour and the man who carried them didn't. That's the part I can't get past.

The mechanics aren't in dispute. Messina Touring Group, the tour's promoter, said several stadium owners had told it they wouldn't allow shows with Macklemore on the lineup, and Sheeran said earlier in the week that the removal was the promoter's call and the venues', not his. An apology for hard decisions is what a liability schedule sounds like, set to acoustic guitar.

Here's the strongest thing the other side has, and it isn't nothing: a headliner is not the insurer of record. If owners in several cities shut the building, a canceled stadium date lands on the promoter, the crew and the ticket-holders long before it lands on the man whose name is on the poster. Sheeran didn't write that rule, and refusing to play under it would have cost other people money first.

Then look at what he did have the power to do. Robert Kraft owns the New England Patriots, and he was among the owners who didn't want Macklemore on a Gillette Stadium stage. Sheeran called him anyway and asked for $2 million in humanitarian aid, double the $1 million Macklemore had pledged out of his tour earnings. Kraft wrote it, per TheWrap's account of the week.

That is a man with leverage. He spent it on the check and not on the lineup, and a week later he stood in Philadelphia and adopted the position that got his opener removed. He used the biggest stage in the country to say it, with the opening slot dark behind him.

Macklemore, who has described a 13-year friendship with Sheeran and said his door is still open, put the failure in one line, TheWrap reported: “But he couldn't get past his public-facing ‘I don't take sides.’” That reads differently now that Sheeran has taken one.

No opening acts have been added to the Loop Tour.

If Sheeran meant what he said in Philadelphia — and the wording was too specific to be a hedge — the repair isn't another statement. It's a name back on the bill, in a building that will take him.

Source: thewrap.com, retrieved September 20, 2026.