List Of Madonna Concerts
Her 1985 debut concert tour, The Virgin Tour, was held in North America only and went on to collect more than US $5 million. In 1987 she performed on the worldwide Who's That Girl World Tour, which visited Europe, North America and Japan, and earned $25 million. One of the tour's shows in Paris in front of 130,000 fans was the largest paying concert audience by a female artist at the time and remains the largest crowd of any concert in French history. In 1990, she embarked on the Blond Ambition World Tour, which was dubbed the "Greatest Concert of the 1990s" by Rolling Stone. BBC credited the tour with "invent[ing] the modern, multi-media pop spectacle". In 1993, Madonna visited Israel and Turkey for the first time, followed by Latin America and Australia, with The Girlie Show. A review in Time by Sam Buckley said: "Madonna, once the Harlow harlot and now a perky harlequin, is the greatest show-off on earth."
Madonna did not tour again until the Drowned World Tour in 2001. She played the guitar and her costumes included a punkish tartan kilt and a geisha kimono. Some critics complained that the show concentrated on material from her most recent albums, but generally, the response was favorable. She grossed more than US $75 million with summer sold-out shows and eventually played in front of 730,000 people throughout North America and Europe. The Drowned World Tour was followed by the 2004 Re-Invention World Tour. Madonna was inspired to create the tour after taking part in an art installation called X-STaTIC PRo=CeSS, directed by photographer Steven Klein. Billboard awarded Madonna the "Backstage Pass Award" in recognition of having the top-grossing tour of the year, with ticket sales of nearly US $125 million.
Madonna's next tours broke world records, with the 2006 Confessions Tour grossing over US $194.7 million, becoming the highest-grossing tour ever for a female artist at that time. This feat was surpassed in 2008 with the Sticky & Sweet Tour, which at the time, became the highest-grossing tour ever by a solo artist, and the second highest-grossing tour of all time, with approximately US $411 million in ticket sales. In 2012, The MDNA Tour was completed as the tenth highest-grossing tour of all time with US $305 million, the second highest among female artists at the time, only behind the Sticky & Sweet Tour. Her 2015–16 Rebel Heart Tour was an all-arena tour which grossed $169.8 million from 1.045 million attendance. The Celebration Tour, which acted as Madonna's first retrospective show, became one of the world's fastest-selling concert tours. Billboard reported the Celebration tour to have grossed over $225.4 million from an audience of 1.1 million. The free concert in Rio de Janeiro drew a crowd of over 1.6 million people, which became Madonna's largest crowd of her career and set records for the largest audience ever for a stand-alone concert and the largest all-time crowd for a female artist.
Madonna has embarked on several promotional concerts to promote her studio albums, as well as performing award shows and benefit concerts like Live Aid (1985), Live 8 (2005) and Live Earth (2007). In 2012, she headlined the Super Bowl XLVI halftime show, which at that time was the most-watched halftime show in history. According to Billboard Boxscore, Madonna grossed over $1.31 billion in concert ticket sales between 1990 and 2016; she first crossed a billion gross with The MDNA Tour. Overall, Madonna ranks third, with just The Rolling Stones ($1.84 billion) and U2 ($1.67 billion) ahead of her. During the London stop of her 2006 Confessions Tour, Madonna became the first performer to be inducted into the Wembley Arena Square of Fame.
Concert tours
| Title | Date | Associated album(s) | Continent(s) | Shows | Gross | Gross adj. in 2023 |
Attendance | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Virgin Tour | April 10, 1985 – June 11, 1985 | Madonna Like a Virgin |
North America | 40 | $5,000,000 | $14,164,604 | 400,000 | |
| Who's That Girl World Tour | June 14, 1987 – September 6, 1987 | True Blue Who's That Girl |
Asia North America Europe |
38 | $25,000,000 | $67,047,452 | 1,317,663 | |
| Blond Ambition World Tour | April 13, 1990 – August 5, 1990 | Like a Prayer I'm Breathless |
Asia North America Europe |
57 | $62,700,000 | $146,225,471 | 2,000,000 | |
| The Girlie Show | September 25, 1993 – December 19, 1993 | Erotica | Europe North America South America Asia Oceania |
39 | $70,000,000 | $147,643,400 | 1,279,123 | |
| Drowned World Tour | June 9, 2001 – September 15, 2001 | Ray of Light Music |
Europe North America |
47 | $75,000,000 | $129,054,689 | 732,606 | |
| Re-Invention World Tour | May 24, 2004 – September 14, 2004 | American Life | Europe North America |
56 | $124,790,787 | $201,300,995 | 897,207 | |
| Confessions Tour | May 21, 2006 – September 21, 2006 | Confessions on a Dance Floor | Europe North America Asia |
60 | $194,754,447 | $294,349,904 | 1,209,593 | |
| Sticky & Sweet Tour | August 23, 2008 – September 2, 2009 | Hard Candy | Europe North America South America Asia |
85 | $411,000,000 | $583,700,326 | 3,545,899 | |
| The MDNA Tour | May 31, 2012 – December 22, 2012 | MDNA | Asia Europe North America South America |
88 | $305,158,362 | $404,990,573 | 2,212,345 | |
| Rebel Heart Tour | September 9, 2015 – March 20, 2016 | Rebel Heart | North America Europe Asia Oceania |
82 | $169,804,336 | $215,575,222 | 1,045,479 | |
| Madame X Tour | September 17, 2019 – March 8, 2020 | Madame X | North America Europe |
75 | $51,361,008 | $61,208,042 | 179,289 | |
| The Celebration Tour | October 14, 2023 – May 4, 2024 | Various | Europe North America South America |
81 | $225,400,000 | $225,400,000 | 1,127,658 |
|
One-off concerts
| Date | Event | City | Venue | Performed song(s) | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| October 13, 1983 | Madonna promotional show | London | Camden Palace |
|
|
| February 14, 1998 | Ray of Light promotional show | New York City | Roxy NYC |
|
|
| November 5, 2000 | Music promotional show | Roseland Ballroom |
|
||
| November 29, 2000 | Music promotional show | London | Brixton Academy |
|
|
| April 22, 2003 | Madonna: On Stage and on the Record | New York City | MTV Studios |
|
|
| April 23, 2003 | American Life promotional show | Tower Records |
|
||
| April 30, 2003 | Absolut Madonna | Cologne | RTL Studio |
|
|
| May 9, 2003 | American Life promotional show | London | HMV Oxford Circus |
|
|
| November 15, 2005 | Confessions on a Dance Floor promotional show | KOKO |
|
||
| November 19, 2005 | Confessions on a Dance Floor promotional show | G-A-Y |
|
||
| December 7, 2005 | Confessions on a Dance Floor promotional show | Tokyo | Studio Coast |
|
|
| April 30, 2008 | Hard Candy promotional show | New York City | Roseland Ballroom |
|
|
| May 6, 2008 | Hard Candy promotional show | Paris | Olympia |
|
|
| May 10, 2008 | Hard Candy promotional show | Maidstone | Mote Park | ||
| February 2, 2012 | Super Bowl XLVI halftime show | Indianapolis | Lucas Oil Stadium |
|
|
| March 10, 2016 | Madonna: Tears of a Clown | Melbourne | Forum Theatre |
|
|
| November 7, 2016 | Hillary Clinton campaign concert | New York City | Washington Square Park |
|
|
| May 7, 2018 | Met Gala | Metropolitan Museum of Art |
|
||
| June 30, 2019 | Stonewall 50 – WorldPride NYC | Pier 97, Hudson River Park |
|
||
| April 30, 2022 | Medallo en el Mapa (Maluma hometown concert) | Medellín | Estadio Atanasio Girardot | ||
| June 24, 2022 | NYC Pride March | New York City | Terminal 5 |
|
Benefit concerts
Music festivals
| Date | Event | City | Performed song(s) | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| February 22, 1995 | Sanremo Music Festival | Sanremo | "Take a Bow" (with Babyface) | |
| February 24, 1998 | Sanremo Music Festival | Sanremo | "Frozen" | |
| April 30, 2006 | Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival | Indio |
|
|
| May 10, 2008 | BBC Radio 1's Big Weekend | Maidstone |
|
|
| March 25, 2012 | Ultra Music Festival | Miami | "Girl Gone Wild" (as a guest during Avicii's act) | |
| April 12, 2015 | Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival | Indio |
|
|
| May 18, 2019 | Eurovision Song Contest | Tel Aviv |
|
See also
- List of performances on Top of the Pops
- List of most-watched television broadcasts
- List of most-attended concert tours
- List of most-attended concerts
- List of highest-grossing live music artists
- List of highest-grossing concert tours
- List of highest-grossing concert tours by women