Lindemann's 50+ date tour shows the real verdict is the box office

Can a public controversy still cancel a concert tour? If you judge by Till Lindemann's calendar, the honest answer is: only if the audience agrees to it. And so far, this audience has shown no interest in agreeing.

The facts are simple. The Rammstein frontman has announced his "World Tour 2027," with more than 50 concerts, 33 of them in 22 European countries, according to the organizer. The tour starts on other continents in spring 2027 and reaches Europe in the fall. Presale for Germany, Austria and Switzerland opens Wednesday, October 28, at 4 p.m. through Myticket. According to the organizer, his 2025 solo run, "Meine Welt," sold more than 200,000 tickets across Europe.

The presale hasn't happened yet, and that's the point

A small correction to the easy version of this story: the "presale rush" is still ahead of us. Nobody can tell you today how fast anything sells out, and anyone who does is guessing. But the verdict doesn't really hinge on a single morning of server crashes. It's already written in the promoter's arithmetic.

Fred Handwerker, whose company organizes the European leg, put it this way, as That Eric Alper reports: "We started with 18 concerts, grew to 25, and now have 33 venues in 22 countries!" We can't know the promoter's reasons, but in our view promoters rarely add dates out of sentiment; they usually add them when the previous ones showed there was demand to serve. Three tours, three expansions. That looks like a market speaking, and it's speaking in a very consistent voice.

Controversy has become a footnote in the sales deck

Here is the uncomfortable part. Austrian and German coverage notes that Lindemann has faced accusations from women about sexual misconduct, and that investigations were later closed. Against his Vienna show of November 29, 2025, a petition titled "#KeineBühne für mutmaßliche Täter!" had gathered a good 5,700 signatures as of that earlier reporting. That's a real number of real people. It is also, we'd argue, a rounding error next to a 200,000-ticket tour.

We want to be careful here. A closed investigation is not a conviction, and nothing in the reporting lets us say more than what has been published. Still, the commercial lesson is hard to miss: a petition is a loud form of disapproval, but a ticket is a binding one. Outrage costs nothing to share and a seat costs money. In a fight between the two, money tends to win on the night.

What this says about fans more than about him

The lazy take is that fans are "excusing" something. We think that's both unfair and incomplete. Many probably buy tickets for the spectacle, the music and the ritual of a live show, and some will point to the fact that the investigations were closed. Others simply separate the stage from the person, as people have done with artists for decades. Whether that separation is wise is a legitimate debate. But it's a stance, not an accident.

What has changed is the infrastructure of the debate. Online campaigns can make a name toxic for a news cycle, but they can't easily dissolve a fanbase that has its own channels and its own loyalty, and that now buys into an adults-only (18+) event. The more a scene is told it's under siege, the tighter it usually closes ranks. Controversy doesn't always dent loyalty; sometimes it may work as a membership fee.

We'd also push back on the thesis that this is a story about "paying for provocation." The reporting tells us about dates, venues and sales, not about what happens onstage. What it does show is something plainer and, frankly, more sobering: demand looks like the only veto that actually works in live music. Venues book, promoters expand and ticketing platforms process, all following the same signal.

Our verdict

If you think artists in Lindemann's position shouldn't be on stage, the petition-and-hashtag route has been tried, and in our view it is not enough. Persuading venues and promoters is a slower, less glamorous job, and it ultimately means persuading ticket buyers. If you're a fan, own that choice rather than hiding behind "it's just music"; it's a decision with a price tag, and it's fair to be asked about it.

And if you're simply watching the industry: October 28 will tell us how big the appetite is, not whether it exists. We'd bet that this tour, like the last one, sells. That's a prediction, not an endorsement, and it says the audience, not the outrage cycle, holds the final vote.