Ben Ellis

Cardiff first, algorithm second

Ellis was born in Cardiff and is now based in London. The release that started things properly was Ed's House, a self-made EP put out in 2023, and its lead single Sofia did what decides careers at that level: it spread on social video, kept spreading, and dragged the rest of the record behind it. The numbers followed rather than led. By February 2025 he had passed 2.1 million Spotify streams, had spent 22 weeks on the Welsh A-List at BBC Radio Wales, and was picking up repeat plays on Radio 1 alongside placements on New Music Friday UK and Fresh Finds.

The Welsh side of it was not something he left behind on the way to London. He co-founded PLUCK, a Cardiff music night set up to put Welsh acts in front of a crowd, with the Radio 1 presenters Sam and Danni and the creative director Finlay McDonald. When his first headline tour went on sale in early 2025, all six dates sold out within minutes, with more than a thousand tickets gone almost immediately. That run took in Manchester on 24 February, Cardiff the following night and Edinburgh on 2 March 2025.

Three EPs, and a sound that keeps getting tidier

The Hollywood EP arrived in 2024 and moved him away from the bedroom-made texture of the debut towards something cleaner. The 2025 single where she goes, produced by the Grammy-nominated Matt Rad, pushed further in that direction, and the single Burner Phone was announced in February 2025 as the first taste of what came next.

His third EP, the train where the time slows, was released on 13 March 2026: five songs, seventeen minutes, no filler and no detours. A deluxe edition followed on 5 June 2026 on Closer Recordings, expanding the record to seven tracks and appearing on limited vinyl. Reviewing it, Vinyl Report described a set that puts singer-songwriter balladry against modern production, with acoustic and electric guitars interwoven and the production kept understated enough that the melody and the lyric carry the weight. The EP contains still be friends, which is his most-streamed track to date.

The through-line across the three records is subject matter rather than style. Relationships, the end of them, and the awkward stretch afterwards keep coming back, handled without much distance or irony. The production has changed around that; the writing has stayed where it started.

The support-slot apprenticeship

Much of the last two years has been spent opening for other people, which is where the live act was built. He toured with Henry Moodie and then with Alfie Jukes on a sixteen-date UK and European run through April and May 2025. Festival slots came in the same period, including BST Hyde Park, TRNSMT and Latitude.

Autumn 2025 brought his own Love Stays On Tour, and the moment that run ended he went straight out again as support on Sadie Jean's tour. The pattern has been relentless rather than strategic: play, then play again somewhere else. Speaking to 3FM's Jasper Leijdens at The Great Escape in Brighton, Ellis put the fanbase down to constant gigging rather than to any social media strategy, mentioning pop-up shows in places such as Amsterdam's Vondelpark, and said he now recognises the same faces turning up wherever he plays and thinks of them as friends rather than an audience.

A summer of festival stages

2026 was the year the festival bookings caught up. He made his Pinkpop debut in June 2026, an appearance trailed on 3voor12 Radio on 18 June with a message to Dutch fans that amounted to an instruction to come and sing and dance, and he also played Rock Werchter.

At home the summer ran through Live at the Piece Hall in Halifax on 4 July 2026 and Depot in the Castle at Cardiff Castle on 25 July, where he played a ten-song set between 5.15pm and 5.50pm that took in Animal, where she goes and still be friends. The season closed at Victorious Festival on Southsea Common on 30 August 2026, a ten-song slot from 8.45pm that included holding on to nothing, Does It Get Cold In California and a cover of Bennie and the Jets.

Eighteen dates, and two different sizes of room

What is on sale now splits cleanly in two. Nine of the dates are his own: the Time Slows on Tour, which opens at Gebäude 9 in Cologne on 30 September 2026 and continues to Molotow in Hamburg on 1 October, the Museum room at Botanique in Brussels on 4 October and La Boule Noire in Paris on 5 October, where tickets are €23.50 through AEG Presents France. The UK leg runs from the Trinity Centre in Bristol on 8 October through the O2 Institute2 in Birmingham on 9 October, St Luke's in Glasgow on 11 October and Club Academy in Manchester on 12 October, finishing at Scala in London on 13 October 2026.

The other nine are a step up in scale and a step down the bill. In March 2027 he is listed alongside Arthur Hill at the 3Olympia in Dublin on 1 March, O2 Academy Liverpool on 3 March, the O2 Apollo in Manchester on 4 March, O2 Academy Birmingham on 10 March, Rock City in Nottingham on 11 March, two nights at O2 Academy Bristol on 14 and 15 March, O2 Academy Bournemouth on 17 March and the Eventim Apollo in London on 19 March 2027.

The contrast is the clearest measure of where he currently sits. Manchester gets him at Club Academy in October as a headliner and at the O2 Apollo five months later as a guest, which is roughly the gap between the audience he can fill on his own name and the audience that is starting to hear it.