Macklemore Told MetLife He Took Sheeran’s Tour to Speak

Macklemore told a MetLife Stadium crowd he took Ed Sheeran’s Loop Tour so he could shout “Free Palestine” from American stadiums. He opened both East Rutherford nights, Sept. 4 and Sept. 5, then posted the Saturday speech on Monday rather than walk it back. The Israeli-American Council wants him cut. Sheeran has not said a word in public.

That collision was sitting in the booking. The 43-year-old rapper has toured “Hind’s Hall” since 2024. Loop is a circular-stage pop night built around Sheeran’s hits from Play and the catalog that filled the stadium after 8 p.m. Macklemore used the 45 minutes before that to make the Gaza war the first political fact in the building.

He Said the Loop Tour Was the Point

He did not treat the chant as a slip. On Friday he told the crowd a big part of the reason he wanted the tour in the first place was to stand in stadiums like MetLife and say two words near to his heart: Free Palestine. He wanted people in Gaza and the occupied West Bank to hear that they had not been forgotten, then played the protest song while Gaza footage and campus-rally images ran on the house screens. He wore a keffiyeh over his shoulders.

Saturday he came back to the same slot and spoke longer. He told Jewish listeners that criticism of Israel, apartheid, and genocide was not a criticism of them, and that his message was peace, love, and equal treatment. He then widened the list: free Palestine, free Lebanon, free Cuba, free Congo, free Sudan, and “free all people in America living in fear over this terrorist organization ICE.” Israel rejects the genocide charge and says its Gaza campaign is self-defence after the Hamas-led attack of Oct. 7, 2023, which killed about 1,200 people and took 251 hostages.

One of the reasons I wanted to come on this tour was because I wanted to stand up on stages across America and say two words that are very near and dear to my heart: Free Palestine. I want those words to be loud and clear so the people from Gaza all the way to the occupied West Bank know that we have not forgotten them.

Macklemore, onstage at MetLife Stadium, Sept. 5, 2026

On Monday he put that clip on his own feeds with the line that wanting all humans treated equal should never be controversial. The post is the record he wants sitting next to the petition.

https://x.com/macklemore/status/2097033800811507990

THE METLIFE OPENING SET

• CHANT: The first number on both nights, before any of the radio hits.
• Thrift Shop, White Walls, Same Love: The 2010s singles that still fill a stadium early.
• Hind’s Hall: The 2024 protest track, placed fifth, with the Gaza screens behind it.
• Good Old Days, Glorious, Can’t Hold Us: The close that hands the building back to Sheeran.

Doors were at 4:30 p.m. BIIRD started at 5:30 and Lukas Graham at 6:00. Macklemore’s window was 6:45 to 7:30. Sheeran took the circular stage at 8:00 and played until 11:00, a hits run that still ended on “Shape of You,” “Azizam,” and “Bad Habits.” The political speech lived in the support slot, not in the headliner’s set.

Who the Petition Names

The Israeli-American Council community organization launched the drive after the Friday show and aimed it at the people who can actually change the bill. It says it represents more than 150,000 Israeli-Americans. The form does not show a public signature total. It does name the targets in order: Sheeran, manager Stuart Camp at Grumpy Old Management, Messina Touring Group, AEG Presents, MetLife’s leadership, and every venue still hosting Loop.

The text calls MetLife an Ed Sheeran concert, not a rally, and says the problem is an opener using a global tour to push a one-sided agenda with selective images and disputed claims presented as fact. It treats “Hind’s Hall” as a choice, not a coincidence, because the song backs the campus protest movement and takes its name from the label occupiers gave Columbia’s Hamilton Hall.

THE IAC DEMANDS

• The cut: The form asks Sheeran and tour leadership to remove him from remaining Loop dates on which he is scheduled.
• Prior approval: It wants a straight answer on whether the speech, the screen package, and “Hind’s Hall” were cleared before Friday.
• Stage rules: It asks for clear boundaries so later openers cannot turn the slot into a political broadcast.

The closing lines are the part written for Sheeran. Freedom of expression, the council said, does not mean freedom from responsibility. Your show. Your stage. Your responsibility. Keep Loop about music, not political propaganda.

Night Two Turned Silence Into a Decision

Friday could have been written off as an opener going long. Saturday cannot. The same speech, the same song, and the same screens went out after a full day of video from night one. Sheeran still handed Macklemore the 6:45 p.m. slot. He then played his own show as billed. No statement came off the headliner’s account, and no public note came from Camp, Messina, or AEG.

A father in the Friday crowd wrote that he had brought his wife and two daughters for Sheeran, sat through the first two openers, then took them out of the bowl when the Free Palestine chant started. He said they waited out the rest of Macklemore’s set and came back for the headliner, which he still called phenomenal. After Saturday he argued the repeat made the booking Sheeran’s. That is the cleanest version of the complaint, and it does not require anyone to pretend the opener hid his politics.

The Anti-Defamation League put the same objection in institutional language. ADL said fans came for a concert, not “performative, biased and hateful anti-Israel ‘activism’” from the opener, and that Jewish or Israeli fans should not have to walk out of a pop show. StopAntisemitism circulated concert video and wrote that Jewish patrons should not be subjected to that propaganda. P!NK reshared that attack. Boy George posted an AI image of Sheeran in a shirt reading “Wkack Mack No More” and wrote that he had never been a Sheeran fan and that nothing had changed.

The other half of the building heard a different night. Parts of the crowd cheered the chant. Clips of the keffiyeh, the screens, and the “we have not forgotten them” line moved as proof that a stadium opener had finally used the mic. The split is not mysterious. One side bought a Loop ticket for “Thinking Out Loud” and got a lecture on Gaza before the loop pedal started. The other side thinks a 45-minute support set is fair use when the death toll is the subject.

Hind’s Hall Has Been Public Since 2024

None of this arrived as a new politics. Macklemore released “Hind’s Hall” on May 6, 2024, named for Hind Rajab, a 6-year-old Palestinian girl killed in Gaza, and for the Columbia students who occupied Hamilton Hall and renamed it for her. New York police took the building back on April 30, 2024. The track samples Fairuz, attacks U.S. funding of Israel, calls the occupation apartheid, and funnels proceeds to UNRWA. Singer Matisyahu called the song antisemitic the year it dropped. Macklemore kept playing it, including at a New Zealand date days after release, with Palestinian flag colors on the house lights.

Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry, whose figures the UN treats as reliable, puts the death toll from Israeli attacks since October 2023 at more than 73,000, including more than 1,300 after a ceasefire declared on Oct. 10, 2025. A United Nations-appointed commission of inquiry issued a UN inquiry finding on genocide in Gaza in September 2025. Israel called that work distorted and false. The International Court of Justice is still hearing South Africa’s genocide case; Israel calls it unfounded. Macklemore’s MetLife language (“apartheid,” “genocide”) tracks the protest register, not a court judgment.

THE HIND’S HALL TIMELINE

1. 2014: Macklemore apologises for a stage costume that critics said was antisemitic, a file the current fight keeps pulling back up.
2. October 2023: He is among the early names on the Artists4Ceasefire letter he signed, asking then-President Joe Biden for a ceasefire, hostage releases, and aid into Gaza.
3. May 6, 2024: “Hind’s Hall” lands as a surprise single tied to the campus occupations.
4. Sept. 21, 2024: At Seattle’s Palestine Will Live Forever Festival he debuts “Hind’s Hall 2,” says “yeah, fuck America,” and is then dropped from Las Vegas’s Neon City Festival.
5. Jan. 16, 2026: Sheeran’s Loop Tour opens in Auckland for the album Play; Macklemore is not on that first run.
6. Sept. 4-5, 2026: He joins the U.S. stadium leg at MetLife and puts the 2024 catalog in front of a pop crowd of more than 80,000 capacity.

Loop rotates openers. Myles Smith, Aaron Rowe, Sigrid, Lukas Graham, Ellie Banke, Amble, and BIIRD have all held the slot on other nights. Macklemore is the one who told the room he took the dates in order to talk about Palestine. That is why the petition reads like a demand to reverse a known hire, not to punish a surprise rant.

Promoters Have Not Said If the Speech Was Cleared

The unanswered question in the IAC form is the one that actually sits with production. Stadium tours lock video packages, content warnings, and set times weeks out. Gaza stills on MetLife’s boards are not a phone flashlight. Either someone in the Loop camp signed off on that screen file, or an opener overran the plot and the Friday tape was still rolled again on Saturday. Camp, Messina, and AEG have not said which it was. Messages to those offices went unanswered after the first night.

Sheeran has been on Loop since January. Macklemore only joined for this stretch of the American stadium run. That timing cuts two ways. It lets the headliner’s camp argue the support bill is a local add-on, not a joint political ticket. It also means the first two nights of this pairing were the test, and the test was repeated after the footage was already public. Silence after Friday is delay. Silence after Saturday is a hold.

P!NK’s share and Boy George’s joke do not move a stadium contract. Promoters do. So do venue chiefs who now have the petition sitting in the same inbox as the Sept. 19 advance. If the screen package was approved, cutting Macklemore would be a political reversal, not a safety call. If it was not approved, keeping him is a decision to live with it through Tampa.

Eight Stadiums Still Carry His Name

Concert listings still have him on the U.S. stadiums that follow MetLife. The next of those nights is Saturday, Sept. 19, at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia, with Lukas Graham and Aaron Rowe also on the bill. Nothing public has changed that lineup since the Monday video.

REMAINING LOOP DATES WITH MACKLEMORE

Loop itself runs through Dec. 12 in Mexico City. The Latin American dates list other support, including Finneas, not Macklemore. The fight is confined to this American stadium block, which is exactly the map he described on the mic: stages across America, two words, loud enough to carry.

Philadelphia will get the same 45-minute window unless Sheeran or AEG change the sheet. Macklemore has already said why he wanted that window. The petition has already said why it wants it closed. The headliner still has the only vote that counts, and he has not used it.