Multiple countries expected to introduce ticket levy

Multiple international markets are moving towards following the UK’s lead and introducing voluntary ticket levies to support grassroots live music, IQ understands.

BRIT Award-nominated singer Olivia Dean’s 2026 Australian tour, which goes on general sale tomorrow, includes a A$1.10 per ticket contribution to the Australian Music Venue Foundation (AMVF), which launched in March, while discussions are believed to be advancing in Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and Canada.

Elsewhere, in France, a statutory 3.5% levy on concert ticket sales is already in place and goes into a central fund administered by the Centre National de la Musique (CNM).

The subject is expected to be high on the agenda in the Reeperbahn panel Imagine Togetherness – How We Secure the Future of Live Music in Hamburg, Germany, this Friday (19 September), as well as at next month’s 20th ACCES Congress in Murcia, Spain.

UK trade body LIVE launched the LIVE Trust charity at the beginning of the year to channel funds raised via an optional £1 per ticket from arena and stadium shows with a capacity of over 5,000. Artists including Pulp, Diana Ross, Mumford and Sons, Enter Shikari and Hans Zimmer have also pledged ticket contributions from their UK tours to the Trust, while London’s Royal Albert Hall recently became the first arena to sign up to the scheme.

The move came after a number of 2025 UK arena and stadium tours, including Coldplay, Sam Fender and Katy Perry, committed to supporting the grassroots ecosystem via donations to the Music Venue Trust (MVT).

“This isn’t some sort of charity thing, it’s about research and development,” MVT CEO Mark Davyd tells IQ. “People shouldn’t view it as a tax; I think even the word levy is a bit unfortunate, because it’s about national ecosystems and how you economically support them. How do we invest in them so that we continue national pipelines of talent, and how we make sure that local access to live music in our communities is sustained?”

“The problems we face in the UK have been replicated elsewhere and the solutions will be the same”

Davyd gave a presentation to the Association of Dutch Pop Venues and Festivals (VNPF) Congress in Utrecht, the Netherlands, yesterday (15 September) about the levy and its potential adoption across Europe.

“The problems we face in the UK have been replicated elsewhere and the solutions will be the same,” he says. “The live music industry is probably being a bit slow on this, because actually, this is very easy for us to manage. It’s quite an obvious thing for us to do and it makes sense for us as an investment programme.

“Really, what we should do is get on and do this and then ask the questions we should be asking of all of these governments as to why they haven’t done something similar with taxation, or licensing, or noise complaints, or planning laws. So let’s just get it out of the way, and then we can move on to the proper conversation we should be having about business rates – which are about to crush our arenas and VAT on tickets, which are completely unsustainable.”

Labour MP Chris Bryant recently left his post as culture minister in a government reshuffle, having set a target of a 50% uptake for the grassroots music levy on 2026 UK stadium and arena tickets. The MVT says the figure currently stands at around about 32% at the moment, but culture secretary Lisa Nandy told the CMS Committee last week that she still supported the goal.

“I have previously said that if we have to act to put this on a statutory footing, we will, but we would of course prefer that the industry gets there itself,” she said. “The 50% target remains. I have already had a conversation with the new minister for music, Ian Murray, who is very committed to this, and we will continue to take that work forward.”

“Our slight nervousness around direction lasted all of 72 hours”

Davyd adds that any fears that Bryant’s departure would lead to a loss of momentum had been swiftly allayed.

“We were a little bit concerned because Chris Bryant has been very forthright and hasn’t taken any prisoners on it,” says Davyd. “He’s been quite blunt; he’s had personal meetings with some of the companies and was really driving progress. Obviously, immediately, when he was announced on Saturday [he had left], there was a little bit where you go, ‘Is this going to blow off course?’ But in fact, Lisa Nandy was asked if that target still remained, and unequivocally said they are looking at it right now and will not hesitate to use the statutory levy if the voluntary levy cannot be made to work.

“She also said that she had already had conversations with the new culture minister, Ian Murray, and that Ian would be prioritising this within his workload. So our slight nervousness around direction lasted all of 72 hours.”

Get more stories like this in your inbox by signing up for IQ Index, IQ’s free email digest of essential live music industry news.