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 in Vienna in 2024.
A jury of a court in Wiener Neustadt late Thursday found Beran A., an Austrian citizen of North Macedonian descent, guilty of attempted murder, membership in a terrorist cell and other terrorist crimes. His surname is abbreviated under Austria’s privacy rules.
Beran A. confessed to planning the attack and said he considered blowing himself up like the suicide bomber in the 2017 attack at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester that killed 22 people. He also admitted to having been a supporter of Islamic State. A court spokesperson confirmed to POLITICO that police found an “almost completed, but not highly explosive,” bomb in his apartment.
Co-defendant Arda K. from Slovakia, was sentenced to 12 years in prison. While he was not involved in planning the attack on the Taylor Swift concert, prosecutors said he and Beran A. discussed further attacks in other cities.
The jury also found the defendants guilty of having encouraged a former friend, Hasan E., to carry out a knife attack in Mecca in 2024, a charge both denied. Hasan E. stabbed five people in Islam’s holiest city because he believed Muslims there were not practicing their faith correctly. He has since been held in custody in Saudi Arabia.
Beran A. was arrested just ahead of Swift’s planned concert in Vienna on Aug. 9, 2024, after the CIA tipped off Austrian authorities. Following the arrest, the pop superstar canceled all three Vienna concerts that had been planned. Beran A.’s indictment followed in February 2026.
The verdict comes just days after another major terrorism case in Austria. On Wednesday, a Syrian asylum seeker was sentenced to life imprisonment for carrying out a deadly knife attack in the southern Austrian town of Villach in 2025, killing a 14-year-old boy and injuring five others.
In 2020, a 20-year-old attacker killed four people and injured 22 others in central Vienna in the deadliest Islamist terror attack in Austria’s modern history.