Ed Sheeran Concert

What a well organised place Auckland can be, even though we made it as difficult as we possibly could getting into the stadium!

I'm not an Ed Sheeran fan, but Elaine likes him, and it gave us a good excuse to come here to see his opening concert of 2026 in the southern hemisphere at Go Media Stadium.

Getting there started smoothly. The bus departure point was a 10 minute walk, and the queue moved quickly with buses waiting. But we made our first bad decision as we got off when we hadn't checked which entry gate we needed to use and proceeded to circumnavigate the outside of the stadium and then having to double back once we were inside

We then found our seats occupied by a couple who were reluctant to admit they were in the wrong place and getting annoyed when we insisted they move. That was our next bad decision - insisting they move rather than taking their seats. We were seated in front of a family group who made a running commentary throughout the concert, including a child who kept regularly swinging his feet into the back of my seat.

Ed started on a small rotunda in the centre of the stadium. He held the crowd with the stories of his progress and the genesis of each song. Sometimes, he gave the impression of changing the order of the set list and played up the pre-concert feedback in the songs he had chosen to sing. There were some nice techno touches like an extending bridge from the stage that he used to transition back and forth to the rotunda during the show. Overall, I thought it was a consumate performance and went so smoothly that little had actually been left to chance.

After all the little dramas earlier in the evening, the return to the city was remarkably uneventful.

ps. The fish and chips at the stadium was really good.Read more