Wireless Festival Under Fire: Sponsors Flee as Kanye West Stays on the Bill
London's Wireless Festival faces backlash after confirming Kanye West as a headliner, leading to sponsor withdrawals and public condemnation, but organizers stand firm.
For the past week, London’s Wireless Festival has been embroiled in controversy after announcing Kanye West would headline all three nights of its 2026 edition. As of today (April 6), at least four of the festival’s sponsors, including Pepsi, have pulled out over West’s inclusion, with at least one more, PayPal, withdrawing the rights to its branding. (The “Partners” page on Wireless Festival’s website currently displays a 404 error.) Tory MP Chris Philp and Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey have called for West to be banned from England entirely. The criticism toward the rapper stems from his prior antisemitic comments.
But in a new statement, Wireless Festival organizer Melvin Benn has confirmed that West, who currently performs as Ye, will remain on the bill. “Ye’s music is played on commercial radio stations in this country,” he wrote. “It is available via live streams and downloads in this country without comment or vitriol from anyone and he has a legal right to come into the country and to perform in this country. He is intended to come in and perform.”
Benn continued, “Forgiveness and giving people a second chance are becoming a lost virtue in this ever-increasing divisive world and I would ask people to reflect on their instant comments of disgust at the likelihood of him performing (as was mine) and offer some forgiveness and hope to him as I have decided to do.” You can read the full statement below.
Earlier this week, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer told The Sun: “It is deeply concerning Kanye West has been booked to perform at Wireless despite his previous antisemitic remarks and celebration of Nazism. Antisemitism in any form is abhorrent and must be confronted firmly wherever it appears. Everyone has a responsibility to ensure Britain is a place where Jewish people feel safe.”
London mayor Sadiq Khan has also addressed Wireless Festival’s booking of West. “We are clear that the past comments and actions of this artist are offensive and wrong, and are simply not reflective of London’s values,” a spokesperson for Khan’s office said in a press statement. “This was a decision taken by the festival organizers and not one that City Hall is involved in.”
In March, West finally released his long-delayed album Bully. James Blake subsequently requested to have his name removed from the producer credits on the LP’s closing track, “The One Here,” which he said was no longer true to “the spirit” of the version he’d worked on.
West is currently being sued on claims of alleged sexual battery by a former assistant and alleged sexual assault by a model who appeared in one of his music videos. After attending the 2025 Grammys with his wife, Bianca Censori, he posted a hate-filled X rant in which he called himself a “Nazi” and praised Adolf Hitler. In January, West took out a full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal to issue a public apology, attributing his behavior to bipolar disorder and an untreated frontal lobe injury he sustained from a 2002 car crash.
Read Sam Goldner’s recent live review Kanye Wades Through the Fog at SoFi Stadium.
Melvin Benn:
I am a deeply committed anti-fascist and have been all my adult life. I lived on a kibbutz for many months in the 1970’s that was attacked on October 7th, am pro Jew and the Jewish state, while being equally committed to a Palestinian state.
Having had a person in my life for the last 15 years who suffers from mental illness, I have witnessed many episodes of despicable behaviour that I have had to forgive and move on from. If I wasn’t before, I have become a person of forgiveness and hope in all aspects of my life, including work.
What Ye has said in the past about Jews and Hitler is as abhorrent to me as it is to the Jewish community, the Prime Minister and others that have commented and - taking him at his word - to Ye now also.
Ye’s music is played on commercial radio stations in this country. It is available via live streams and downloads in this country without comment or vitriol from anyone and he has a legal right to come into the country and to perform in this country. He is intended to come in and perform. We are not giving him a platform to extol opinion of whatever nature, only to perform the songs that are currently played on the radio stations in our country and the streaming platforms in our country and listened to and enjoyed by millions.
Forgiveness and giving people a second chance are becoming a lost virtue in this ever-increasing divisive world and I would ask people to reflect on their instant comments of disgust at the likelihood of him performing (as was mine) and offer some forgiveness and hope to him as I have decided to do.
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