Roxette and their fans are the latest victims of increasing touring costs and nixed concerts as the Swedish pop rock group announced the cancellation of their scheduled North American tour.
In a July 25th social media post, Roxette said “due to logistics and hugely increased touring costs, Live Nation US has decided to postpone” the band’s 40th anniversary tour in North America.
“Lena, I and the band are of course disappointed,” Per Gessle, the group’s guitarist and songwriter, said in a separate post. “We were really looking forward to this (North American) tour and US is by far our biggest streaming market.”
Gessle emphasized that the decision to scratch the scheduled tour was made by Live Nation and was “probably based on their own calculations,” adding, “I hope we can play for our fab fans in the USA and Canada at some point in the near future.”
The 14-date 40th anniversary tour, with Taylor Dayne, Nick Lowe, and Los Straightjackets supporting, was announced in May and was supposed to kick off September 10th in Michigan.
Roxette had four U.S. chart toppers from 1988 to 1991 with “The Look,” “Listen to Your Heart,” “It Must Have Been Love,” and “Joyride” and sold millions of records worldwide.
The Swedish group’s North American tour collapsing points toward another casualty of rising touring costs and sluggish ticket sales, a trend that’s become so recognizable that it’s gotten the name “Blue Dot Fever,” a reference to the colored circles that denote empty seats on Ticketmaster’s sales platform.
In May, The Pussycat Dolls canceled a North American tour, admitting that lackluster ticket purchases made them “take an honest look” and come to a “difficult and heartbreaking” decision. This year, a Post Malone and Jelly Roll stadium tour was pushed back and some concerts canceled, and Meghan Trainor canceled her entire “Get it Girl” tour. While Post Malone and Trainor cited timing issues and family, respectively, as the reasons for the cancellations, insiders and reporters revealed underwhelming ticket purchases likely were a contributing factor.
For Roxette’s part, they’ve been successfully touring the rest of the world, having performed all over Europe, South America, Australia and South Africa in 2025 and 2026 as well as having more European concerts scheduled this month and next.
In 2019, the Swedish duo’s original vocalist Marie Frederiksson died, and Gessle tapped Lena Philipsson as the new singer in 2024.
