'Song For The Mira" Earns Notable Recognition
"Song for the Mira" by Allister MacGillivray is to be inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame as part of a unique partnership with the East Coast Music Association.
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The Weeknd’s After Hours Til Dawn Tour Is One of 2025's Biggest Tours, According to Billboard Boxscore’s Year-End Chart
The 2025 year-end tracking period includes all shows, worldwide, between Oct. 1, 2024, and Sept. 30, 2025, with international grosses being converted to USD.
Initially announced in February 2020, the tour was delayed by COVID-19. By the time the artist, born Abel Tesfaye, hit the road two years later, the tour had further expanded internationally. He hit North America in 2022, Europe and South America in 2023, Australia in 2024 and circled back to the United States and Canada in 2025. The global outing supports 2020’s After Hours, 2022’s Dawn FM and this year’s Hurry Up Tomorrow, which all peaked at No. 1 on the Billboard Canadian Albums chart soon after release.
This year’s North American stadium leg featured over 40 sold-out shows and set the highest attendance records by a Black male artist at venues in New York, Denver, Santa Clara, Seattle, Edmonton, Montreal, Orlando, Arlington and Houston.
In his home country, The Weeknd set a record for performing the most shows by a Canadian male artist at Toronto’s Rogers Centre in August. Over two weekends, he completed four sold-out dates at the venue he still calls by its classic name, SkyDome. In celebration of his major feat, the R&B singer was granted a key to the city, and the first string of shows fell onto what was dubbed “The Weeknd Weekend” by Mayor Olivia Chow.
The Weeknd's creative director and co-founder of XO, La Mar Taylor, accepted the Billboard Canada 40 Under 40 Visionary Award this year, and he talked about the tour's impact — especially the hometown shows.
“Everything that I’ve learned, everything that I’ve done, all the mistakes I’ve made and the triumphs I’ve achieved — I feel like it was leading up to this moment,” he reflected. “Just some kids coming out of Scarborough, no name, no identity, no nothing, selling out six shows in Toronto. It’s mindblowing. It shows people from Toronto that there’s no limitations. You can be whoever, whatever you want to be.”
While The Weeknd earned just shy of $340 million between the tracking period, Billboard Boxscore shared that he surpassed one billion in grosses worldwide in November. According to a statement from Tesfaye’s team, the grosses make the global outing the top-earning tour by a male solo artist in history.
The billion mark was crossed following the recent on-sale dates for upcoming spring and summer 2026 dates in Mexico, Brazil, Europe and the U.K., which bumped the tour’s total ticket sales to more than 7.5 million to date across 153 shows since he hit the road in 2022.
In mid-August, Billboard Boxscore found that the tour had grossed $635.5 million and sold 5.1 million tickets since launching, making it the biggest R&B tour in history, overtaking Beyoncé’s 2023 Renaissance World Tour, which earned $579.8 million over 56 shows. In pure ticket sales, he passed Bruno Mars’s 3.6 million on 2017-18’s 24K Magic World Tour.
The Weeknd’s impressive touring numbers make it the ninth tour to hit the $600 million and above mark, with Tesfaye securing the only R&B and Black artist on a list that features pop and rock acts, including Elton John and Harry Styles. The Weeknd crossed the $600 million threshold with his two performances at Philadelphia’s Lincoln Financial Field on July 30 and 31, bringing the tour full circle after launching at the same stadium on July 14, 2022.
According to Billboard Boxscore, the show’s attendance sets records, too, making him the only genre act and only Black artist to sell over five million tickets on a single tour.
The trek will continue in 2026 with 40 more dates in Mexico, Brazil, Europe and the U.K, kicking off on April 20 with three dates in Mexico City.
Topping this year’s Billboard Boxscore’s Year-End Chart is rock band Coldplay — for the second year in a row. According to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore, the group’s Music of the Spheres World Tour grossed $464.9 million in the tracking period.
It’s the band’s fourth consecutive year in the top five, dating back to the ongoing world tour’s launch in 2022. In total, the trek has brought in over $1.5 billion and sold 13.1 million tickets, selling more tickets than any concert tour in history. With more dates teased for 2027 and beyond, it is likely to challenge the all-time gross record, currently held by Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour — which wrapped up in Vancouver last December.
This year’s Coldplay trek included shows in four continents — Australia, New Zealand, Asia and North America — the latter of which included four sold-out dates at Toronto’s new outdoor venue, Rogers Stadium.
The British band is followed by Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter Tour at No. 2 and Kendrick Lamar and SZA’s Grand National Tour at No. 3. While the duo performed two nights at Toronto’s Scotiabank Arena, Lamar performed his Drake diss track “Not Like Us,” receiving minutes-long standing ovations on Night 1 and Night 2, with the crowd chanting “one more time,” to no avail. 