"The stage became electrified. It severely shocked two guys in our crew." Avatar cut short London Valentine's show after deeming venue unsafe

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By ( Metal Hammer, Louder ) published

Avatar say an electrical issue injured crew members and damaged equipment at London's Exhibition White City

Johannes Eckerstrom and Henrik Sandelin from Avatar perform onstage during a concert at Exhibition White City on February 14, 2026 in London, England.
(Image credit: Joseph Okpako/WireImage)

Avatar had to cut short a performance in London after the stage "became electrified" – damaging equipment and "severely" shocking two members of the band's crew.

The Swedish outfit were just over an hour into their set ay Exhibition White City ion London lats night (February 14) when they called it quits.

Frontman Johannes Eckerström revealed details of the incident in a video posted to Instagram later.

He says: "Hello everyone watching, particularly the people of London who came out to see our show tonight. As you heard, we didn't make it quite to the finish line.

"The whole stage became electrified. It burnt some of our equipment and also shocked – severely shocked – two guys in our crew.

"We have deemed this venue not safe to perform in any longer. We could get hurt, we we're simply lucky. The crew guys are fine now, so also lucky. But this is not a safe place to be for you or for us, so how about a rain cheque?

"We want to figure out what we can do to come back as soon as we can. Both you and us deserve that very much.

"Thank you for an amazing hour-plus at least, it was supposed to be a bit longer. You were amazing, we were pretty amazing too. Let's find an amazing place to finish this."

There has been comment from the venue on the incident and, as reported by Eckerström, the road crew members who were hurt seem to recovering well.

Avatar's tour continues in Manchester tonight (February 15) and they have dates lined up across Europe and North America in the coming months.

Stef Lach

Stef wrote close to 5,000 stories during his time as assistant online news editor and later as online news editor between 2014-2016. An accomplished reporter and journalist, Stef has written extensively for a number of UK newspapers and also played bass with UK rock favourites Logan. His favourite bands are Pixies and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Stef left the world of rock'n'roll news behind when he moved to his beloved Canada in 2016, but he started on his next 5000 stories in 2022. 

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