She make it look easy, ‘cause she got it. Earlier on Thursday (June 29), Billboard reported that the first nine shows of Beyoncé’s Renaissance World Tour made her the top-grossing touring act of May. But there’s more! She wrapped the European leg of the tour Wednesday night in Warsaw, posting career-high blockbuster numbers. According to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore, Beyoncé grossed $154.4 million and sold 1 million tickets across 21 shows.
Not only is that a huge number that resists qualification, it’s the biggest gross and attendance of any of Beyoncé’s previous European legs. On 2016’s The Formation World Tour and 2018’s On the Run II Tour (co-headlined with Jay-Z), she earned $87 million, marking a 77% bump on her recent stint.
The so-far $154 million-plus total from 21 shows over two months is more than any artist made in the six-month window that defined Billboard’s midyear report. Of course, Harry Styles, Elton John and other acts atop those charts continue to add to their hauls, but it bodes well that the Renaissance World Tour isn’t even half done, putting it in immediate contention for year-end honors.
The tour’s attendance of 1.05 million improves upon 871,000 in 2018 and 867,000 in 2016. It’s the first time that any leg of any solo Beyoncé tour broke the seven-digit milestone.
Of the 14 markets Beyoncé hit, 12 of them yielded local records. That includes the biggest gross in the history of London’s Tottenham Hotspur Stadium and Warsaw’s PGE Narodowy, plus the attendance record at Tottenham. Elsewhere, she set highs for single-night engagements and broke ground among women and Black artists throughout Europe.
The obvious standout of the European shows was a five-night run in London, earning $42.2 million from 240,000 tickets. It instantly blasts in to the all-time top 10 Boxscores, ranked seventh behind two engagements apiece from Harry Styles, Take That and Coldplay. That makes it the single biggest report by a woman, a Black artist, or by any act from the United States.
Further, Beyoncé broke the $10 million barrier with double-headers in Solna, Sweden; Amsterdam; and Warsaw. She scored one more eight-figure show with one night at Paris’ Stade de France. The $10.1 million is slightly off from the $10.9 million from On the Run II, but consider that the 2018 gross came from two shows, matching 92% of that gross with just one show in 2023.
These 21 shows push Beyoncé’s reported career gross to $921.7 million and attendance to 9.9 million. But she’s not done for the near future.
The Renaissance World Tour continues with 36 shows in the U.S. and Canada, kicking off on July 8-9 in Toronto. If Beyoncé continues at this pace, the North American leg would gross $264 million and sell 1.8 million tickets. That leg alone would pass the global total of The Formation World Tour to become the biggest of Beyoncé’s career, though it’d make for a worldwide total of about $415 million and 2.8 million tickets.
On that 2016 run, Beyoncé paced $5.3 million in North America, compared to $5.1 million in Europe, indicating that those estimates could be slightly low. Her Renaissance grosses leapt by 44% in Europe from her previous solo tour, but post-pandemic results across the industry have exacerbated an existing ticket-price gap between the continents. Despite typically smaller capacities, North American stadium grosses have ballooned in a more extreme way than in Europe, which could push Beyoncé’s totals even higher.
Final results will depend on final pricing via the dynamics of a post-pandemic ticketing ecosystem. But it is more than safe to say that Beyoncé will soar beyond $1 billion and 10 million tickets in career figures due to her biggest tour ever.
