The Chicago-born American rapper Kanye West will perform in Russia for the first time, with concerts scheduled for Oct. 10 and 11 at Gazprom Arena in St. Petersburg, the organizer, Say Agency, announced on social media on Aug. 18. Tickets for the event are currently priced from 9,000 (just over $100) to 160,000 rubles (close to $1,900). No performances in other Russian cities have been announced.
The concerts will mark the rapper’s debut on the Russian stage. However, West, now known as Ye, has visited the country before: in June 2024, he made a surprise visit to Moscow for the birthday of fashion designer Gosha Rubchinsky.
West’s planned visit was welcomed in the State Duma, Russia’s lower house of parliament. Elena Drapeko, first deputy chair of the Duma’s culture committee, told the outlet Podyom that she viewed the tour as a good sign while still expressing hope the performer had changed some of his past views.
“I hope that since then he has changed his mind and changed his attitude toward both Hitler and Russia,” she said. “The fact that he is coming to us is, in fact, a good sign.”
Drapeko added that West would fill Gazprom Arena and called his visit a “breakthrough of the blockade,” framing the rapper’s planned visit as an example of Russia escaping the Western cultural isolation that followed the invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Drapeko acknowledged, however, that she had not heard any of the rapper’s songs and was not interested in the genre.
Ye has drawn widespread criticism and condemnation in recent years after he began making antisemitic remarks and voicing admiration for Adolf Hitler. In early 2025, in a series of posts on X, Ye openly called himself a Nazi. He later released a song titled “Heil Hitler” (along with a companion title, “WW3,” which similarly glorified Hitler) and also offered a $20 white T-shirt printed with a swastika and the code "HH-01" for sale on his website (which he also advertised at Super Bowl LIX).
Several of Ye’s European performances were canceled in 2026, including those scheduled in the UK and Poland. Britain blocked West from traveling to the country in April to headline London’s Wireless Festival due to his antisemitic comments and celebration of Nazism. Several weeks later, the Swiss football club Basel also refused to host his concert at its stadium, St. Jakob-Park, saying the event was incompatible with the organization’s values.
West has issued apologies to the Jewish community on several occasions, most recently taking out a full-page advertisement in the Wall Street Journal in January 2026. In the ad, he said he had “lost touch with reality” and attributed his behavior to an undiagnosed brain injury from a 2002 car crash, along with untreated bipolar disorder
"I regret and am deeply mortified by my actions in that state, and am committed to accountability, treatment, and meaningful change. It does not excuse what I did, though. I am not a Nazi or an antisemite. I love Jewish people," he added.
