The Weeknd has unexpectedly postponed his upcoming Australia and New Zealand tour.
The Canadian superstar was due to tour the two countries in a few weeks, taking in stops in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, and Auckland through November and December. The Weeknd was even forced to add several shows to the tour due to overwhelming demand.
However, “due to unforeseen circumstances”, the Australia and New Zealand leg of his world tour has been postponed. A statement sent to ticketholders from Ticketmaster stated that the pop star was “deeply disappointed” to have to postpone the shows.
“Due to unforeseen circumstances, we must reschedule the Australia/New Zealand tour. New dates will be announced next year and current tickets will be valid for the new shows,” the statement read. “Refunds will be available for those unable to attend the new dates. Deeply disappointed but can’t wait to be there with you!”
The Weeknd’s global stadium run has regularly been shattering records this year. The tour recently broke London Stadium’s attendance record thanks to 160,000 fans attending across two nights.
In France, The Weeknd’s shows in Nice, which sold 70,000 tickets across two shows, became the highest in the city’s history, while he became the first artist to sell out two nights at Milan’s Ippodromo La Maura in Italy.
The Weeknd’s tour was belatedly celebrating his acclaimed 2020 album, After Hours, as well as his follow-up 2022 album, Dawn FM, both of which topped the albums charts in Australia and New Zealand.
In other disappointing news for The Weeknd, he was finally overtaken by Taylor Swift as the artist with the most monthly listeners on Spotify. The evermore singer-songwriter had been trailing The Weeknd for months, but the re-release of her 2014 album 1989 saw her finally overtake him. Swift now has 105.335 million monthly listeners on the platform, while The Weeknd has 105.091 million listeners.