Beyoncé fans battled technical issues and long queues as tickets went on general sale for the UK leg of her first solo tour since 2016. The pop superstar is playing stadium shows in Cardiff, Edinburgh, Sunderland and London in May and June. Some users got an error message on the Ticketmaster website, while others said they were kicked out of the queue, which in some cases was 500,000 strong. Three more London dates were added on Tuesday “due to high fan demand”. A portion of the UK tickets had already been sold in a series of pre-sales, while the first pre-sales for her North American dates began on Monday. There is particular scrutiny in the US of how Ticketmaster handles the tour, especially since the company’s systems were overwhelmed by demand for Taylor Swift tickets last year. The UK concerts are part of a world tour in support of her Grammy-nominated Renaissance album. The shows kick off in Sweden on 10 May, before landing at Cardiff’s Principality Stadium a week later. She will then visit Edinburgh’s Murrayfield on 20 May, Sunderland’s Stadium of Light on 23 May and London’s Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on 29 and 30 May. After tickets went on general sale on Tuesday, she added three further shows at the Tottenham stadium on 1, 3 and 4 June, taking the total number of UK dates to eight. Beyoncé conceived the Renaissance album as “a place to dream and to find escape” during the pandemic, layering her songs with multiple samples and references to club music, from Nile Rodgers’ Studio 54 disco grooves and Grace Jones’ imperious soul, to less-celebrated movements like bounce and dancehall. Exclaim magazine called it “the sound of a once-in-a-generation superstar performing at her peak”, while the Guardian described it as “a breath-taking, maximalist tour de force”. Unusually, Beyoncé has avoided making music videos for the album, meaning the Renaissance tour will be fans’ first chance to see her visual interpretation of tracks like Break My Soul, Alien Superstar and Cuff It. The star generally reworks and updates old songs to fit her current aesthetic, so we may also hear clubbed-up remixes of hits like Crazy In Love, Formation and Single Ladies.