Thwarted attack at Taylor Swift concert in Vienna: here's what we know

Steph Deschamps / August 9, 2024

Police have announced the arrest of two people, including a 19-year-old, who were planning a suicide attack at one of American star Taylor Swift’s concerts in Vienna to “kill a large number of people”, intelligence officials in the Alpine country announced on Thursday.

“He made a full confession and said he intended to carry out an attack using explosives and bladed weapons,” Director of Intelligence Services (DSN) Omar Haijawi-Pirchner told a press conference. “His aim was to kill himself and a large number of people, either today or tomorrow, during the concert.”

The Austrian citizen, who had “pledged allegiance” to the jihadist group Islamic State (EI), was arrested following a special operation in Lower Austria, an hour outside Vienna, according to the Director General of Public Security, Franz Ruf.

“We discovered preparatory acts with a focus on Taylor Swift’s concerts in Vienna,” he told the press, adding that ‘chemical substances’ had been ‘seized’ from the suspect’s home.

He was in collusion with another person, also “radicalized on the Internet”, who was arrested in Vienna, said Mr. Ruf, without giving further details. The authorities had promised tighter security measures and checks at the stadium entrance, but this was clearly not enough to reassure the organizers.

“With the confirmation by the authorities of a planned terrorist attack at the Ernst Happel stadium, we have no choice but to cancel all three concerts for everyone’s safety,” the organizers announced on Instagram in the evening, specifying that tickets would be automatically refunded ‘within 10 days’.

The 34-year-old singer was due to perform in Vienna from Thursday as part of her “Eras” tour, the European leg of which kicked off in Paris in May. Taylor Swift’s sixth tour kicked off in the USA in March 2023, and at the end of last year became the first in history to sell over a billion dollars’ worth of tickets. This figure is set to more than double by the time it ends in Canada in December.

In Austria, more than 170,000 spectators were expected to attend, generating an estimated 100 million euros in revenue, according to figures provided by the APA news agency.

Austria has stepped up its preventive measures since a jihadist attack on November 2, 2020, which killed four people and was the first to hit the normally safe country of 9.1 million inhabitants.