Finneas and the Loop Tour Openers Quit After Sheeran’s Statement

Finneas, Lukas Graham, Aaron Rowe and touring band Beoga quit Ed Sheeran’s Loop Tour on September 15, hours after his statement on Macklemore. The 35-year-old headliner had just written that he would not abandon the other support acts. Those acts then left.

Three remaining openers and the Irish band that shares his stage are now off the bill. Ten North American dates still start in Philadelphia on September 19.

Hours After His Statement, the Bill Collapsed

Sheeran posted the note on Instagram on Tuesday, September 15, captioned “It’s important that I set out some facts.” He said venues had told the tour they would pull upcoming shows if Macklemore stayed on after the New Jersey sets, and that talks with those venues, including Robert Kraft, had failed.

“Macklemore coming off tour was the promoter’s decision, it was not mine,” he wrote. Macklemore’s contract, he added, sat with the promoter, not with him.

I would never let down the fans who had made plans, nor would I abandon the touring crew and the other support acts and musicians who rely on me for work and to make a living.

Ed Sheeran, Instagram statement, September 15, 2026

By that evening the remaining openers had answered him in public. Aaron Rowe, booked across the last North American run, went first. Lukas Graham, Finneas and Beoga followed. Billboard later put the hole in one line: the Loop Tour has no openers left.

Sheeran also wrote that he does not use his professional platform for politics because his rooms include young people, often children, and that those rooms are not a political forum. The walk-off notes treat that claim as the problem. They read his silence, and the promoter’s cut, as the same act.

Philadelphia Opens the Rest of the Run Without Support

The North American leg resumes on Saturday, September 19 at Lincoln Financial Field. Original support for that night was Macklemore, Lukas Graham and Aaron Rowe. All three are gone. So is Beoga, which is not an opener. The band had been playing a six-song mini set with Sheeran inside the headliner show.

THE REMAINING NORTH AMERICAN DATES

Finneas was never on those nights. The 29-year-old producer, Billie Eilish’s brother, had six South American dates in November and December. He withdrew from those too. No replacement openers have been named for Philadelphia or for anything after it.

Ticket holders still hold seats for a Sheeran headline set. They no longer hold the undercard printed on the original bills, and they no longer have Beoga inside the main set. Messina Touring Group, the U.S. promoter, had already warned that losing dates would hit hundreds of thousands of fans. The dates themselves have not been pulled.

Beoga Left the Stage They Shared With Sheeran

Beoga is the cut that changes the show, not only the wait. The traditional Irish band co-wrote “Galway Girl” with Sheeran on the 2017 album ÷ and appears on “Nancy Mulligan.” They backed him at Glastonbury in 2017. On this run they were, in their own words, “Ed Sheeran’s band on the remaining U.S. Loop tour,” friends for over 10 years.

“We are a traditional Irish band who never saw ourselves playing in stadiums of that size and that opportunity is not lost on us,” they wrote. “As musicians, playing to those crowds every night is the stuff of dreams but to play in venues that silence anyone advocating for a Free Palestine is simply not an option for us.”

They said they were in the room for Macklemore’s MetLife set and backed it, and that most of that crowd did too. They named Kraft’s record against the BDS movement and called “zionist lobbies” the force that removed Macklemore. They also said they remain friends with Sheeran. The friendship, in their telling, does not keep them on those stages.

Sheeran built the Loop Tour around a loop pedal and a one-man core. Beoga was the live exception, a six-song traditional block inside a stadium pop set. That block is now off the remaining U.S. nights unless he rebuilds it with other players, and he has not said he will.

What Macklemore Said at MetLife Stadium

Macklemore opened two nights at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, on September 4 and 5, the first of 10 Loop dates he had been booked to play. Between songs he told the room a reason he took the tour was to stand in American stadiums and say “Free Palestine,” and that he wanted people in Gaza and the occupied West Bank to know they had not been forgotten. He performed the protest song “Hind’s Hall,” showed images from Gaza, and told Jewish fans that criticism of Israel was not criticism of them.

The Israeli American Council put out a petition asking Sheeran to drop him. P!nk said the remarks alarmed her. Boy George criticized him too. Official Loop Tour recaps from MetLife Stadium log those two nights as completed shows. The fight started there and then moved into the venues still ahead.

HOW THE UNDERCARD EMPTIED

1. September 4, 2026: Macklemore opens at MetLife Stadium and calls for a free Palestine from the stage.
2. September 5, 2026: He repeats the message on the second New Jersey night.
3. September 14, 2026: Messina Touring Group removes him from remaining support dates. Kraft bars him from Gillette Stadium. Macklemore posts that Sheeran’s team made the call under venue pressure.
4. September 15, 2026: Sheeran says the promoter decided, not him. Hours later Rowe, Beoga, Lukas Graham and Finneas withdraw.

Macklemore, whose given name is Benjamin Haggerty, has known Sheeran for 13 years and called him a brother. In his Instagram letter he said he is not a victim, Sheeran is not a victim, and the victims are Palestinian civilians. He wrote that Kraft told Sheeran he would not be allowed to play Gillette, and that Kraft had rallied other stadium owners into an ultimatum: drop Macklemore or lose the rooms.

“I didn’t need 10 shows from Ed. I needed 2,” he wrote. “Two chances to stand in front of 90,000 people and say the words that somehow became too dangerous to say. Free Palestine. But if those words cost me the stage, while turning the conversation back to Palestine, then it was the most successful tour I’ve ever been on.”

He had been saying the same thing on other stages for almost three years, he argued. The difference at MetLife was the size of Sheeran’s rooms. At that scale, he wrote, “Free Palestine” became a risk for the headliner.

Kraft and the Venues Drew the First Line

Robert Kraft, owner of the New England Patriots and of Gillette Stadium through the Kraft Group, confirmed the Gillette bar in a statement on September 14. He did not confirm or deny Macklemore’s claim that he had lined up other owners. Messina, speaking as promoter, said venues on upcoming U.S. dates would not let a concert proceed with Macklemore on the lineup, which would cancel the tour.

“Gillette Stadium has a longstanding commitment to providing a welcoming environment for all guests and ensuring that events held at our venue do not provide a platform for hate speech,” Kraft said. He cited Macklemore’s New Jersey material “and a broader history of antisemitic rhetoric and imagery” that he said had been hurtful to the Jewish community, and he said the September 25 and 26 concerts at Gillette Stadium would cross that line if Macklemore played them.

Kraft wrote that the decision was not about denying Palestinian suffering. Advocacy, he said, “should not come at the expense of the Jewish community or obscure the responsibility of Hamas,” which he listed as a designated terrorist organization in the United States, Canada, the European Union, the United Kingdom and Japan. He said he would sit down with Macklemore. Macklemore said the antisemitism charge is being used as a shield against criticism of the Israeli state, and that antisemitism is real, which is why the word should not be used that way.

Sheeran’s own account sits between them. He said venues objected to how Macklemore conveyed part of the message, rather than to everything that was said, and that he spent the week trying to “build a bridge.” He named Kraft as one of the people in those talks. He also said he spoke with promoters and with activists on both sides. “The venue’s and promoter’s decision was final.”

Four Notes, One Shared Refusal

The four walk-off posts landed on the same day as Sheeran’s letter, and they answer it in different voices. Finneas is the name that travels. Rowe and Beoga write as Irish artists who treat occupation as family history. Lukas Graham writes from Christiania, the Copenhagen enclave where, the band said, speaking your mind was ordinary.

WHO LEFT THE LOOP TOUR ON SEPTEMBER 15

• Aaron Rowe: The Irish singer, booked on the last North American dates, thanked Sheeran for changing his life, then said Irish people “know all too well about genocide, forced famine and violent occupation,” and that he would not let billionaires silence people who speak against “the savage murder of children.”
• Beoga: Sheeran’s touring band quit the remaining U.S. dates, kept the friendship, and refused venues that, in their words, silence anyone advocating for a free Palestine.
• Lukas Graham: The Danish band said money does not buy the right to own the conversation, that nobody’s bank balance should decide who gets to speak, and that they still love Ed and are withdrawing anyway.
• Finneas: He pulled the six South American dates with a four-sentence note: artists must not be silenced when they speak up for the oppressed, and he stands with Palestine and its people.

Rowe’s post is the longest personal break. “I would lose all respect for myself to carry on as normal,” he wrote. “I need to be true to myself and my ancestors who resisted colonisation, and fought for a freedom that I enjoy today in Ireland.”

View this post on Instagram

Lukas Graham made the money argument that maps onto Kraft without naming him. “Having more money didn’t make your opinion worth more than anyone else’s,” the band wrote, after saying it is hard to watch families bury people they love. “I love Ed, and I’m grateful for everything we’ve shared. That hasn’t changed. But I can’t put these words out into the world and carry on with this tour as things stand.”

Finneas did not argue with Sheeran in public. He did not mention Kraft, Messina or the promoter. He treated the withdrawal as a rule about artists and then left.

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The split around those posts is already clear, and it is the same split Sheeran tried to close. One side wants the stadium to stay a music night. The other side wants the stadium to carry the words Macklemore was removed for saying. Sheeran chose the first. The remaining acts chose the second, and they used his own “I will not abandon you” sentence as the cue to walk.

Fame is uneven across the four names, which is why Finneas is the search term and Rowe is not. Casual ticket holders know Billie Eilish’s brother. Many of them do not know the Irish opener or the Danish band, and some of the loudest replies to the news simply asked who those people were. The operational hole does not care. Philadelphia still has no support act on the bill.

The Loop Dates Have Not Moved

Sheeran has not posted a second note since the walk-offs. Messina has not named replacements. Kraft’s Gillette shows remain on sale as Sheeran headline nights. The official North America Loop Tour show calendar still runs from Philadelphia on September 19 through Tampa on November 7.

The Loop Tour began on January 16, 2026, in Auckland, behind the 2025 album Play. Sheeran can play a stadium alone. He has done it for years with a loop pedal and a guitar. That is the show that now goes into Lincoln Financial Field unless the promoter fills the undercard in the next three calendar days, and nobody involved has said that work is underway.

Macklemore got the two nights he said he needed. Sheeran kept the rooms he said he could not lose. The musicians he said he would not abandon are the ones who are gone.