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Hyghly Alleyne
The Weeknd
Touring
The Weeknd's After Hours Til Dawn Tour Becomes the Highest-Grossing Tour Ever by a Male Artist
Live Nation reports that the tour grossed over $1.3 billion and sold 9 million tickets across 176 shows worldwide, surpassing Elton John's record for the highest-grossing tour by a male artist in history and third highest-grossing tour overall.
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The Weeknd now holds the record for the highest-grossing tour among male artists.
After Abel Tesfaye played the final show of his After Hours Til Dawn global stadium tour in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on Nov. 3, Live Nation has confirmed that the tour has set a new record for the highest-grossing tour by any male artist in history, with over $1.3 billion USD in grosses and 9 million tickets sold across 176 international concerts.
Initially conceived as an arena tour that was scrapped due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the After Hours Til Dawn tour was reborn as a stadium tour and kicked off in 2022 in support of The Weeknd's albums After Hours and Dawn FM, followed by another run of global dates throughout 2025-26 following the release of Hurry Up Tomorrow (2025). With $1.3 billion in grosses, it surpasses Elton John's Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour, which grossed $939 million. The Weeknd's trek now ranks third overall among the highest-grossing tours ever, only behind Coldplay's Music of the Spheres world tour ($1.52 billion) and Taylor Swift's blockbuster Eras Tour ($2 billion).
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It's a major milestone for The Weeknd that arrives at the height of his popularity, as opposed to later in his career, an achievement that his creative director La Mar Taylor celebrated upon being named Billboard Canada's first-ever 40 Under 40 Visionary last year. “When you think about what we've done, an artist usually does those things towards the end of their career,” he shared with Billboard Canada. “But we did it in the middle of ours, and we still have so much more space to grow. We’ll be on this journey a long time. God willing, it never stops.”
Since then, the trek racked up $500 million in grosses and 3 million ticket sales in 2026 alone, wrapping up with a final leg in Asia comprised of 16 shows, during which he recently set a record as the highest-selling international male solo artist in Hong Kong and released a new track "Hong Kong" exclusively in Asia. During the previous European leg, the singer added a massive 40-foot statue designed by Hajime Sorayama to his tour, the tallest fine art piece ever commissioned for a concert.
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Those are just two of the countless touring records the trek toppled along its four-year run, making history in storied venues worldwide. In his native Toronto, The Weeknd played a record number of six sold-out shows at the Rogers Centre, the most by any male solo artist and Canadian artist at the stadium. He briefly held the record for the most shows at the venue by an artist on a single tour, in a tie Swift, which was recently doubled by the Backstreet Boys' forthcoming Toronto residency.
While the gross record has now been stamped, the Weeknd quietly surpassed it almost a year ago, as his tour hit $1 billion in grosses in November 2025 following the onsale for his 2026 shows in Mexico, Brazil, Europe and the U.K. In August 2025, the trek surpassed Beyoncé and Bruno Mars' tours to become the biggest R&B tour in history after crossing $635.5 million in grosses and 5.1 million ticket sales, as reported by Billboard Boxscore. The same report credited him with being the first Black artist and first R&B artist to ever sell more than 5 million tickets on a single tour.
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