Austrian Man Sentenced to 15 Years for Planning Attack on Taylor Swift Concert

An Austrian court has sentenced a 21-year-old man to 15 years in prison for planning a jihadist attack on a Taylor Swift concert scheduled for 2024 in Vienna. The court in Wiener Neustadt found Beran A., an Austrian citizen of North Macedonian descent, guilty of attempted murder, membership in a terrorist cell, and other related crimes. Beran A. confessed to planning the attack and expressed intentions to detonate a bomb, similar to the suicide bombing at the 2017 Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, which resulted in 22 fatalities. Authorities discovered an 'almost completed, but not highly explosive' bomb in his residence. Co-defendant Arda K., from Slovakia, received a 12-year sentence for discussing potential attacks with Beran A., although he was not directly involved in the concert plot. The jury also found both men guilty of encouraging a former associate, Hasan E., to commit a knife attack in Mecca in 2024, a charge they denied. Hasan E. has been detained in Saudi Arabia after stabbing five individuals. Beran A. was apprehended shortly before Swift's concert on August 9, 2024, following a tip-off from the CIA to Austrian authorities, leading to the cancellation of all three planned concerts in Vienna. The indictment against Beran A. was issued in February 2026. This verdict follows another terrorism case in Austria, where a Syrian asylum seeker was sentenced to life imprisonment for a knife attack in Villach in 2025, which resulted in one death and five injuries.