List Of Highest-Grossing Concert Tours

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Concert tours generate income mostly from the sales of tickets. Billboard and Pollstar are two major publications that regularly provide the official figure of concerts' gross revenue worldwide. Billboard launched the boxscore ranking in 1975 through its spin-off magazine Amusement Business , and it has been also featured in the Billboard magazine itself since the issue date of October 3, 1981. Pollstar began reporting the box office data since November 29, 1981. However, there are many missing data in the early reporting of both publications, hence claims of highest-grossing tours in the 1980s and the 1990s are mostly based on other non-specialist sources.

Michael Jackson's Bad tour and Pink Floyd's A Momentary Lapse of Reason Tour, both running from 1987 to 1989, were the earliest tours to have been claimed with revenue passing $100 million. As record sales collapsed in the early 21st century, musicians rely their income on live music shows, and touring industry has since skyrocketed. In 2023, Elton John's Farewell Yellow Brick Road set a new record for the highest-grossing tour of all time, with a revenue of $939.1 million. The tour was held in five different calendar years from 2018 to 2023, featuring a total of 330 shows. The highest-grossing tour in a single year is the Eras Tour by Taylor Swift, collecting $780 million in 2023. When the figures are adjusted for inflation, U2's 360° Tour between 2009–2011 has earned more than any other tours in history (with an equivalent of $958 million in 2022), but Swift's tour still earned the most in a year.

Touring industry is highly dominated by bands and male soloists of rock music. Some of highest-grossing tours came from pop stars such as Ed Sheeran, Harry Styles, Beyoncé, and Madonna, as well as country musician Garth Brooks. The Rolling Stones had broken the all-time tour milestone three times (1990, 1995, and 2006), with their Voodoo Lounge Tour remaining the longest record holder for eleven years (1995–2006). They also became the only act to have the highest-grossing tour of the decade twice (the 1990s and the 2000s). U2 achieved the highest-grossing tour of the year at least eight times, more than any other act in history.