The Co-op Live venue in Manchester is in completely disarray, resulting in numerous acts cancelling their shows. 

Following technical issues at one of Manchester’s most famous arenas, huge artists such as: Take That, Olivia Rodrigo, and Keane, have been forced to postpone or cancel their performances on extremely short notice, leaving thousands of fans angered.

Usually, the arena can hold up to 23,500 people, and these seats were expected to be filled on the 20th April, as Rick Astley was due to perform in a test concert, and was the first show since the arena’s original opening. However, according to NME, only an hour before the show began, thousands of unfortunate concert goers received the fatal email that was cancelling their tickets. The arena claimed that this was in order to reduce the venue capacity to 11,000 for safety measures, however it did not appease attendees, some of which had already began on their travels to the show.

From here, the situation only worsened as A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie’s show on May 1st was cancelled ten minutes prior to the doors opening. It has been revealed that a component of the air conditioning system had fell during soundcheck, resulting in the abrupt cancelling of his show. As a result of the worsening difficulties with the venue, artists including A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie and Take That, have managed to change their shows to the Co-op Arena’s rival venue, the AO Arena.

The arena has stated that they are hoping to re-open on May 14th, despite recently undergoing work. According to the BBC, the venue had been warned in February that construction plans were around 35 weeks behind schedule. Nonetheless, the £365m venue is confident that they will soon be re-opening, and are keeping fan’s hopes up with the announcement of shows for this summer and the rescheduling of previously cancelled shows.

However, many artists have been unable to rearrange their shows, with Olivia Rodrigo, who has currently not managed to reschedule her show, stating she is “so bummed” that her show can’t go ahead

Hopefully the venue will be up and running again soon, as many despondent fans have been left miserable and confused at the sudden change of circumstances.