Florence Welch reveals she recently underwent life saving emergency surgery

Florence Welch was due to perform at Zurich Openair and Rock en Seine festivals, alongside a string of other dates, but was forced to cancel the shows.

Yesterday evening, in a statement to her fans, she wrote: “I’m so sorry that I had to cancel the last couple shows. My feet are fine, I had to have emergency surgery for reasons I don’t really feel strong enough to go into yet, but it saved my life".

Welch continued: “Suffice to say I wish the songs were less accurate in their predictions. But creativity is a way of coping, mythology is [a] way of making sense. And the dark fairytale of Dance Fever, with all its strange prophecies, will provide me with much needed strength and catharsis right now.”

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Florence + the Machine have spent most of the year touring in support of Dance Fever, the group’s fifth album, which was released last year. In November 2022, they had to postponed the tour during its UK leg, as Welch announced she had broken her foot.

“I’m sorry to say that after an X-ray I was dancing on a broken foot last night,” she wrote on a statement posted to her social pages. “It is not in my nature to postpone a show, and certainly not a UK tour, but I’m in pain and as dancers know, dancing on an injury is not a good idea. And [I] have been told not to perform to avoid further damage.”

As mentioned in her Instagram post, it appears that the surgery was for another issue, not her broken foot. Despite the surgery, Welch said she hoped to play the final shows on her Dance Fever tour in Lisbon, Portugal, and Málaga, Spain: “Maybe jumping around so much,” she quipped, “but you can do that for me.”