To cancel an Eventbrite event, go to your “Manage my events” page, select the event, click “On sale,” then “Change status,” choose “Cancelled,” and click “Take off sale.” The process takes less than a minute, but the real work comes after: issuing refunds, notifying attendees, and deciding whether to unpublish the event page entirely.
Step-by-Step Cancellation Process
From your Eventbrite organizer account, follow these steps:
- Go to “Manage my events” and select the event you want to cancel.
- Click “On sale” (the current status indicator).
- Click “Change status.”
- Select “Cancelled.”
- Click “Take off sale.”
This changes the event’s status so ticket sales stop immediately, and anyone who visits the event page will see that it’s been cancelled. The event listing still exists at this point, though. If you want to remove it from public view entirely, go to your event dashboard, click the “Cancelled” status, then select “Unpublish event” and confirm. Unpublishing takes the page down so the URL no longer shows your event details.
Refunds You’re Required to Issue
When you cancel an event on Eventbrite, you are required to refund all ticket buyers. This isn’t optional or subject to your posted refund policy. Cancelled events trigger a mandatory full refund that includes both the ticket price and Eventbrite’s ticketing fees (the service fee and payment processing fee combined). Under normal refund circumstances, those ticketing fees are nonrefundable, but cancellation is the exception. Buyers get everything back.
You need to initiate these refunds yourself. Eventbrite doesn’t automatically send money back to ticket holders when you change the status to “Cancelled.” If you fail to respond to refund requests within five business days, Eventbrite reserves the right to step in and issue refunds on your behalf, potentially drawing from your account.
Notifying Your Attendees
Once you cancel, email your registered attendees to let them know. Your message should cover the key details: that the event is cancelled, how they can request a refund, and who to contact with questions. Send this communication as soon as possible after changing the event status. The sooner attendees know, the fewer support requests and disputes you’ll deal with later.
Eventbrite’s platform lets you email attendees through your event dashboard, so you don’t need to export a contact list and use a separate email tool unless you prefer to.
Postponing Instead of Cancelling
If there’s a chance you’ll reschedule the event rather than scrap it entirely, postponing may be a better option than cancelling. The steps are similar: go to your event dashboard, click “On Sale,” then “Change status,” and choose “Postponed” instead of “Cancelled.” This pauses ticket sales and shows visitors the event is postponed.
Postponing buys you time, but it comes with a firm deadline. You have 90 days to set and communicate a new event date. During that window, you can handle refund requests at your discretion. If 90 days pass without a new date, you’re required to issue refunds to any attendee who asks for the next 45 days and until you announce a rescheduled date. Eventbrite also automatically holds your payout when you postpone, keeping funds available for refunds.
If you’re genuinely unsure whether the event will happen at all, Eventbrite recommends cancelling outright rather than postponing. Postponing and then quietly letting it lapse creates a worse experience for attendees and can trigger refund obligations you didn’t plan for.
What Happens to Your Payout
If Eventbrite hasn’t paid you out yet, the funds stay held and are available for refunds. If you’ve already received a payout, the refund amounts will be deducted from your future payouts or charged to the payment method on file. Because cancelled events require full refunds including ticketing fees, the total refund amount will match exactly what each buyer originally paid.
After You Cancel
Once the event is cancelled, refunds are issued, and attendees are notified, there’s not much left to do on the platform side. The cancelled event remains visible in your organizer dashboard for your records, but it won’t appear in public search results if you’ve unpublished it. You can’t reactivate a cancelled event, so if you later decide to hold it after all, you’ll need to create a new event listing from scratch.