How Coldplay ended up playing in Hull

“Out of all the places… why Hull?” was a typical response on social media site X when Coldplay announced that they’ll be performing next year in the small city on the banks of the Humber. Even Hull City Council seemed taken aback by today’s news. “Absolutely bonkers news coming out of Hull this morning… Coldplay are heading to the city next year… seriously,” the Council wrote breathlessly on social media.

The confounded reaction was perhaps understandable. Coldplay’s current Music of the Spheres World Tour is the biggest tour of all time by a rock or pop group. The British band have sold over 10 million tickets, grossed more than $1 billion, and headlined Glastonbury as their tour has looped around the world since 2022. Yet here they were, announcing yesterday that next August they’ll play two nights at Hull’s 25,000-capacity Craven Park stadium, home to not only the Hull Kingston Rovers rugby league team but also their mascots Rufus the Robin and Rover the Dog.

The news was magnified by the fact that Coldplay will travel from Hull to London to play six nights at the 90,000-capacity Wembley Stadium, and that’s it. Hull and London are the only UK or European cities in which Coldplay will perform in the whole of 2025, the band said. The locations are the concert equivalent of David and Goliath: the entire population of Hull could fit into those six Wembley gigs – twice over.

The small city in the East Riding area of Yorkshire is unquestionably an eccentric choice. Bands and musicians who come from the city include David Bowie’s guitarist Mick Ronson, pop duo Everything But The Girl and 1980s indie rock band The Housemartins. That’s a fine pedigree. But, on the surface at least, it doesn’t appear to be a mecca for music.

And Coldplay don’t seem to have any familial connections with Hull, which is often a reason for a stop-off by a massive band on a long world tour (Martin hails from Devon while bandmates Will Champion, Jonny Buckland and Guy Berryman come from Hampshire, London/ Wales and Fife respectively, and “fifth member” and manager Phil Harvey comes from Bristol). Nor would Coldplay have been attracted to the region by its residents’ deep pockets, another “pull” for bands: the median average wage for full-time workers in Hull is ￡30,966, some ￡4,000 lower than the national average.

However, reacting to this morning’s announcement on the local Hits Radio Breakfast Show, DJ Alex Duffy wondered why so many people – from “not just Hull but around the world” – were asking “why Hull?”. “Why not Hull?” Duffy said. “This is the question we should be answering.”

Indeed, “why not Hull?” seems to the question that Coldplay frontman Chris Martin had also been contemplating. According to a source close to the situation, the band wanted to play somewhere in the north of England and Martin “was given several options and he picked Craven Park” as the venue. “I’m told they were given five locations to pick from and they picked Hull,” says this person, without naming the other towns or cities. “They wanted a smaller venue and something a bit quirky.”

Good old-fashioned lobbying also played a role. The management of the Craven Park stadium have “spent a long time nagging” promoter SJM, who are involved in Coldplay’s tour, to book big names with them, according to the source. “It’s brilliant that the club has managed to pull this off,” he says. Last year, the stadium played host to concerts by Rod Stewart and The Who, while pop sensations Little Mix played there in 2018. However Coldplay dwarf them all in terms of impact. Paul Lakin, the chief executive of Hull Kingston Rovers, told the Hull Live website that Coldplay will bring their entire production to the stadium, flashing wristbands, pyrotechnics and all. “Nothing will be scaled back,” he said.

Local officials know they’ve scored a massive coup. Mark Collinson, Lord Mayor of Kingston upon Hull and Admiral of the Humber, tells me that music has always been part of what makes Hull tick. “I am told that the band themselves particularly wanted to play a venue in a working-class part of the north. I think it’s fair to say that music is the mainstay of Hull’s cultural scene – there aren’t really any decent second hand bookshops in the whole city but if you want vinyl this is the place,” Collinson says.

Karl Turner, Labour MP for Kingston upon Hull East, in which the stadium sits, says he’s “over the moon” about Coldplay’s visit. “It really is a big thing for East Hull. Having a well-recognised great band playing at Craven Park is just huge for the city. I think it’ll be appreciated by the East Hullers and across the city and the region as well. I’m looking forward to going along and seeing them play if I can manage to get a ticket,” says Turner. Coldplay have put in place mechanisms with ticket-sellers to ensure that half the Hull tickets go to fans with local postcodes (the band will also give 10 per cent of the proceeds from the Hull and London shows to the Music Venue Trust, which supports the UK’s small grassroots venues).

As with many things Coldplay-related, there have been detractors. One non-fan, Dave Lee, took to X to say: “The second most bombed city in WW2, the loss of the fishing industry, and now this. Why does God hate Hull?” Very droll. But this is, it seems, a minority opinion in Hull, the city that has just pulled off the rock and roll coup of the year.

One person who’s particularly happy is Diane Cooper, who runs Robins Café in the shadow of Craven Park. She says the concerts will be “great for trade”. Cooper, 65, says she’s a Coldplay fan – she likes the song Yellow – however by her own admission she’s not an aficionado. “Is it the singer out of Coldplay that’s got a cheese farm?” she asks. I tell her that’s Alex James from Blur. “That’s it! See, I don’t know the names. If we’d been talking about the Osmond or the Bay City Rollers….” she says with a laugh. Give her a few months. By next summer she’ll be an expert.

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