Brexit Touring Report: £208m Lost, EU Shows Down 21%The government's own numbers on EU touring since Brexit are out: £208 million and 2,490 jobs lost in three years, with small venues carrying the loss while arenas boomed. Here is what the report measured, the five barriers priced from its figures, what a UK date pays right now from our own data, and what to do before you book a run.

Most of us knew EU touring got harder. What we did not have was a figure from the government's own desk. Now we do. The Department for Culture, Media and Sport commissioned Ipsos and Nordicity to work out what the new rules have done to touring, and the report went up on gov.uk on 27 August. The Musicians' Union led on it this week, Complete Music Update and LBC ran the numbers. I have read the full document, including the annexes.

Here is the part that matters for this site. The report is not about stadium acts. Its own words: smaller and mid-scale touring has been disproportionately affected, particularly performances at general live music venues. That is the circuit GigXchange exists for, and it is the circuit that has not come back.

1. What the DCMS report actually measured

Who wrote it, and what data it stands on

The report is called The Economic Benefits of Touring and the Impact of EU Exit. It was written by Ipsos UK and Nordicity for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, and it does two things. It models the economic effect of post-Brexit rules using PRS for Music performance and royalty data, and it interviews people across the touring trade (the interviews ran in January and February 2026) to explain what the numbers cannot.

Two caveats the authors make themselves, which I will repeat because they matter. PRS data only catches artists who perform their own material and report set lists, so it is a proxy for touring, not a full count. And the impact window is 2022 to 2024, with 2020 and 2021 dropped because the pandemic and the new rules landed at the same time. The report uses the United States as the comparison market to separate the two.

The headline numbers: £208m, 2,490 jobs, 21 per cent fewer shows

Between 2022 and 2024 the UK lost an estimated £208.0 million in gross value added and 2,490 full-time equivalent jobs from reduced EU touring, once supply-chain and knock-on spending are counted. The direct loss inside music and performing arts organisations was £95.6 million and 920 jobs. Music carries most of it: £180.2 million of the £208 million. The EU side lost more, around £1.04 billion and 17,010 jobs across the countries the model could cover, with Germany the biggest loser at nearly £290 million.

The table below is the report's own breakdown by sub-sector, with direct and total figures side by side. The framing is the report's, the arithmetic is theirs, and I have only rounded where they did. The report gives the four performing and visual arts sub-sectors a combined direct figure rather than one each, so that appears as its own row.

Read the first two rows against each other. Small rooms lost more box office, more GVA and more jobs than arenas did. A £173 million box-office hole across general live music venues is the sound of a lot of small tours that did not happen.

Small rooms down 22 per cent, arenas up 56 per cent

The split is the story. Performances at general live music venues fell 85 per cent between 2019 and 2021, recovered some, and in 2024 were still 22 per cent below 2019. Stadium and arena dates fell 97 per cent in 2021 and by 2024 had rebounded to 56 per cent above 2019. Average performances per artist tell the same tale: large tours are now above seven dates per artist, small-venue runs have stayed flat.

The interviews explain why. Bigger operations have the staff and cash to absorb visas, carnets and withholding tax. A four-piece in a van does not. The report says outright that the constraints fall hardest on small acts, mid-career artists, niche genres and freelancers, and that emerging artists are losing the chance to build an audience abroad at all.

Where the shows went: Germany lost about 1,400 small-venue dates

Germany, Ireland, France and the Netherlands still take most UK dates. But the small-venue numbers in the report's country breakdown are down almost everywhere. The table gives the report's figures for general live music venues in 2019 and 2024, in thousands of performances, with the arena figures alongside so you can see the two markets pulling apart.

Spain lost about a third of its UK small-venue dates. Ireland lost about 30 per cent. Germany lost about 1,400 (the report puts it at over 1,400 on unrounded figures). Italy held flat at the small end while its arena count went from 5 to 31. If you have been told the market is fine because the big tours are selling out, this table is the reply.

2. The five barriers, priced from the report

The report groups the problems into people, goods, transport, merch and tax. None of them is new. What is new is having the costs written down in a government document you can cite. Here they are, with the figures the report gives, and the ones it does not give left blank rather than guessed.

People: the 90 in 180 rule and the crew problem

UK passport holders can be in the Schengen area for 90 days in any 180 without a visa, but that is a visitor allowance and it does not carry a right to be paid. Each member state sets its own rules on what counts as an artist, what paperwork proves it and whether you need a permit. The report's interviewees describe conflicting advice from different authorities and border staff reading the same rules differently.

The quieter cost is crew. People who tour for a living burn through their 90 days. The report records UK workers without an EU passport routinely losing roles to those with one, and touring companies rotating crew or sending people home on rest days to stay compliant.

Goods: a carnet costs £270 to £444, then the deposit

To take your own gear over the border you need an ATA carnet, which the report prices at £270 to £444 including VAT plus a deposit of 30 to 40 per cent of the value of everything on the list. Every item, serial number and value has to be right at every crossing. Get it wrong and the report records delays, extra charges, penalties and in some cases seized equipment.

Instruments with protected woods or ivory add a second layer, because CITES movement rules now apply to UK to EU travel the way they apply to any third country.

Merch, withholding tax and the 20 per cent promoters hold back

Merch is where small tours make their margin, and the report says so. It now attracts import VAT and sometimes duty when it first enters the EU. Getting the VAT back varies by country and can take a long time, so money that used to fund the next leg sits in a queue.

Then there is the fee itself. Delays on A1 social security certificates have led European promoters to hold back up to 20 per cent of a fee until the paperwork clears. One orchestra told the report it was waiting on around €290,000 in German withholding tax refunds going back to March 2023. That is an orchestra. Scale it down to a band and it is the difference between paying yourselves and not.

3. Booking gigs in Europe as a small act: what a date has to clear

This is where I want to add something the report does not have. It tells you what an EU run costs. It cannot tell you what a UK date pays. The GX Index can, for the settings below. It is built from real quoted and booked fees across the UK, and the table below is the current UK picture by setting and act size, refreshed on 12 September 2026. Rows with fewer than 50 observations are marked as thin.

What a UK date pays right now: £250 to £1,489 medians

A solo act in a pub sits at a £250 median. A five-piece at a wedding sits at £1,489. Everything an EU date costs on top of the fee has to be measured against numbers like these, so here they are in full.

The carnet costs one pub gig before you have left Dover

Put the two tables together. A trio or quartet playing pubs and bars in the UK has a median fee of £350. A single ATA carnet, at the report's £270 to £444, is over three quarters of that fee at the bottom of the range and more than the whole fee at the top, and the 30 to 40 per cent deposit on your gear comes on top. A promoter holding back 20 per cent of a €1,000 fee while your A1 clears is €200 you do not have for fuel. The carnet and its deposit did not exist for a UK act in 2019, and the report ties the fee withholding to A1 delays that came with the new rules.

That is the arithmetic behind the 22 per cent. It is not that European audiences stopped wanting UK bands. The report's own case studies show local streaming jumping around dates played in Barcelona, Vienna and Munich. It is that the fixed costs of the first date now sit at pub-fee scale, so the tours that used to break even at small venues no longer do. The rate data and the calculator are there if you want to run your own numbers.

What the trade bodies found: 47 per cent with less EU work, 28 per cent with none

The report leans on sector surveys to back its interviews, and the figures are worth having in one place. The Independent Society of Musicians found 47.4 per cent of respondents had less EU work than before and 27.8 per cent had none at all. UK Music's survey of 1,461 creators, cited in the report, found 30 per cent said Brexit had affected their earnings; of those, 82 per cent said income had fallen and 43 per cent said EU touring was no longer viable. One study cited puts UK artists on EU festival line-ups at around 26 per cent fewer than before Brexit. The Association of British Orchestras recorded a drop of about 9 per cent in overseas performances against 2019.

The audience case: streams rise where you play

One part of the report I did not expect was the Chartmetric analysis. The authors tracked monthly Spotify listeners in the cities where three UK bands played EU dates and found spikes around the shows in each case: Barcelona, Vienna and Munich. The report is careful to call the pattern associative rather than causal, and so am I. But it is the argument every small act makes to itself before booking a run abroad, and it now sits in a government document with charts.

4. What happens next: the summit, the committee and the coalition

The June committee report said the same thing, with a £26,000 example

This is the second official document on the subject in three months. On 15 June the Culture, Media and Sport Committee published Cultural Touring in the EU, which UK Music welcomed at the time. UK Music's account of the evidence session records Kate Nash telling MPs that her last EU run lost around £26,000 where touring Europe had once been profitable. The committee asked the government to honour its manifesto promise on touring and to look again at Creative Europe.

The Cultural Exchange Coalition and the next UK-EU summit

The MU, UK Music and Pearle Live Performance Europe now speak together as the Cultural Exchange Coalition, which the report dates to March 2026 and describes as a follow-through on the May 2025 UK-EU summit agreement. Their joint statement on the report asks both governments for practical solutions at the next summit, and the MU says the Prime Minister has assured them touring will be on the agenda. What practical means is the open question: the report itself only says that reducing the barriers could generate gains for both sides. Nobody has published a date for the summit or a shortlist of fixes, so I will not guess at either.

Funding that exists now: the touring fund closed, the creators fund opens 1 October

Two pots are relevant while the politics runs. The UK Artist Touring Fund second round closed on 11 September, the deadline that post covered, so that one is done until a further round is announced. The Arts Council Music Creators Growth Fund opens on 1 October with grants of £10,000 to £20,000, and its guidance names international work among the things it funds. If an EU run is in your plan, that is the application to read this month. The MU's working overseas pages cover carnets, visas and instrument certificates for members.

5. Also this week: two merch stories that cut the other way

Belfast’s Ulster Hall and Waterfront Hall end merch commission from 1 October

Some good news from the same week. The MU reports that Belfast's Ulster Hall and Waterfront Hall will stop taking commission on artist merchandise from 1 October 2026, so acts playing either room keep 100 per cent of what they sell. The MU's Northern Ireland officer credits the venues for engaging on the issue since it first surfaced ahead of the NI Music Prize in 2021, and the venues' chief executive frames it as putting revenue back into the hands of touring parties. Given what the DCMS report says about merch being the margin on a small tour, that is not a small gesture. If you run a room, it is a policy worth reading before your next artist asks about it.

EU packaging rules now apply to merch you post to EU fans

The other merch story is a compliance one. The MU explains that the EU Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation has applied since 12 August 2026 to anyone in the UK selling packaged goods into the EU, and the government has confirmed to the union that there is no general exemption for micro-businesses. Packaging has to be recyclable, minimal and labelled, and sellers may need to appoint an authorised representative in the member state they sell into. Producers under 10 tonnes of packaging a year face lighter reporting, which is every band reading this, but not zero. Non-compliant parcels can be refused at the border.

6. What this means for artists, venues, promoters and organisers

The report is about touring, but its consequences land on every side of the booking. Here is the short version for each role, with the page on this site that does the work.

7. What to do before you book an EU date

1. Cost the run on paper first. Carnet fee, the 30 to 40 per cent deposit on your gear value, permit fees per country, ferry and fuel, and 20 per cent of every fee held back until your A1 lands. Compare the total against the UK medians for the same number of dates at home.
2. Check your days. Count everyone's Schengen days for the last 180, including holidays. The gov.uk visit page explains the count; the report explains what happens to crews who get it wrong.
3. Sort the carnet early. The gov.uk carnet page sets out the process. Inventory every item with serial numbers and values, and keep it identical at every crossing.
4. Decide how merch travels. Below the £2,500 UK and €1,000 EU thresholds is simpler but not free, and anything you post afterwards now falls under the packaging rules. Price the VAT queue into your cashflow.
5. Get the fee terms in writing. Withholding, A1 timing, currency and who pays the customs bill. Our contract guide and getting paid guide cover the UK side; the MU covers the rest for members.
6. Apply for what is open. The Music Creators Growth Fund takes applications from 1 to 29 October and funds international work. Read the guidance this month, not on the 28th.

Annual refresh commitment

This guide was published on 12 September 2026 and is refreshed every September. Summit outcomes, fund rounds and fee medians move month to month, so annual verification matters. We re-verify every reference, recommendation, and data point once a year. Next scheduled refresh: September 2027. If any claim is outdated before then, email support@gigxchange.app and we will update it within 24 hours.