List of Madonna's Tours
This is the list of all Madonna's Tours.
Bedtime Stories doesn't have a promotional tour neither a concert tour.
Concert tours [ ]
1. The Virgin Tour (1985) Promoting: Madonna and Like A Virgin
2. Who's That Girl World Tour (1987) Promoting: True Blue and Who's That Girl
3. Blond Ambition World Tour (1990) Promoting: Like A Prayer and I'm Breathless
4. The Girlie Show World Tour (1993) Promoting: Erotica
5. Drowned World Tour (2001) Promoting: Ray of Light and Music
6. Re-Invention World Tour (2004) Promoting: American Life
7. The Confessions Tour (2006) Promoting: Confessions On A Dance Floor
8. Sticky & Sweet Tour (2008-2009) Promoting: Hard Candy
9. Madonna World Tour (2012) Promoting: MDNA
10. Rebel Heart Tour (2015 - 2016) Promoting: Rebel Heart
11. Madame X Tour (2019 - 2020) Promoting: Madame X (album)
12. The Celebration Tour (2023-present)
Promotional tours [ ]
1. Music Promo Tour (Sept. 4 1999)
2. American Life Promo Tour (Sept. 18 2002)
3. Hung Up Promo Tour (Jan. 4 2005)
4. Hard Candy Promo Tour (Dec. 7 2007)
Documentaries [ ]
1. Truth or Dare (In Bed With Madonna) About The Blond Ambition Tour
2. I'm Going to Tell You a Secret About The Re-Invention Tour
- Manage Account
Every Madonna Tour, Ranked
Looking back on the Queen of Pop's groundbreaking concerts over the years.
By Sal Cinquemani
Sal Cinquemani
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In 1974, at the age of 15, Madonna snuck out of her father’s house in suburban Detroit to attend David Bowie’s Diamond Dogs Tour. She was summarily grounded for the summer, but the punishment was worth it. “I don’t think that I breathed for two hours. It was the most amazing show that I’d ever seen,” Madonna said during a speech inducting the Thin White Duke into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1996.
Madonna’s first two tours, 1985’s Virgin Tour and 1987’s Who’s That Girl World Tour, served as experiment labs for the burgeoning superstar. In 1990, her Blond Ambition World Tour revolutionized the pop concert. Drawing inspiration from Bowie’s theatricality, Prince’s cheeky flamboyance and Michael Jackson’s stage command, she offered audiences an immersive experience that went beyond conventional live performance.
Each of Madonna’s subsequent tours have pushed the boundaries even further, embracing technology for multimedia (and multi-sensory) presentations of her music. On the heels of her own induction into the Rock Hall of Fame in 2008, the singer’s Sticky & Sweet Tour became the highest grossing tour for a female artist in history – a record she held until 2023, when it was finally eclipsed by Beyoncé’s Renaissance Tour, according to Billboard Boxscore.
Madonna could have hung up her corset long ago and she would still be one of the most successful live acts of all time. But she continues to push herself – and us. Her latest trek, the career-spanning Celebration Tour, will wrap up with a historic free show at Copacabana beach in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on May 4. The concert will be broadcast live on TV Globo and will likely see Madonna performing for her biggest audience to date – more than 40 years into her career.
To get in on the celebration, we’ve ranked all 12 of Madonna’s boundary-busting tours.
The Virgin Tour (1985)
Madonna’s very first tour was propelled, like most things related to the queen, almost entirely on the strength of her sheer force of will — and, of course, her raw talent. A magnetic and skilled performer (that toss and catch of the tambourine!), Madonna sprinted through a relatively short setlist culled largely from her first two albums, dancing and belting out hits like “Into the Groove” and “Burning Up” like her rent was due yesterday. But she didn’t need to worry about paying the bills for long: When the tour kicked off in April 1985, she was playing modest theaters; two months later, she was performing to a sold-out crowd of Madonna wannabes at Madison Square Garden.
Who’s That Girl World Tour (1987)
Compared to the Virgin Tour just two years earlier, Madonna stepped up the production values, choreography and theatricality for her first world (and stadium) tour. Dramatic performances of “Papa Don’t Preach,” “Live to Tell” and her then-most recent No. 1 on the Hot 100, “Who’s That Girl,” hinted at what was to come on future tours in terms of spectacle and ambition. Though it was only her second tour, Who’s That Girl would become the last of Madonna’s shows to resemble a conventional pop-rock concert.
Re-Invention World Tour (2004)
Coming off of the commercial disappointment of her 2003 album American Life , Madonna returned to the place she’s always thrived: the stage. The Re-Invention Tour was nothing she hadn’t done before or wouldn’t do better in the future, but — for the first time in years — she was embracing her past, performing rocked-out renditions of early hits “Burning Up” and “Material Girl” with electric guitar in hand, and even reinventing a few fan favorites like “Hanky Panky” and “Deeper and Deeper.” As for the queen herself, she was in top form both vocally and physically.
Madame X Tour (2019-2020)
Part jukebox musical, part avant-garde performance art and part standup special, the Madame X Tour revolved around a James Baldwin quote… and a typewriter. Yes, Madame X is a stenographer. The tour took place in theaters and opera houses instead of the usual arenas, offering a more intimate and interactive experience. Highlights included a jazzy version of “Human Nature,” a neo-noir restaging of “Vogue” and a crowd sing-along to the resistance anthem “I Rise.”
Rebel Heart Tour (2015-2016)
A blend of Cirque du Soleil, Broadway and burlesque, the Rebel Heart Tour saw dancers swinging on 10-foot stilts, dressed as nuns on stripper poles and sliding down giant LED screens. As for Madonna, she seemed more at ease on stage than ever, playing the coy chanteuse a la Blond Ambition and strumming the ukulele to “True Blue” – the first time she’d performed the song in nearly three decades. In fact, Rebel Heart was heavier on the hits than any tour since Re-Invention, including a Latin-infused medley of classics “Dress You Up,” “Into the Groove” and “Lucky Star,” as well as a modern twist on “Material Girl.”
Sticky & Sweet Tour (2008-2009)
After a first act that didn’t quite live up to the lofty standards Madonna had previously set, the Sticky & Sweet Tour eventually hit its stride. The ‘Gypsy’ and ‘Rave’ segments in particular – including an electrifying rendition of “La Isla Bonita” featuring Ukrainian group Kolpakov Trio and a heavy metal version of “Hung Up,” which ended with Madonna shredding her guitar to Pantera’s “A New Level” – were as exhilarating as any of her previous tours’ best moments.
The Celebration Tour (2023-2024)
Madonna’s latest tour is the sight and sound of a legend fully embracing her legacy. With no new album to promote, the setlist is packed with so many iconic songs – including a handful she’s never performed on tour before, such as “Bedtime Story” and “Bad Girl” – that more than a dozen of her 28 top 5 hits on the Billboard Hot 100 had to be omitted. A musical recounting of the Queen of Pop’s life and career, the Celebration Tour touches on her rise to fame in New York, the AIDS crisis (via a stirring rendition of “Live to Tell”), the media backlash she suffered in the early ‘90s and her spiritual rebirth, in which she rises like an AI phoenix on a glowing cube and — quicker than a ray of light — soars above the crowd. Masterful.
Drowned World Tour (2001)
Pioneered by bands like U2, live concerts had moved closer to multimedia presentations in the years since The Girlie Show in 1993, and Madonna fully embraced the artistic potential that new technology allowed. For her first tour in eight years, Madonna pulled out all of the stops: smoke machines, acrobatic stunts, line-dancing, even Japanese anime. And with only a handful of older songs making the cut – including tour staples “Holiday” and “Human Nature” – she proved she was still laser-focused on the present… and the future.
The MDNA Tour (2012)
Coming on the heels of Madonna’s iconic halftime performance at Super Bowl XLVI, the maximalist MDNA Tour was one of her most ambitious, employing elaborate stage combat, slacklining, Tetris-style cubes that rose 16 feet above the stage and a backdrop of eight rotating video screens. It was also one of her most intense shows. At 54, Madonna was in peak form, performing intricate choreography in spiked stilettos nonstop for two hours straight. The only chance she had to take a breath was during a surprisingly poignant piano version of “Like a Virgin” … after which the air was literally squeezed from her lungs by a corset being tightened around her.
The Girlie Show (1993)
Inspired by cabaret and classic Hollywood musicals, The Girlie Show was a visual tour-de-force. The second act, dubbed ‘Studio 54,’ rivaled the ‘Religious’ segment from Blond Ambition for sheer catharsis, with the freedom of the orgiastic disco era (“Deeper and Deeper”) juxtaposed with the subsequent AIDS crisis (“In This Life”), as well as a captivating fever dream of choreography set to a remix of “Justify My Love.” Madonna was in fine voice throughout, growling her way through “Express Yourself” and harmonizing beautifully on “Rain.” She’s never had a better live band, either — and even mused about collaborating with them on an album, though it sadly never materialized.
Blond Ambition World Tour (1990)
With its elaborate costumes (courtesy of French designer Jean-Paul Gaultier), Broadway-style sets (designed by Madonna’s brother Christopher Ciccone) and quasi-narrative arc, the Blond Ambition Tour is the blueprint – the mother of the modern pop concert. The show infamously found Madonna exorcising herself of the guilt of her Catholic upbringing. The ‘Religious’ segment, which began with the singer simulating masturbation and ended with her facing the judgment of the male authority figures in her life (her father, the Pope, God), is among the most audaciously conceived and impeccably executed moments of stagecraft in touring history.
Confessions Tour (2006)
The Confessions Tour snags the top spot on our list for two reasons. First, it served as a culmination of everything Madonna had learned from Blond Ambition through Re-Invention, combining spectacle, drama and good ol’ fashioned performance mojo. Like its namesake, 2005’s Grammy-winning Confessions on a Dance Floor , the show struck a deft balance between dance-party hedonism and intimate introspection. Madonna’s 2000 Hot 100 chart-topper “Music” was transformed into a roller-disco fantasia, while a haunting rendition of “Live to Tell” saw the veteran provocateur suspended from a giant disco-fied cross in order to shine a light on the plight of AIDS in Africa.
Most importantly, Confessions was Madonna’s most cohesive and consistently thrilling show to date. Musical director Stuart Price skillfully arranged and remixed early hits like “Erotica” and “Like a Virgin” to fit the Eurodisco aesthetic of Confessions . Plus, each act of the show was a visual and aural smorgasbord, from the opening equestrian segment, which found Madonna emerging from a giant glitter ball and commanding a stripper-poll-cum-carousel-horse, to the extended finale, which mashed up “Lucky Star” and “Hung Up” into a nearly 15-minute explosion of ear and eye candy.
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List of Madonna concerts
From wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
American singer Madonna has performed on twelve concert tours , nineteen one-off concerts , nine benefit concerts , and three music festivals . Madonna has been nicknamed by some publications as the "Queen of Concerts" or "Queen of Touring", recognizing her "years-deep involvement in the touring game" and stage shows . [1] [2] Once the highest-grossing female touring artist according to Billboard Boxscore and Pollstar , [3] [4] Madonna remains one of the highest-grossing live touring acts .
Her 1985 debut concert tour, The Virgin Tour , was held in North America only and went on to collect more than US $5 million. [5] In 1987 she performed on the worldwide Who's That Girl World Tour , which visited Europe, North America and Japan, and earned $25 million. [6] [7] 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. [8] [9] In 1990, she embarked on the Blond Ambition World Tour , which was dubbed the "Greatest Concert of the 1990s" by Rolling Stone . [10] BBC credited the tour with "invent[ing] the modern, multi-media pop spectacle". [11] In 1993, Madonna visited Israel and Turkey for the first time, followed by Latin America and Australia, with The Girlie Show . [7] 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." [12]
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. [7] 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. [13] [14] 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 . [15] 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. [16]
Madonna's next tours broke world records, with the 2006 Confessions Tour grossing over US $194.7 million, [17] becoming the highest-grossing tour ever for a female artist at that time. [18] 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. [19] 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. [20] Her 2015–16 Rebel Heart Tour was an all-arena tour which grossed $169.8 million from 1.045 million attendance. [21] 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. [22] 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. [23]
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. [21] During the London stop of her 2006 Confessions Tour, Madonna became the first performer to be inducted into the Wembley Arena Square of Fame . [24]