J. Cole in Antwerp: same money, better weekend.
J. Cole plays the AFAS Dome on 17 October. The ticket is £48.56 and the flight from Manchester is £38. A weekend in Belgium for roughly the price of a night at the O2.
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Skip the O2. J. Cole is £48.56 in Antwerp.
The cheapest ticket for J. Cole at The O2 on 19 October is £133.40 and you get an evening. The same tour plays the AFAS Dome outside Antwerp on 17 October for £48.56, and from Manchester the return flight is £38.
This is not a saving and we will not pretend it is. Once the trains at the far end are counted it costs a little more than staying home. What the extra buys you is a weekend in Belgium instead of a night on the Jubilee line.
From | Airport | Ticket | Flight | Accommodation | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Manchester | MAN to Charleroi | £38 | £18 | £104.56 | |
London | Stansted to Eindhoven | £18 | £118.56 | ||
Belfast | BFS to Charleroi via MAN | £36 | £154.56 |
Book the ticket on Ticketmaster → (opens in a new tab)
All three are Ryanair, out Saturday morning and back Sunday. Manchester's return leaves Charleroi at midday, so you are up and out of Antwerp after breakfast. London's comes back at 21:15 and gives you the full Sunday, which is worth the extra £15.
The catch
Neither airport is in Antwerp. Charleroi is 120km south, past Brussels. Eindhoven is 100km north, in a different country. Both are about two hours on the ground each way, which will need a train or coach journey. Budget for it and the weekend stands up. Ignore it and you will be annoyed with us.
Where you stay
a&o Antwerpen Centraal, £18 for a dorm bed.
It is directly opposite Antwerpen-Centraal, about a hundred metres from the main entrance and twenty from the nearest side door. That matters more than it sounds. Your train from Charleroi or Eindhoven arrives at Centraal, so you walk across the road and drop your bag. The tram to the venue leaves from the same square. When you land back at the station at one in the morning after the gig, you are already home.
The station itself is the reason to stay here rather than somewhere cheaper further out. Antwerpen-Centraal is a stone, steel and glass cathedral of a building from 1905 and is regularly called the most beautiful railway station in the world. You will walk through it four times over the weekend and it does not get old.
Twenty-four hour reception, free wifi, bar downstairs, luggage store for the Sunday. Private rooms are available if a dorm is not your thing, though that changes the maths.
Two days in Antwerp
Saturday. Land, train in, drop the bag. You will have most of the afternoon, so walk it. Head down De Keyserlei from the station, through the diamond district, into the old centre. Grote Markt has the guild houses and the town hall, and the Cathedral of Our Lady around the corner holds four Rubens altarpieces in the room they were painted for. Carry on to Het Steen on the river, then either the MAS for the rooftop view over the docks or the Sint-Anna tunnel, a 1930s pedestrian crossing under the Scheldt with the original wooden escalators still running.
Eat early. Doors are at 18:30 and you want to be on the tram by 18:00.
Your ticket is also your tram ticket. Admission to the AFAS Dome doubles as a De Lijn pass, valid on every tram, metro and bus in Antwerp province on the day of the show, in both directions, with nothing to validate. From Diamant, the metro stop under the station, take line 2 towards P+R Merksem or line 6 towards P+R Luchtbal and get off at Sport. Two minutes to the door.
Sunday, if you flew from Manchester. You do not get one. Take the early train to Charleroi, and you are home by half twelve. If you wake up early you might have time for a Belgian waffle for breakfast before getting the train.
Sunday, if you flew from Stansted. You have until about six in the evening. Zurenborg is a twenty-minute walk south east of the station and Cogels-Osylei is a full street of art nouveau townhouses, each one competing with the one next door. Quiet on a Sunday morning and free. Then back into the centre for lunch, fries and something Belgian on tap, before the train north to Eindhoven.
How we work this out
Cheapest ticket on Ticketmaster Belgium, converted to GBP. VIP and lounge tickets excluded. Flights are return, one adult, hand luggage only, checked on 3/8/26. Ryanair prices move daily. The AFAS Dome is in Merksem, north of the centre, on the tram network.