Nine U.S. Arenas Rejected Macklemore's 'Free Palestine' Tour, Rapper Says

By Elena Vasquez

Nine arenas across the United States refused to book Macklemore's planned "Free Palestine" benefit tour, the rapper said on Friday. The rejections came weeks after he was removed from Ed Sheeran's stadium tour in September over his public support for Palestinians.

Macklemore laid out the timeline in a social media post. In mid-September, after being dropped from Sheeran's tour, his team contacted arenas in the United States and "received available dates at these arenas through the end of the year," he wrote.

"But once they found out these were my benefit shows for Palestine," his statement continued, "those dates were suddenly off the table."

Which venues turned him down?

Macklemore named nine venues, spanning the country's largest markets:

• Madison Square Garden and Barclays Center in New York, plus UBS Arena on Long Island
• Prudential Center in Newark, N.J.
• Intuit Dome, Kia Forum and Crypto.com Arena in and around Los Angeles
• Chase Center Arena in San Francisco
• Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle, Macklemore's hometown

Three of the nine sit in the New York metropolitan area alone, and three more cluster around Los Angeles — the two biggest concert markets in the country.

What did the venues say?

Madison Square Garden was the only venue to offer a substantive response. "We have some of the busiest venues in the world with extremely limited availability and he's not an arena-level act," a spokeswoman said in a statement.

A spokesman for Kia Forum said the venue had no comment. None of the other seven venues responded to requests for comment.

What's the context?

Macklemore, an indie rapper who has won mainstream commercial success, has been one of the most vocal pro-Palestinian voices in popular music. His removal from Ed Sheeran's stadium tour in September marked the first professional consequence he named publicly; the arena rejections mark the second.

The MSG statement offers a competing explanation for at least one refusal — limited availability and the claim that Macklemore is "not an arena-level act" — a framing that puts the decision on business grounds rather than politics. Macklemore's own account attributes the withdrawals to the benefit shows' Palestinian cause, noting that dates were available until the purpose of the shows became clear.

The disparity matters. If venues across nine major markets withdrew available dates after learning the shows were Palestine benefits, as Macklemore asserts, the episode suggests a coordinated reluctance across the live-events industry to host explicitly pro-Palestinian programming at the highest commercial tier; if the venues' cited reasons hold, it reflects ordinary booking calculus. Neither account has been independently verified beyond the statements on each side.

Only one venue of nine has publicly explained its decision. Whether any of the others break that silence — or whether Macklemore pursues the tour in smaller venues or abroad — will determine whether his benefit plan survives its first booking cycle.