Music of the Spheres - Coldplay have announced that the final two London dates of its Music of the Spheres World Tour will be rescheduled due to a planned Tube strike. In a statement on their website, the band said it was "impossible" to get 82,000 fans to and from Wembley Stadium without London Underground services. "Therefore, no event licence can be granted for the nights of 7 and 8 September," they said. The Sunday, 7 September show will move to Saturday, 6 and the Monday, 8 September show will move to Friday, 12. Coldplay said fans can use their existing tickets for the rescheduled dates.
Despite changing the dates, Coldplay will still be playing 10 nights at Wembley Stadium, breaking the joint record set by Take That and Taylor Swift of performing eight shows at the venue in the same year. The Music of the Spheres is already the most-attended concert tour in history, according to Guinness World Records.
Grassroots - The vast majority of applicants for Arts Council England’s Grassroots Music Fund have been impacted by the collapse of the funding body’s online portal, Grantium, a survey by UK Music suggests. The survey of applicants for the Grassroots Music Fund was announced in early August, shortly after the fund was suspended due to ongoing technical problems with ACE’s application systems.
Of the respondents, which included artists, venues and labels, 90% said they felt they would be impacted in some way by the disruption to the funding cycle, with 46% saying they feared that the initial timeframe proposed by ACE would render their projects “unviable”. The Grassroots Music Fund reopened last week with an alternative application portal to Grantium, which first failed in July and remains out of action.
Dirty Dancing Delay - A new ‘state-of-the-art’ venue that was set to launch in west London this year will now not open until 2026. Producers of the theatre’s planned inaugural show, Dirty Dancing – The Classic Story on Stage, attributed the postponement to “planning and design issues during the early stages of construction”. The Capital Theatre is hoped to be a permanent venue in Westfield shopping centre, Shepherd’s Bush, and has promised an "intimate, flexible" 620-seat auditorium in which no audience member will be more than nine rows from the stage.
Eternal Sunshine - Ariana Grande is to go on her first tour in seven years next summer, with five dates in London the only shows so far scheduled outside North America. The pop star's The Eternal Sunshine Tour is named after her latest album, which came out in March 2024. Since then, she has focused on acting, earning an Oscar nomination for her role as Glinda in Wicked, with the sequel Wicked: For Good due for release this November.
The tour will begin in Oakland, California, on 6 June 2026 and will conclude with five nights at London's O2 arena on 15, 16, 19, 20 and 23 August. Pre-sale for the UK tickets will begin on 16 September, followed by the general sale on 18 September.
Date Changes - Jessie J has rearranged and cancelled upcoming tour dates after revealing she needs to undergo further cancer treatment. The singer says she needs to "have a second surgery". The operation falls in the middle of her upcoming European tour dates in October, which she says will be rearranged, whilst her US shows have to be cancelled due to calendar clashes.
Edinburgh Rocks - Organisers have announced the acts for this year's Edinburgh's Hogmanay celebrations. Indie rockers Wet Leg will play the world-famous event, held in Princes Street Gardens, for the first time, after a big year that saw them play at Glastonbury and get to number one in the UK album charts. They will be joined by Scottish supports acts Hamish Hawk and Lucia & The Best Boys.
(Jim Evans)
2 September 2025