Sixteen months without a Wellington stadium gig and ‘nothing on the horizon’

Wednesday, 4 June 2025

Foo Fighters in January 2024 was the last big international concert at Sky Stadium in Wellington.

Wellington’s Sky Stadium is sitting on a 16-month concert drought as the organisation promoting the capital says three acts have pulled out of touring the city this year alone.

WellingtonNZ's latest report to its majority owner, Wellington City Council, this week states: “Cancellations due to rising touring costs highlight some financial strain on promoters that has resulted in the cancellation of three 2025 performance events.”

It did not specify what venue the acts would have played and WellingtonNZ would not reveal the names of the acts.

But local promoter Phil Sprey said Coldplay and and Pink missed the capital in later 2023 and early 2024. He did not know which ones had cancelled in 2025.

“There is nothing on the horizon either,” Sprey said.

Warrick Dent took over the stadium chief executive role in November 2023 from Shane Harmon.

“Shane worked his arse off to get acts there,” Sprey said.

Elton John ended Wellington’s last big gig drought, but there are no clues what will end this one.

Dent said the last big concert held at the stadium was the Foo Fighters in January 2024, but there had been longer gaps such as the hiatus between Bon Jovi in 2010 and Elton John in 2015.

“It is shaping as potentially a quiet summer for stadium concerts in New Zealand, at this stage there is only one stadium concert [Metallica in Auckland in November] that has been announced,” Dent said.

“We continue to work with promoters to bring concerts to Sky Stadium and are having positive discussions about future opportunities.”

The stadium had some big non-musical events coming up including a Wrexham football match in July and the Hot Wheels Monster Trucks Live in September.

Wellington Central MP Tamatha Paul said the lack of a large arena was Wellington’s problem.

“If Wellington had an arena like [Auckland’s] Spark Arena … it would make it more profitable for international acts to tour New Zealand.

“That is why people have been trying to create an arena in Wellington for the last few decades. I fully support this.”

Talk of a indoor covered stadium – bigger than the Queen’s Wharf TSB Arena but smaller than Sky Stadium – had been floated for years and got to the stage of having a site chosen and artist’s impressions done but no spades hit the ground.

Wellington City councillor Diane Calvert, a Wellington Regional Stadium Trust board member, said the issue was not necessarily with anything Wellington was doing wrong, as much as bands were not touring so much.

“And we are getting the monster trucks,” she said.

When the then WestpacTrust Stadium opened in 2000 its resource consent allowed for a maximum of six night performances a year.