Ye can’t buy a European stage right now. The BULLY rollout that was supposed to be a global victory lap has turned into a month of rejections, and Switzerland is the newest country to slam the door.
FC Basel, the Swiss soccer club that runs bookings at St. Jakob Park, officially passed on a proposed June performance from Ye. The club made it public on Saturday, April 18, keeping its reasoning short and pointed.
“FCB received an enquiry and considered it,” the club said in a formal statement. “However, after thorough review, we have decided not to proceed with the project, as we cannot, in accordance with our values, provide a platform for the artist in question within this context.”
Translation: not in our house.
Switzerland is the fourth European rejection in under two weeks. The timeline is stacking up fast.
First, the UK. On April 7, the British Home Office withdrew Ye’s Electronic Travel Authorization, which effectively blocked him from entering the country to headline Wireless Festival in London. The festival had already been bleeding sponsors. Diageo pulled out. PayPal pulled out. Once the visa was gone, Wireless cancelled the entire festival and started issuing refunds.
Next, France. Marseille’s Orange Velodrome was on the schedule for June. French officials made noise. The interior minister went public with opposition. Ye ended up announcing the postponement himself, saying on X that he didn’t want to put his fans “in the middle of it.” France was already reportedly exploring legal avenues to formally ban him before he pulled the plug.
Then Poland. On April 17, Chorzów’s Slaski Stadium cancelled his June 19 show, citing “formal and legal reasons.” Polish culture minister Marta Cienkowska had already come out swinging, calling the booking “unacceptable” and saying the country was dealing with “an artist who has publicly expressed antisemitic views, downplayed crimes, and profited from selling swastika T-shirts.
And now Switzerland. Four countries in about eleven days.
Every one of these rejections traces back to the same fallout. Ye’s string of antisemitic remarks, the “Heil Hitler” song, the public praise of Adolf Hitler, and the swastika T-shirts he was selling directly off his website. Australia banned him back in 2025 over that same run of behavior, and Holocaust survivors have been publicly calling on other European countries to follow suit.
Ye tried to reset the narrative in January when he took out a full page ad in The Wall Street Journal, apologizing and blaming his conduct on untreated bipolar disorder and a brain injury from his 2002 car accident. “I am not a Nazi or an antisemite. I love Jewish people,” he wrote.
The apology landed differently depending on who was reading it, and there’s a credibility wrinkle Europe is clearly paying attention to. In an ongoing lawsuit from a former Yeezy employee, Ye’s own legal team has reportedly argued that the antisemitic conduct directed at that employee was part of his “creative process,” not a symptom of his mental health. That’s the opposite of what the WSJ apology said. European governments noticed.
The split between how the US and Europe are treating Ye right now is wild. BULLY dropped on March 27 and debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200. First week numbers came in at 56,000 physical copies sold and over 98 million on demand streams. His two SoFi Stadium nights on April 1 and April 3 reportedly grossed $33 million combined and broke venue records. The stage design, built out with visual artist Aus Taylor, got near universal praise.
So domestically, Ye is in comeback mode. Overseas, he’s getting frozen out one country at a time.
According to Ye’s official tour listing, the remaining 2026 BULLY dates include Turkey, the Netherlands (Gelredome in Arnhem on June 6 and 8), Italy (RCF Arena in Reggio Emilia on July 18), Spain (Estadio Metropolitano in Madrid on July 30), and Portugal. India already happened on March 29 at Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium.
The real question isn’t whether Ye can sell tickets. The SoFi numbers answered that already. The question is whether any of those remaining European dates are actually safe, or whether the “values” dominoes are going to keep falling. Ye hasn’t publicly responded to the Switzerland decision yet. BULLY era continues, but the map is shrinking.
