Diljit Dosanjh made a triumphant return to India on Saturday, performing in Delhi as part of his highly anticipated Dil-Luminati Tour. The concert, held at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium, attracted an impressive 35,000 enthusiastic fans, marking it as one of the largest concerts in Indian history. However, in comparison to some of the biggest concerts globally, Diljit’s event appears modest.
The title for the largest concert in history goes to a New Year’s Eve celebration at Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro in December 1994. This monumental event saw an astounding attendance of 3.5 million people as Rod Stewart took to the stage. The allure of free entry, along with the vibrant carnival-like atmosphere and unrestricted food and drink options, drew huge crowds to the beach. Notably, this attendance exceeded the population of several nearby cities.
Three years later, in 1997, French musician Jean-Michel Jarre matched this record with his performance at the Oxygene concert in Moscow, which also saw an attendance of 3.5 million, making these two events a staggering hundred times larger than Dosanjh’s Delhi concert.
When it comes to ticketed events, attendance figures are typically lower. The largest ticketed concert record is held by Italian artist Vasco Rossi, who performed in Modena Park in 2017, drawing a crowd of 225,000 fans. In India, the largest ticketed concerts were by Justin Bieber in Mumbai in 2021 and Diljit Dosanjh in 2023, both of which attracted 50,000 attendees.
While Diljit’s concert in Delhi is certainly a monumental achievement within the Indian music scene, it serves as a reminder of the immense scale of global concerts, where attendance figures can reach astonishing heights.