Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour finally lands in the UK tonight, and Swifties have been queuing outside Edinburgh’s Murrayfield Stadium for days in anticipation.
READ MORE: Taylor Swift live in New Jersey: a glittering celebration of every era
Swift begins the UK and Ireland leg of her huge, career-spanning tour in the city tonight (June 7) with the first of three consecutive shows in the stadium. Support will come from Paramore.
From there, she will play three shows in Liverpool from June 13-15, one night in Cardiff on June 18 and three in London’s Wembley Stadium on June 18-22. She then heads to Dublin on June 28, before taking the tour around Europe.
Swift superfans were seen queuing outside Murrayfield Stadium yesterday (June 6) in the hope of picking up official merchandise, with Swifties being told by security that they could expect to wait over an hour to get served.
Taylor Swift fans queue outside Murrayfield stadium on June 06, 2024 in Edinburgh, Scotland. (Photo by Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)
Looking forward to welcoming over 200,000 fans over the next 3 days
FAQs https://t.co/5WnsodvHeL pic.twitter.com/uQwA29lzGd
— Scottish Gas Murrayfield (@MurrayfieldStad) June 7, 2024
Taylor Swift fever grips Edinburgh, as fans descend on Murrayfield ahead of the weekend…
And this, is just the merch queue! pic.twitter.com/ne7qAOvZVS
— Forth 1 News (@Forth1News) June 6, 2024
Queues for Taylor Swift at Murrayfield already crazy. pic.twitter.com/m2YeuwOe5d
— Nichola Kane (@NicholaKane_) June 7, 2024
This is the queue for Taylor Swift merch at Murrayfield more than 24 hours before her first gig kicks off.
Coverage across @BBCScotlandNews. pic.twitter.com/Z4U8uY2doE
— Hope Webb (@imhopewebb) June 6, 2024
Lily and Grace are No. 1 and 2 in the standing queue for tonight’s concert.
They arrived here at 5:30am.
They say they’ve been Taylor Swift fans for the last 13 years since they were 7 years old. #EdinburghTStheErasTour pic.twitter.com/2xstYAq9Tv
— Hope Webb (@imhopewebb) June 7, 2024
One hardcore Swift fan, Ellie Poulte from Oxford, has been queuing since 6am on Thursday morning, with her tent, despite only having tickets for Saturday’s show.
“I think I’m the first person to start camping – there’s just nobody here,” she told Edinburgh News. “I thought people were going to camp because people were queuing for the Paris shows for two nights.”
“So I thought I was going to be camping for like a week before, but nobody else has ended up doing that so I thought two days would be fine to camp for that long. I’ve got a tent and I’ve took a duvet and that’s it apart from my clothes – I have nothing and I didn’t come prepared at all.”
Gates for the first show will open at 4pm on Friday, and competition will be fierce for the best standing spaces.
Ahead of Swift’s arrival in the Scottish capital, a number of homeless people were moved out of the city to make way for the expected insurge of Swifties.
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Shelter Scotland reported that several homeless people it has been supporting had been sent by taxi to Aberdeen and Glasgow because of a shortage of accommodation in the city due to the upcoming concerts.
The housing charity told the BBC it was “a blatant injustice” for homeless people to be “in direct competition” with tourists visiting the city.
The unprecedented success of the Eras Tour means that her stint in the UK is set to bring in an estimated £1billion to the nation’s economy. As Culture Secretary Lucy Frazer told the Independent, the shows “are not only set to generate nearly a billion pounds for the economy but will boost our brilliant tourism sector as we welcome gig-goers from around the world.”
NME saw one of the early shows in the Eras Tour, in New Jersey in May 2023. In a five-star review, we said: “Like she sings in the much-danced to track, ‘22’, life can be “miserable and magical” at the same time and even more than the cinematic world she creates on stage, with pyro, makeshift cabins and elaborate costumes, it’s Swift herself that embodies that notion, and whether or not you’d call yourself a Swiftie, you can’t help but want to celebrate that.”
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