THE NEW YORK TIMES: Pepsi and others drop sponsorship of Wireless Festival London headlined by Kanye West

Several sponsors have said they were cutting ties with the three-day Wireless Festival in London, the most prominent being Pepsi, after the event’s organisers booked Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, as a headliner.

Ye’s participation in July’s festival was part of an effort by the artist to rehabilitate his reputation after a half-decade of anti-Semitic and racist controversies.

On Sunday, Pepsi said it was withdrawing as a sponsor of the event, hours after Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he was “deeply concerned” that Ye had been chosen to perform at what organizers call London’s “ultimate summer music festival.”

“Anti-Semitism in any form is abhorrent and must be confronted firmly wherever it appears,” Starmer told The Sun newspaper. “Everyone has a responsibility to ensure Britain is a place where Jewish people feel safe.”

On Monday (local time), UK officials said they were reviewing Ye’s ability to enter the country, though they added that they were not aware that he had any immediate plans to travel to Britain. It was not clear if Ye has applied for entry into the country.

NBC News first reported that British government ministers were scrutinising Ye’s permission to enter the country for the event.

The festival had been advertised as “PEPSI PRESENTS WIRELESS.” But a statement issued by the company Sunday said, “Pepsi has decided to withdraw its sponsorship of Wireless Festival.”

It is not clear what Pepsi’s decision will mean for the festival, which also lists Budweiser, Beatbox and several other major companies as corporate “partners” on its website.

Diageo, the global alcohol giant, also pulled back from the event.

“We have informed the organizers of our concerns and as it stands, Diageo will not sponsor the 2026 Wireless Festival,” a representative for the company said in a statement.

The statement did not mention Ye.

According to several published reports on Monday, Rockstar Energy withdrew from its sponsorship of the festival, while PayPal distanced itself from the event.

Neither company immediately responded on Monday to requests for comment.

Ye apologised earlier this year for recent anti-Semitic behavior, including posting “death con 3 ON JEWISH PEOPLE” and conducting an interview while wearing what appeared to be a Black Ku Klux Klan robe. He said in an ad in The Wall Street Journal that he hoped to be forgiven by “those I’ve hurt.”

Since then, the rapper has been seeking to return to public view in ways that do not create controversy. On Wednesday and Friday, Ye performed at SoFi Stadium, near Los Angeles, to promote the release of his new album, Bully.

In addition to the appearance at the London festival, he is scheduled to perform in Italy and Spain this summer.

But the rapper’s effort at public rehabilitation has prompted outrage from many public figures in Britain. Ed Davey, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, said last week that Britain’s “home secretary should ban him from coming to this country.”

For Starmer, the issue of anti-Semitism is a personal one.

Before becoming PM, he made a name for himself in politics by vowing to purge the Labour Party of anti-Semitism in its ranks. Starmer, a former human rights lawyer, helped push out Jeremy Corbyn, the former Labour leader who had been accused of “unlawful acts of harassment and discrimination” against Jewish members of the party. Additionally, Starmer’s wife, Victoria, is Jewish.

Since becoming Prime Minister, Starmer has been under pressure to do more to combat anti-Semitic attacks and harassment in the country, which have increased sharply since the war in the Gaza Strip began in 2023. A terrorist attack on a synagogue in Manchester, England, last year increased that pressure.

But the PM has also been criticised by Palestinian activists, including members of his own party, who want him to demonstrate more robust support for their safety in Britain.

Sunday’s comments by Starmer suggested that the Prime Minister did not believe Ye’s latest apology was sincere.

In 2023, the rapper apologised for the “deathcon” comment and other behavior in a social media post written in Hebrew, saying that “it was not my intention to offend or demean.”

But in February of last year, he withdrew the apology in a profanity-laced rant on social media in which he declared that he is a Nazi and professed his love for Adolf Hitler.

“I’m never apologizing for my Jewish comments,” he said on the social platform X, formerly known as Twitter.

In his most recent apology, Ye blamed what he said was untreated bipolar I disorder, caused by a brain injury he suffered in a car crash in 2002, for his behavior. But in 2025, he said he had been diagnosed with autism.