Grammy-winner Ed Sheehan will be the first Western artist to hold a concert in Bhutan. Sheeran’s concert will be organised in the Changlimithang Stadium in Bhutan’s capital of Thimphu on 24 January 2025.
The gig will be part of his +–=÷x Tour or Mathematics Tour, which will go to Asia and the Middle East at the beginning of the year. Aside from Bhutan, the singer will also stop in China, Qatar, Bahrain, UAE and India. The overall tour, which started back in 2022, is set to end in 2025.
Ed Sheeran’s passage in Bhutan won’t go unnoticed. The country, in which visitors are charged with a $40 visa and a $100-a-day fee as part of its “high value, low impact” tourism model, hasn’t seen much international activity in its history. With almost no embassies in the country and no international brands such as McDonald’s or Starbucks, Bhutan mostly keeps to itself.
Although Ed Sheeran’s concert will be an intimate performance with just his guitar and loopstation, it will be a grand day for the Changlimithang Stadium. The venue is the biggest stadium in the country, with a capacity of 15,000, but the latest most important event organised there was back in 2011, with a live broadcast of the wedding of King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck and Queen Jetsun Pema. Before that, in 2003, it hosted “The Other Final”, a football match between Bhutan and Montserrat to select FIFA’s lowest-ranked national team, which Bhutan won with 4-0.
The average price for an Ed Sheeran concert ticket might be $167 but in Bhutan, fares have been adapted to the country’s average annual salary of $1,387. Ticket prices thus start at just 860 Bhutanese ngultrum or about $10, even though those cheapest tickets have already sold out. Some spots are still available at fares of $30, $50, $70 or $100 but according to a statement by a Bhutanese government official to CNN, 90% of the tickets have already been sold and those who want to grab a spot thus need to be quick.
