Event Ticketing Platform for Kenya

Sell event tickets online in Kenya with M-Pesa, Airtel Money and card. 5% per ticket sold, settlement in realtime, and — unlike every other ticketing platform in the market — capital advanced before your on-sale so the venue deposit and artist advance are covered.

5% per ticket sold

No monthly subscription, no setup fee, no charge to list an event and no per-payout fee. Settlement is realtime and payouts are in KES — no international wire step and no FX spread.

Go to the organizer portal →

How your buyers pay in Kenya

M-Pesa: The default for Kenyan buyers. Integrated directly, so checkout is an STK push rather than a redirect to a card form most of your audience will abandon.
Airtel Money: For buyers outside the Safaricom network, so no segment of your audience is locked out.
Card (Visa, Mastercard): For diaspora buyers and corporate purchases, processed on PCI-compliant infrastructure.
Bank transfer: For high-value group and corporate bookings.

Collect anywhere in Africa, get paid anywhere in Africa

Our payment infrastructure is built on Fincra and Maplerad, which means we collect and disburse across Africa rather than only in Kenya. For a Nairobi organizer that has two practical consequences.

Your buyers are not limited to Kenya. A Kenyan festival that draws from Kampala, Dar es Salaam, Kigali or Lagos can take payment in each of those markets on the rails those buyers actually use — their own mobile money wallet or local card — instead of forcing an international card payment that will frequently decline.

You can be paid wherever you are. Diaspora promoters running Kenyan events, and Kenyan promoters running events elsewhere on the continent, are settled without an international wire step and without losing money to an FX spread in both directions.

What separates ticketing platforms in Kenya

Every serious platform in Kenya sells tickets, takes M-Pesa and issues a QR pass. Ranking them on that is close to meaningless — the features have converged and the headline rates cluster within a couple of percentage points of each other.

Three things actually differ, and all three are financial rather than technical:

When you get your money. Some platforms release funds as tickets sell. Others hold everything until after the event, which means you personally fund the venue balance, the artist and the marketing while your own revenue sits visible and unreachable in a dashboard. Ask for the settlement policy in writing before you list anywhere — here is why the delay exists.

Whether anyone funds the event. Almost every platform in this market is a payment processor with a good front end. The relationship starts when a ticket sells, which leaves the hardest part of running an event — paying for it before anyone has bought anything — entirely with you.

What the all-in cost really is. A headline rate plus separate mobile money processing plus a per-withdrawal fee is a different number from the one advertised. Compute cost per ticket on your actual sales pattern, not the rate on the pricing page.

Event prefinancing in Kenya

The venue wants a deposit. The artist wants an advance. The posters and paid social have to be paid for weeks before a single person buys a ticket. For most Kenyan organizers that money comes from savings, a chama, or borrowing at rates that make the whole event marginal.

We advance capital before your on-sale and recover it from ticket revenue as it sells. There is no separate repayment schedule and no property collateral — the event is the asset being financed. In 2026 we built a capital pool sized for stadium-scale shows, not only club nights.

This is the single biggest constraint on the scale of live events in Kenya. It is not demand and it is not venues — it is that promoters cannot front the cost of the show they are capable of selling. How event prefinancing works.

Selling to Kenyan buyers

Make M-Pesa the obvious path. A checkout that leads with a card form loses Kenyan buyers who have never used one online. The STK push is familiar and finishes in seconds.

Price tiers on evidence. Nairobi event pricing is usually copied from the last show. If early bird clears in nine hours your next tier is underpriced; if tier one is crawling at week three a flash tier beats a price cut.

Track what actually sells. Most marketing budgets here are spent on reach that was never going to convert. A WhatsApp broadcast to past attendees routinely outperforms a paid influencer package by an order of magnitude on cost per ticket — but only if you measure it.

Plan for the announcement spike. A well-announced Kenyan event can take half its sales in the first ten minutes. That is the moment your platform has to hold.

Where organizers sell

Events run on SoldOutAfrica across Kenya, including Nairobi, Mombasa, Kisumu, Nakuru, Eldoret, Kilifi, Watamu and Diani.

Browse upcoming events by city.

Common questions

What is the best event ticketing platform in Kenya?: It depends on what constrains you. If discovery is the problem, an established marketplace helps. If funding the event and cash flow are the problem — which is the more common case for anyone past their first few events — you want a platform that prefinances and settles in realtime. Compare all-in cost per ticket, settlement timing and whether anyone will fund the event, not feature lists.
How much does it cost to sell event tickets in Kenya?: SoldOutAfrica charges 5% per ticket sold with no monthly subscription, no setup fee, no listing fee and no per-payout charge. You choose whether to absorb the 5% or pass it to attendees at checkout. Other Kenyan platforms publish rates between roughly 4% and 8%, though several do not publish anything — always ask for written terms.
Can I accept M-Pesa for event tickets?: Yes. M-Pesa is integrated directly, so buyers pay with an STK push rather than being redirected to a card form. Setup takes minutes and there is no separate Safaricom paybill application for you to manage.
How quickly do I get paid after selling tickets?: Settlement is realtime — revenue reaches you as tickets sell rather than being held until after the event. That is what makes it possible to pay the venue balance and the artist out of ticket revenue instead of your own pocket.
Do I need a company to sell tickets in Kenya?: You can start as an individual organizer. Onboarding flexes to who you actually are rather than forcing everyone through the same verification wall, which is why some organizers give up on other platforms before they have listed anything.

Start selling in Kenya

Tell us what you are planning for the next six months and we will tell you what we can front — before you commit your own cash to it.

Go to the organizer portal →