Rapper Kanye West's Concert In Poland Canceled Amid Scandals
- 18.04.2026, 12:50
The Minister of Culture initially found this unacceptable.
Poland on Friday, April 17, announced the cancellation of a June concert by U.S. rapper Kanye West, who has for many years been an euphemist with anti-Semitic, racist and pro-Nazi remarks, says the BBC.
The concert by Kanye West, who changed his name to "Ye" five years ago, was scheduled for June 19 in the southern Polish city of Chorzów. It could have been his first performance in Poland in 15 years, but on Friday the stadium where the show was planned said it would not take place - "for formal and legal reasons."
Polish Culture Minister Marta Cienkowska earlier said she found the decision to invite West "unacceptable."
In addition to Poland, West was set to perform in Britain and France during his European tour, but British authorities banned him from entering the country on April 6, and a few days later the organizers of the Marseille event announced that the decision on the concert had been postponed.
In February last year, West began selling swastika T-shirts, causing online shopping site Shopify to remove his store.
Three months later, the rapper released a piece titled "Heil Hitler," in which he said he was made a Nazi by a child custody lawsuit and the freezing of his assets.
In January, before announcing a European tour and a new album, West paid for a full page in the Wall Street Journal newspaper in which he apologized for his statements and actions.
"I'm not a Nazi or an anti-Semite. I love Jews," West wrote and explained that he had "lost touch with reality" because of his bipolar disorder.
In Poland, promoting Nazi symbols is a crime punishable by up to three years in prison.
In Poland, Nazi symbols and ideology are a particularly sensitive issue. Nazi Germany (along with the Soviet Union) occupied and dismembered the country. The Nazis deported Poles en masse and set up death camps in the country, where millions of European Jews, including 3 million Polish Jews, were murdered.
"This artist publicly expressed anti-Semitic views, downplayed the gravity of the crimes and made money from swastika T-shirts," Culture Minister Cienkowska wrote on the X network. - This is a deliberate crossing of boundaries and normalization of hatred. There should be no place in culture for those who use it to spread hatred."
Before the concert's cancellation was announced by the Polish stadium, Polish Culture Ministry spokesman Peter Jędrzejewski told the BBC that the authorities could not simply ban the concert because there was no suitable law for that.
He added that Poland's Foreign Ministry was also against West's concert.