Kanye kicks off tour
Kanye West launched his 2026 world tour in Los Angeles this week, a high‑profile return to live shows that’s already drawing headlines because of controversy tied to a Wireless Festival booking. (nme.com) For Pop/Hip‑Hop fans, the run signals big festival and arena moments ahead this year. (nme.com)
What makes this launch notable is how tightly it ties Kanye West’s live return to a new release cycle. The Los Angeles opener came one week after *BULLY* arrived on March 25, and early reports from the first SoFi Stadium show say the set leaned heavily on that album rather than playing as a greatest-hits reunion. (nme.com) (setlist.fm) The other reason the opening night drew so much attention is that it happened in the middle of a new fight over whether major festivals should book him at all. Wireless announced on March 30 that West would headline all three nights of its July 10-12 festival in London’s Finsbury Park, and that immediately triggered public criticism from the Jewish Leadership Council and Campaign Against Antisemitism over his past antisemitic and pro-Nazi statements. (nme.com) (billboard.com) Onstage, the first Los Angeles show looked more like a stadium-scale reset than a tentative comeback. Fan-reported set information shows West opening with several live debuts from *BULLY*, including “KING,” “THIS A MUST,” and “FATHER,” before moving into older catalog staples such as “Father Stretch My Hands, Pt. 1,” “Black Skinhead,” “Can’t Tell Me Nothing,” and “Runaway.” (setlist.fm) The schedule also shows this is not just a one-off pair of California dates. West’s official tour page lists a second SoFi show on April 3, followed by stadium stops in New Delhi on May 23, Istanbul on May 30, Arnhem on June 6 and June 8, Marseille on June 11, Reggio Emilia on July 18, Madrid on July 30, and Portugal’s Algarve on August 7. (tour.yeezy.com) (ticketmaster.com) That routing helps explain why Wireless matters so much in the story around this tour. Booking him for three straight festival nights turns the London appearance into more than a normal headline slot; it makes the festival one of the central stages of his 2026 comeback, at the exact moment promoters and audiences are still arguing over whether his commercial return should be treated as business as usual. (nme.com) (uk.news.yahoo.com) So the Los Angeles kickoff landed as two stories at once: a new stadium show built to relaunch West as a live event artist, and a test of how much resistance that relaunch will keep facing as the tour moves into Europe and Asia. The next immediate marker is the second SoFi date on April 3, with the larger political and industry flashpoint set for Wireless in July. (tour.yeezy.com) (nme.com)
