The following is a list of the most-attended concerts which have drawn at least 100,000 people. The oldest 100,000-crowd show reported to Billboard Boxscore is Grateful Dead at Englishtown's Raceway Park on September 3, 1977, with 107,019 fans. Internationally, 43 ticketed concerts have surpassed the initial record set by Grateful Dead. Michael Jackson held 11 concerts with attendance exceeding 100,000. Robbie Williams achieved this four times, and Queen and the Rolling Stones each did so three times. Currently, Marko Perković Thompson holds the record for the concert with the most tickets sold, held on 5 July 2025 at the Zagreb Hippodrome, with 485,430 tickets sold. [a]
Although the attendance numbers of free concerts are known to be exaggerations, [3] media outlets have registered several concerts with a million people or more. Rod Stewart's concert in Copacabana 1994 holds the Guinness World Record for the largest attendance of any concert, [4] having reportedly attracted more than 3.5 million people in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Jean-Michel Jarre is the only act to attract at least a million spectators on five occasions (Paris in 1979, 1990 and 1995; Houston in 1986; and Moscow in 1997).
In 2024, Madonna's free-to-attend closing performance for the Celebration Tour at Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro attracted over 1.6 million people, [5] setting the record for the highest attendance for a standalone concert at the time. [6] Lady Gaga broke the record in 2025 with 2.1 million attendees at the same place for Mayhem on the Beach, a promotional show dedicated to her album Mayhem . [b]
* | Indicates the concert was the most-attended of all time up to that point |
‡ | Indicates standalone free concert |
The following shows are the most-attended single-night engagements for a ticketed event with 100,000 people or more (excluding music festivals).
The following shows are the most-attended single-night engagements for a free event with one million people or more. The first ever was by French musician Jean-Michel Jarre in Paris in 1979, which created the Guinness World Records entry. This list also includes multi-artist festivals, which may not be directly comparable to single-artist concerts. Attendance numbers for many of the kinds of events listed here rely on estimations from the promoters and are known to be exaggerations. [3]
The following shows are the most-attended multi-night engagements for a ticketed event with 300,000 people or more (excluding music festivals and concert residencies).
Jean-Michel Jarre concert Guinness.