For the first time in more than a decade, Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, performed on a major Western European stage on Saturday night.
Outside an arena in the Netherlands, a smattering of protesters condemned his antisemitic behavior, including the release of a song titled “Heil Hitler.” But inside, tens of thousands focused on his music, as hands went up in the air and mostly stayed there for the better part of a roughly two-hour concert.
Inside the GelreDome stadium in Arnhem, an Eastern Dutch city, the atmosphere was nothing short of giddy. Ye’s legions of fans, many of whom were seeing him in concert for the first time because they were in elementary school during his last major European tour in 2014, spent the show belting out every lyric and dancing along to hits like “Power,” “Stronger” and “King.”
“This crowd is too crazy,” Ye said from atop a set designed to resemble a giant globe. Otherwise, he barely addressed the nearly 40,000 fans in attendance.
Many of those fans said they could separate Ye’s art from his hateful comments — “death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE,” the rapper wrote on social media in 2022 — and from the political opposition to his two performances in the Netherlands. Another show is scheduled for Monday, Ye’s 49th birthday.
“I’m here for the music,” said Domenico Wiener, 25, “not for his point of view.” Wiener, who had driven to Arnhem for nearly two hours from the southern part of the country, had bought tickets for the show in February. He said he had mostly been concerned about whether it would happen as scheduled.
For the few dozen protesters who had assembled outside the stadium, the night signified something more grave. They had brought along electronic billboards displaying an antisemitic quotation by Ye, as well as signs with slogans condemning hatred toward Jews.
It has been decades since World War II, said one protester, Roger van Oordt, but “there’s more open hatred of Jews.”
Van Oordt, 68, had traveled to the concert from the Dutch city of Amersfoort. He was one of the few protesters who was not Jewish, he said, but had wanted to support the Jewish community. “The Jews should not be alone here,” he said.
As they walked by the demonstration, some fans took selfies in front of red banners that protesters had hung up, some of which included swastikas, while others laughed. Still others acknowledged that they had completely missed the controversy surrounding the concert.
Mostly, though, fans appeared to hardly notice the protest as they waited to buy Ye-branded merchandise or enter the arena.
For months, Ye’s European tour has been met by opposition. In April, the British government barred the rapper from entering the country to play a series of concerts. Later that month, Ye called off a show in Marseille, France, after opposition from the French interior ministry.
In Switzerland, the soccer club FC Basel canceled Ye’s date at its stadium. So did a stadium in Poland. And this month, Italian officials canceled a concert that had been planned for July.
But the Netherlands took another approach. Last week, the city’s mayor, Ahmed Marcouch, granted the organizers the necessary permit to hold the event, setting aside pressure from lawmakers and Jewish groups. He also extended an invitation to Ye to visit the Holocaust Museum in Amsterdam or another memorial, as a way to understand the Dutch Jewish history. As of Saturday, Ye had not responded.
Barring any more cancellations, Ye is scheduled to perform in the countries of Georgia, Albania, Portugal and Spain this summer, as well as in Florida. A week ago, he performed in front of more than 100,000 people in Istanbul. In April, the rapper performed in Los Angeles, his first full live show in the United States since 2021.
For Gideon Querido van Frank, who works for the Center for Information and Documentation Israel, the Dutch group that organized the demonstration on Saturday, the fact that most of the protesters were Jewish was disappointing. “Where are all my friends from before?” he said. “I feel lonely.”
For his part, Ye had taken out a full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal in January, apologizing for his antisemitic actions. It was his second such apology since 2023. In 2025, during a four-month period that Ye described in the Journal ad as “a manic episode of psychotic, paranoid and impulsive behavior,” he had taken back that apology.
“I am not a Nazi or an antisemite,” he wrote in The Wall Street Journal, attributing his behavior to untreated bipolar I disorder, during a time when he had stopped taking medication.
Many fans in Arnhem on Saturday appeared to agree that Ye’s bipolar disorder was to blame for his antisemitic behavior. The merchandise for sale included a $58 T-shirt that employed a four-letter expletive to denounce bipolar disorder.
“The atmosphere is good,” said one fan, Melanie van der Velden, 20, who added that most people seemed to have shown up to support Ye’s music, not his past behavior.
“I don’t think people are thinking about it,” she said.
Claire Moses is a Times reporter in London, focused on coverage of breaking and trending news.
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