DOGMA Has To Cancel Their US Tour Due To Visa Issues; Is This The New Normal? What’s Happening?

There has been a much louder discussion regarding artists touring throughout the United States as the country goes through some rather unstable times – with some artists saying they wouldn’t travel through the US at all and don’t plan to (Queen‘s Sir Brian May, Neil Young), others are scrapping tour dates due to morals and their unwillingness to tour in an unsafe environment (The Murder Capital), then there are a select few who have made headlines for their socio-political views and have had their visas revoked on account of it (Kneecap, Bob Vylan), and then there are the category of musicians who have cancelled because the visa process waiting times exploded at the beginning of 2025. Dogma now joins that last category.

Just yesterday, Dogma announced that they were going to have to cancel their US tour – which was due to start today. Writing in a statement,

“Due to unforeseen delays in the visa processing timeline, Dogma must postpone our upcoming U.S. tour dates.

After months of preparing for these masses, it hurts to delay the moment when we were meant to finally gather with our U.S. sinners. The first masses where our new songs were meant to be revealed will now arrive later than we had hoped.

We are currently working with promoters and venues to confirm the rescheduled dates, which will be announced soon. All previously purchased tickets will remain valid.

We were ready to meet you.
Ready to open these rituals.

Now we must wait a little longer.”

While, indeed, there’s a certain amount of schadenfreude (def. “pleasure derived by someone from another person’s misfortune”) after the never-ending allegations poured in against Dogma‘s management, the band does join a category of artists that exists and keeps growing by the day.

Alongside Dogma is alt-EDM producer and singer FKA Twigs, who had to cancel her own shows this time last year. She originally posted in a video to TikTok: “Today, I was informed that production did not fill out the correct paperwork in a timely manner for us to have our visas to come to the USA and perform. By no choice of my own, I will have to pull out of my New York, Chicago, and Toronto shows.”

Yet those two artists are just the tip of the iceberg – indie rockers Shred Kelly, alt-pop group PONY, and others who wish to remain anonymous as they proceed with their visa applications and fear retribution if they were to speak out have all faced visa delays, sometimes spanning months, with the timeframe of travel passing before their application is even looked at.

While the original application fee for performance-based travel visas was $450 and raised to $1,615 under the Biden administration in 2024, the Trump administration since taking office in early 2025 has made a point to become more thorough in their background searches of potential visa applicants by combing through their social media and search their internet footprint in order to identify ‘high risk’ individuals as deemed by the US State Department. This kind of research has in turn lengthened the visa process, with the wait time ballooning from a few short weeks to full on months, in the case of most major Canadian cities.

An immigration lawyer by the name of Matthew Covey talked to The New York Times about the possible impacts of the new visa guidelines and how he expected international artists to respond to the issue – he anticipated a 30% drop, and while there aren’t exact figures, he doesn’t seem entirely off. With festival season coming up, and dozens if not hundreds of international artists, stemming from all alternative genres, will be travelling to the US to perform at said festivals, will we start to hear of more cancellations and artists pulling out of line-ups? Most likely. Will we straight-up see less announcements in general? Probably.

Between visa uncertainties and the spike in application fees – with the now added option to expedite your visa application for a jolly $2,805 through “premium processing,” added during the Trump administration as Rolling Stone‘s Alex Ashley points out – as well as the unpredictable nature of the Trump administration and their next move, there’s too much financial unreliability lingering in the air. Added onto the fact that the IRS taking 30% gross income on every show and every dollar made by international artists, there’s very little financial incentive for artists to travel to the US as is, let alone with the recent visa and immigration issues.

Imagine spending a minimum of $5,000 on visas – before lawyers, hotels, flights, luggage, crew, equipment – and then being denied at the U.S. border, detained, and sent home. That was the case for UK Subs in March 2025, when The Guardian reported the band were denied entry into the US, with suspicions around the reason for their denial being casted towards bassist Alvin Gibbs‘ vocal criticism of the current president.

Now, Dogma is in the same position – even though I can’t say I’m entirely sympathetic for their management about the situation – but it begs the growing question… is this going to be the new normal for this summer? Are festivals going to see more international artists dropping out of the lineup due to troubles securing visas? Most likely.