I have somewhat of a fix for this.
Go to line 178 of plugins/events-manager/em-posts.php
Change
'rewrite' => array('slug' => 'event-recurring','with_front'=>false),
to
'rewrite' => array('slug' => 'events','with_front'=>false),
As tal239 said:
Recurring specific shortcode is still returning “events-recurring” instead of “events” slug prefix.
This makes the slug for recurring events to be events. Somehow this makes it work to redirect to an event in the series. I haven’t verified that it chooses the most logical event (the one coming up).
I think the real fix may be in classes/em-permalinks on line 61. I believe if it checks on that line if the current post type is event-recurring, then allows the redirect, it’d work. I don’t have time to figure this out though.
By the way, I did save permalinks, I did disable all plugins except events manager, and I did switch to a default WP theme. Updated to latest WP and plugins as well. None of these fixed the issue.