Poland cancels Kanye West concert after backlash over Nazi, racist remarks

Poland canceled Kanye West’s planned June 19 concert in Chorzów after days of public backlash over the rapper’s antisemitic comments and celebration of Nazism, turning another European booking into a political liability. Stadion Śląski, the Silesian Stadium, said the show would not go ahead for “formal and legal reasons,” closing the door on a performance that had become untenable long before the first ticket was scanned.

The decision followed a sharp intervention from Poland’s culture minister, Marta Cienkowska, who publicly opposed the concert and called the plan to stage it “unacceptable.” She said Poland is a country scarred by the Holocaust and argued that artistic freedom does not give performers a free pass for hate. Her remarks helped crystallize the backlash into a broader test of where European institutions now draw the line on antisemitism in popular culture.

West, also known as Ye, had been scheduled to perform at Stadion Śląski on June 19, but the venue’s announcement effectively ended the event before summer. The cancellation came just days after he postponed a show in France, another sign that the fallout from his public remarks was spreading across European markets. West has faced repeated criticism for antisemitic statements and public praise of Adolf Hitler, accusations that made the Polish booking politically combustible from the start.

The episode also came a little more than a week after Britain blocked West from entering the country, where he had been due to headline London’s Wireless Festival. After the Home Office refusal, Wireless Festival was canceled. British officials cited his history of antisemitic remarks, and the move underscored how government decisions and concert economics have become tightly linked when performers cross into overt hate speech.

West apologized in January 2026, saying his behavior was tied to untreated bipolar disorder and renouncing previous expressions of admiration for Hitler. But the apology did little to stop the commercial and political consequences now stacking up around him. In Poland, the reaction showed how quickly a stadium booking can turn into a national issue, especially in a country where Holocaust memory still shapes public life and where cultural institutions are increasingly under pressure to reject performers whose rhetoric veers into antisemitism.