Morrissey’s tour chaos continues: three concerts canceled, 402 cancellations in total.
Morrissey canceled further appearances on his “The Royal Playhouse Tour 2026” at the start of 2026. In doing so, the former frontman of The Smiths and long-time solo artist remained true to himself: In 2025, too, he became the focus of media reporting due to, among other things, increased gig cancellations or postponements.
Three shows affected at the beginning of the year
The controversial singer has already postponed one gig in the first five days of 2026 and completely canceled two more. The affected shows are last January 3rd at the Agua Caliente Casino Rancho Mirage in California, January 6th at the San Diego Civic Theater in California and January 25th at Altos de Chavón in the Dominican Republic.
The January 3rd performance has been postponed to an as yet undetermined future date. In an accompanying statement, the venue’s operators cited “a side effect of a prescription medication” as the reason for postponing the event. What illness this was was not disclosed in the statement.
The organizers of the concert at Altos de Chavón said in their statement that the show had to be canceled “for reasons completely beyond our control.”
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Reddit user created website for Morrissey’s concert cancellations
A user The social media platform Reddit compiled all postponements, cancellations or shortenings of events with which Morrissey is associated on a separate website together. This also includes the affected dates during his time with The Smiths from 1982 to 1985. In his almost 45 years as a publicly performing artist, the user recorded 402 incidents of canceled, postponed or shortened sets. Last year alone, the 66-year-old canceled half of his planned tour dates.
The reasons given for the previous failures included extreme exhaustion, lack of support from his label, injuries to band members, severe sinusitis and technical problems.
Next appearances
His next scheduled performance is January 10th at the Boeing Center at Tech Port in San Antonio, Texas. This is a catch-up date as the concert on May 8, 2025 has been postponed. The performance would be his first in the state in 15 years because his scheduled gigs in 2016 and 2017 were first postponed and then canceled, Stereogum reported.
The tour takes the artist to the United States, the Caribbean and Europe through the end of March 2026 with 19 shows remaining. How many of these appointments will actually take place will become apparent in the coming months.
The controversy surrounding the singer
Morrissey has attracted attention in recent years through right-wing political statements. Among other things, he described Hitler as a “leftist” and said that accusations of racism from “left-wing crackpots” were just a method to distract from the issue.
His band The Smiths had already broken up in 1987 and the members had fallen out ever since. Bassist Andy Rourke died in 2023. A reunion has not taken place in recent years, among other reasons, because Johnny Marr rejected it. Most recently, Morrissey sold all of his business interests in the band, cutting all ties with his former bandmates Marr and Joyce.