Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour has been canceled in Austria after officials announced the arrest of two men whom they accused of plotting a terrorist attack in Vienna, with one of them focusing on several stadium shows the singer had planned for this week.
An Austrian concert promoter, Barracuda Music, announced the cancellation of the three shows in a post on Instagram. Nearly 200,000 people had been expected to attend the Vienna concerts, which were to start on Thursday.
“We have no choice but to cancel the three scheduled shows for everyone’s safety,” the Instagram post said.
Officials in Austria said at a news conference on Wednesday that two men had been arrested and accused of plotting a terrorist attack. One of them, a 19-year-old Austrian citizen, had recently pledged allegiance to the Islamic State online and had focused on the Eras Tour as a potential target, said Franz Ruf, an Austrian public security official.
Law enforcement carried out a raid at the man’s home in Ternitz, a town south of Vienna, and found chemical substances, Mr. Ruf said, noting that officials sent a bomb squad to the home.
The other man was arrested in Vienna.
“Both suspects had become radicalized on the internet and had taken concrete preparatory actions for a terrorist attack,” said a news release from the Austrian interior department.
Law enforcement had been planning to increase security at the concerts, which had been planned for the Ernst Happel Stadium, with the band Paramore scheduled as an opener. Gerhard Pürstl, the president of the Vienna State Police, said that about 65,000 people had been expected to attend each concert, with more than 15,000 other fans expected to gather around the stadium.
“The concrete threat, as you’ve heard, has been minimized, but there remains an abstract increased threat,” Mr. Pürstl said.
The Eras Tour began its major European leg this summer after becoming a cultural phenomenon and financial juggernaut in the United States last year.
The singer’s fandom became a target for a violent attack in England last week, when three children died in a knife attack in Southport during a Swift-themed dance class. A 17-year-old boy was arrested in connection with the attack.
On Wednesday morning, Swift enthusiasts from Austria and abroad were already gathering around the stadium, lining up to buy Swift-brand sweatshirts and water bottles, exchanging the beaded friendship bracelets that have become a trademark of the fandom and chatting about what songs the pop star might surprise them with.
“You could see all the anticipation,” said Ana-Maria Sari, 23, a student at the University of Vienna who went to the stadium on Wednesday.
A longtime Swift fan, Sari grew up in Romania and had never had a chance to see her perform live. When the tour dates were announced for Vienna, she bought tickets for all three nights. Then, late on Wednesday night, she got an email from the ticket seller saying that the concerts had been canceled and that she would get a refund.
“It was just a shock to the system,” she said. “But they did their very best to protect us.”
Some fans had traveled long distances to be there. Morgan Smith, 35, had made the trip from Chicago for the concert. “It’s been something we’ve been looking forward to for so long,” she said.
Western counterterrorism officials said suspicion on the organization behind the plot immediately fell on the Islamic State’s Khorasan Province, or ISIS-K. The group is based in Afghanistan, but in the past year alone, it has been involved in assaults in Russia, Iran and Turkey, as well as foiled plots in Europe.
“The Taylor Swift concert plot fits ISIS-K’s modus operandi perfectly,” said Colin P. Clarke, a counterterrorism analyst at the Soufan Group, a security consulting firm based in New York. “A high-profile soft target which, if successfully attacked, would result in massive civilian casualties while generating worldwide publicity.”
Mr. Clarke said that many of the plots foiled in Europe this year featured young ISIS supporters — one was 13 years old — and that several of them were radicalized via TikTok.
Mr. Clarke cited a precedent for this type of plot: the suicide bombing at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, England, in 2017 that killed 22 people.
In a 2019 essay for Elle magazine, Ms. Swift said that she had become “terrified” to go on tour after the Manchester bombing and the 2017 mass shooting at an outdoor musical festival in Las Vegas that killed 60 people, adding, “I didn’t know how we were going to keep three million fans safe over seven months.” She wrote that there was “a tremendous amount of planning, expense and effort put into keeping my fans safe.”
The next dates for the Eras Tour are scheduled for next week at Wembley Stadium in England.
Eric Schmitt and Ainara Tiefenthäler contributed reporting.
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