Madonna admitted she was lost for words as she looked back on the biggest show of her career.
The pop superstar wrapped her ‘Celebration’ tour by playing her biggest ever concert in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on Saturday night (04.05.24) playing to an audience of an estimated 1.6 million at Copacabana Beach and she has now thanked everyone involved for making it happen.
In a post on Instagram, she wrote: “This really happened ……….Thank you Rio ………. Thank you @pabllovittar and @anitta ……………Words cannot express my gratitude! To everyone involved!! “
Madonna has been on the road since October 2023 when she kicked off the concerts in London before taking the gigs across Europe and North America and she brought the tour to a close with a final concert in Rio de Janeiro.
As she kicked off the gig, she told the crowd: “Here we are in the most beautiful place in the world. This place is magic.”
The free show attracted huge numbers of people, who watched on giant screens positioned along the beach while others caught a glimpse of the action from boats and balconies nearby with 18 speaker towers making sure they could all hear Madonna’s hits.
The 1.6 million attendance smashed Madonna’s previous record of 130,000 gig-goers who attended her show at the Parc des Sceaux in Paris back in 1987.
Madonna played a career-spanning set and was joined on stage by stars including Diplo, Anitta, Pabllo Vittar and Bob the Drag Queen, while the Queen of Pop delighted the audience by slipping into a Brazilian football shirt during the show.
Other acts have previously attracted huge audiences with gigs on the beach with the Rolling Stones playing to 1.5 million people on their ‘A Bigger Bang’ tour in 2006 and Rod Stewart, who broke records with an attendance of 4.2 million on New Year’s Eve in 1994.
Madonna previously announced the show would be free of charge to say thank you to her loyal fans. A post on her website explained: “The event will be her biggest gig yet, an unforgettable concert in one of the world’s most beautiul settings.
“The show will be free of charge as a thank you to her fans for celebrating more than four decades of her music over the course of the epic global run of the tour.”