Ed Sheeran announces concert in Bhutan — with tickets starting at $10

Ed Sheeran announced this week he’s taking his Mathematics Tour to Bhutan, India and the Middle East in early 2025.

The tour, formally named the +–=÷x Tour, includes a notable stop in Bhutan’s capital of Thimphu on Jan. 24, 2025 — which will be the first major international concert to be held in the country, according to a press release announcing the concert.

Tickets went on sale Saturday, with the cheapest tickets, priced at 860 Bhutanese ngultrum ($10) already sold out. Other tickets for the concert at Thimpu’s Changlimithang Stadium are priced at $30, $50, $70 and $100.

The average price for an Ed Sheeran concert ticket is $167, according to the user ranking website Ranker.com, which ranked Sheeran No. 2 — after the singer Pink — in terms of artists that are “worth the ticket price.”

By contrast, tickets to see Sheeran perform in Singapore in February ranged from $88 to $488 Singapore dollars ($65 to $363), according to the booking website Klook.   

International attendees, excluding Indian nationals, will have to obtain a visa to enter Bhutan ($40) and pay the country’s Sustainable Development Fee while visiting, which is currently set at $100 for adults and $50 for children aged six to 12.

The fee is assessed per person per day, and is “used to protect our natural environment, to provide free education and free health care to our citizens,” Bhutan’s Prime Minister Tshering Tobgay told CNBC Travel in May.

The Bhutan performance is being promoted by the live entertainment companies AEG Presents and One Fiinix Live, as well as Gelephu Mindfulness City, a 2,600-square-kilometer city that is set to serve as an economic and tourist gateway to Bhutan.

Masterplans for the city, which is not yet built, show a low-to-mid-rise metropolis built around a series of bridges that will house a new international airport, a university, a health-care facility for Eastern and Western medicine, a spiritual center and a hydroelectric dam, according to the plan.

The goal of the sustainable city, which is designed to support a population of 1 million, is to be the “greenest, cleanest, and safest city” in the world, according to a press release announcing Sheeran’s new concert dates.

Sheeran launched the Mathematics Tour in 2022 and has performed 134 shows to date. The tour is scheduled to end in 2025.