Raye steps in to manually review presale after bots flood Royal Albert Hall sign-ups
Raye announced her team had to vet 1.8 million registrations for her intimate London show after AI bots flooded the system.
British singer-songwriter Raye revealed on Tuesday that 1.8 million registrations were submitted for approximately 5,000 available seats at her upcoming London concert, prompting her team to manually review the list after automated bots flooded the system.
The singer addressed the issue in a statement shared on Instagram and X, as reported by the Evening Standard and The Independent, detailing how ticket touts targeted the presale registration for her October 23, 2026 performance at the Royal Albert Hall.
“We received 1.8 million sign-ups for 5000 seats for This Symphony May Contain Hope,” Raye wrote. “Sadly our sign-up process was overwhelmed by scalpers, using AI bots to create hundreds of thousands of fake registrations.”
She added: “It is a new world we are living in now, I have never witnessed bots on this scale.”
How the team handled the presale
To keep tickets out of the hands of touts, Raye explained that her team changed the distribution model to review submissions directly. As covered by BBC and Daily Mail, the goal was to verify genuine supporters before releasing purchase codes.
“It is so important to me that fans can buy tickets at the face value price,” Raye said in her statement. “Therefore rather than risk opening a presale that scalpers could exploit, we felt the best and safest solution for this specific show was to manually review the sign-up list to identify a shortlist of people we believe are real fans.”
Shortlisted buyers were scheduled to receive access details on Tuesday, October 13, 2026. “Those selected will receive their presale link and code by email on Tuesday at 11:45am BST Presale will open at 12pm,” she wrote.
For those who did not make the presale list, Raye confirmed that access would continue later in the week. “If you do not receive a presale code, the remaining tickets will be available to all on general sale,” she noted. Remaining tickets will be offered in a general sale on Thursday, October 15, 2026.
A special London performance
The concert, titled This Symphony May Contain Hope, is scheduled as a one-night-only performance on October 23, 2026. The show will feature Raye performing alongside The Heritage Orchestra, the Flames Collective choir, and her band, presenting symphonic arrangements of her sophomore album, This Music May Contain Hope, which was released in March 2026.
When registration initially launched around October 8, 2026, applicants were asked to complete album quiz questions and submit social media handles to confirm they were genuine listeners.
Fans online quickly backed the decision to protect face value pricing while sharing frustrations over bot infiltration across live events, according to reports from MyLondon.
What comes next
Raye admitted that the incident highlighted growing challenges in live event ticketing. “I’m not sure what the future holds for ticketing, I do know this experience has really opened my eyes,” she stated, adding: “Me and my team are going to think really hard about what we can do in the future. Lots of love, Raye.”
What remains unconfirmed is the exact number of applicants chosen for the manual shortlist, as well as the specific technical screening methods Raye’s team relied on to filter out automated accounts during the review.
