English singer Morrissey has cancelled another concert on his 2026 tour, with Morrissey citing extreme sleep deprivation after a night of festival noise in Valencia, Spain.
by Paul Cashmere
Morrissey has cancelled yet another concert on his current tour, calling off a scheduled performance in Valencia, Spain after claiming he was unable to sleep due to noise outside his hotel room.
The 66-year-old singer had been due to perform at Palau de Les Arts in Valencia on March 12 but announced hours before the show that he would not be able to take the stage. In a series of statements posted to his website, Morrissey explained that the cancellation followed two days of road travel and a sleepless night caused by the city’s festival atmosphere.
According to the statement, Morrissey arrived at his hotel in Valencia late after travelling by road for two days. Once there, he said rest proved impossible.
“Any form of sleep or rest throughout the night was impossible due to festival noise, loud techno singing and megaphone announcements,” the message read, adding that the experience had left the singer in what was described as a “catatonic state”.
A subsequent update said the Valencia performance had been “rendered impossible due to sleep deprivation”. The message added that the show itself had not technically been cancelled, with organisers instead stating that circumstances made the performance impossible.
In a third post, Morrissey described his hotel stay in stark terms. “The hotel in Valencia was indescribable hell,” he wrote. “It will take me one year to recover. And that is an understatement.”
The disruption occurred during the build-up to Valencia’s annual Las Fallas festival, one of Spain’s loudest and most elaborate cultural celebrations. The multi-day event fills the city with fireworks, music and public announcements as neighbourhoods construct enormous sculptural displays that are eventually set alight in a dramatic closing ceremony.
For fans in Valencia, however, the cancellation meant the loss of one of the most anticipated concerts of Morrissey’s European run. Tickets for the show had been on sale for months, with many fans travelling to the coastal Spanish city specifically for the performance.
The Valencia date marked the seventh show Morrissey has cancelled during the current touring cycle promoting his latest album Make-Up Is A Lie, released on March 6. The record has generated strong chart interest in the UK, reaching No. 2 in the midweek chart following its release.
Several shows earlier in the year were already scrapped, including performances in San Diego, St Louis, Atlanta, the Dominican Republic and St Petersburg in Florida. Another scheduled appearance in Rancho Mirage, California was postponed after Morrissey reported an adverse reaction to prescription medication.
The Valencia cancellation adds to a long and widely documented history of disrupted tours throughout Morrissey’s career. Fan tracking sites estimate that since 2012 the singer has completed around 70 percent of his scheduled shows, performing 449 out of 639 booked concerts.
Across his entire career, including the early years with The Smiths, Morrissey is estimated to have cancelled or postponed more than 400 shows. For audiences, buying a ticket to a Morrissey concert has sometimes carried an element of uncertainty.
The reasons behind those cancellations have varied widely over the years. Health concerns have occasionally played a role, including battles with pneumonia, respiratory illness and an ulcer, as well as a medical procedure related to cancer earlier in his career.
Security concerns have also forced cancellations. In late 2025 several United States shows were called off after authorities warned of a credible threat against the singer while on stage. The concerts were scrapped as a precaution for the safety of both the artist and the audience.
Other cancellations have come under unusual circumstances. In 2015 Morrissey declined to perform at a festival in Reykjavik after organisers refused his request to stop serving meat during the event, a stance consistent with his long-standing advocacy for animal rights.
In 2014 he ended a concert in Warsaw after just 25 minutes when a comment from an audience member was deemed offensive. Earlier tours have been interrupted by exhaustion during long travel schedules and disputes with promoters.
Tour disruptions even stretch back to the earliest days of Morrissey’s career. During The Smiths era in the 1980s, concerts were occasionally cancelled due to illness or unexpected incidents involving band members, including a widely reported jellyfish sting suffered by bassist Andy Rourke during a holiday break.
Despite the unpredictable touring record, Morrissey remains one of the most influential figures to emerge from the British independent music movement of the 1980s. After fronting The Smiths for five years, he launched his solo career in 1987 and has since released 14 studio albums, most of which have reached the UK Top 5.
Songs such as Everyday Is Like Sunday and I Know It’s Over helped cement his reputation as one of the most distinctive lyricists of his generation, blending literary references, bleak humour and social commentary.
The current tour still has two Spanish dates remaining. Morrissey is scheduled to perform next in Zaragoza before concluding the run in Sevilla, provided the remaining shows proceed as planned.
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