Holly Humberstone has cancelled the remainder of her European tour after a member of her touring party suffered a “serious, life-threatening medical emergency”.
The Grantham singer-songwriter shared the news on social media today (September 21), explaining that the emergency occurred yesterday morning as her tour bus arrived in Cologne.
“Hello people of Europe,” she wrote. “As some of you may already know, we had an issue within our team yesterday. I had to keep it vague as we didn’t want to be insensitive to the situation by airing it on the internet whilst it was still happening around us.
“A member of our touring party suffered a serious, life threatening medical emergency yesterday morning on the bus as we arrived into Cologne. We responded and got them to a hospital quickly, and thankfully they are now stable and doing ok in the hospital.
“The medical team have been incredible and we can’t say enough good things about the care they’ve been given here in Cologne.”
Humberstone went on to confirm that she had made the decision to cancel the remaining dates on the European run while the unnamed member of the touring party recovers.
— Holly Humberstone (@HolHumberstone) September 21, 2026
“We are a family, and it wouldn’t feel right to continue without them whilst they take the time to recover – and so, I have made the difficult decision to cancel the remainder of the EU tour and reschedule it to a time when we can all come back, together, and deliver the show we promised,” she wrote.
“I know this tour has been tough on the fans, and I’m deeply sorry to anyone who has travelled and taken time out of their lives to come and see the show only to be faced with a cancellation.
“Cancelling shows is not something I take lightly at all, and I promise that if the situation was any different, we would be on stage for you. In these circumstances, the show wouldn’t be half as good with such a core member missing, and it just doesn’t feel right to continue.”
The incident had already led Humberstone to postpone last night’s scheduled show at Bürgerhaus Stollwerck in Cologne. In a message shared at the time, she said the concert could not go ahead “due to illness within our touring team”, adding: “The wellbeing of my team has to be my number one priority.”
The remaining dates affected are scheduled shows in Copenhagen tomorrow (September 22), Oslo (23), Stockholm (24), Hamburg (26), Berlin (27) and Munich (28).
Humberstone was also forced to postpone her September 15 show at Le Trabendo in Paris and at Amsterdam’s Paradiso the following day after being struck down with what she described as “some sort of flu”, which had left her with no voice.
The tour came in support of Humberstone’s second album ‘Cruel World’, which arrived in April. She announced the record at the beginning of the year alongside confessional first single ‘To Love Somebody’.
Speaking to NME around the album’s release, Humberstone reflected on the impact that years of touring had had on her, explaining that she needed to rediscover who she was away from life on the road.
“When I came off tour, I was like, ‘I know who I am as an artist, but who am I as a person?’” she said. “It was the first chunk of time that I’d ever had off.
“The main objective is to go and live your life like a normal person and write an album, which was a very different experience to how I wrote ‘Paint My Bedroom Black’. I really needed the space to take a breather, slow things down a bit and reconnect with who I am.”
