{"id":223830,"date":"2025-12-09T14:47:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-09T14:47:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/223830\/"},"modified":"2025-12-09T14:47:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-09T14:47:10","slug":"coldplay-u2-and-ed-sheeran-top-pollstars-most-popular-touring-artists-of-the-new-millennium","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/223830\/","title":{"rendered":"Coldplay, U2 and Ed Sheeran top Pollstar’s most popular touring artists of the new millennium"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n Published on
\n 09\/12\/2025 – 9:34 GMT+1\n <\/p>\n

Who are the most popular touring artists of the last two decades based on ticket sales?<\/p>\n

The results may surprise you.<\/p>\n

So far, the 2020s have seen two artists gross a billion dollars with their tours. The benchmark was first crossed by Taylor Swift<\/strong><\/a> in 2023 with her landmark Eras Tour<\/strong><\/a>, followed by The Weeknd\u2019s After Hours \u2018Til Dawn Tour.<\/p>\n

However, these two artists don\u2019t top concert trade publication Pollstar\u2019s recently published \u201cMost Popular Touring Artists of the Millennium\u201d – which ranks the top 25 acts based on ticket sales from 1 January 2001 to the end of 2025.<\/p>\n

Leading the list is Coldplay, with 24.8 million tickets sold, followed by U2 with 20.2 million tickets sold, and Ed Sheeran, with 19.6 million.<\/p>\n

Next is Dave Matthews Band, with nearly 19.6 million tickets sold. Taylor Swift only rounds off the top five, with roughly 18.9 million.<\/p>\n

Swift is the only woman featured in the top 10. She’s followed by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, Kenny Chesney, Metallica, Bon Jovi and Elton John.<\/p>\n

In fact, there are only four women in the top 25: Pink is at No. 11 with nearly 13 million tickets; Beyonc\u00e9 is No. 13 with 11.8 million tickets sold; and Madonna is listed at No. 15 with almost 11 million tickets.<\/p>\n

It should be mentioned that numbers of tickets sold is a different metric than money grossed.<\/p>\n

As previously mentioned, in 2023, Swift\u2019s Eras Tour became the first tour to cross the billion-dollar mark, according to Pollstar\u2019s 2023 year-end charts. She then broke her own record in December 2024, when Pollstar announced that the Eras Tour brought in $2.2 billion across its nearly two-year run, extending its lead as the highest-grossing tour of all time.<\/p>\n

According to the new chart published by Pollstar, Swift has grossed over $3.1 billion in the new millennium. Compare that to Coldplay, who leads with most tickets sold, the band follows with a gross of nearly 2.5 billion. As of September, cumulative grosses from Coldplay\u2019s Music of the Spheres Tour \u2013 which launched in 2022 and ran through 2025 – reached $1.39 billion.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the ranking of the top 10 most popular touring artists of the millennium (ranked by total tickets sold):<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Coldplay<\/strong> \u2013 Tickets sold: 24,805,126<\/strong> \u2013 Total gross: $2,486,330,250 \u2013 Shows: 731<\/li>\n
  2. U2<\/strong> – Tickets sold: 20,216,314 \u2013 Total gross: $2,187,175,842 \u2013 Shows: 594<\/li>\n
  3. Ed Sheeran<\/strong> – Tickets sold: 19,615,334 \u2013 Total gross: $1,747,549,307 \u2013 Shows: 641<\/li>\n
  4. Dave Matthews Band<\/strong> – Tickets sold: 19,552,586 \u2013 Total gross: $1,126,711,752 \u2013 Shows: 1,171<\/li>\n
  5. Taylor Swift<\/strong> – Tickets sold: 18,885,185 \u2013 Total gross: $3,126,217,400<\/strong> \u2013 Shows: 575<\/li>\n
  6. Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band<\/strong> – Tickets sold: 18,622,566 \u2013 Total gross: $2,016,611;312 \u2013 Shows: 721<\/li>\n
  7. Kenny Chesney<\/strong> – Tickets sold: 18,198,369 \u2013 Total gross: $1,357,983,712 \u2013 Shows: 962<\/li>\n
  8. Metallica<\/strong> – Tickets sold: 15,567,194 \u2013 Total gross: $1,456,399,805 \u2013 Shows: 562<\/li>\n
  9. Bon Jovi<\/strong> – Tickets sold: 13,904,391 \u2013 Total gross: $1,286,252,048 \u2013 Shows: 587<\/li>\n
  10. Elton John<\/strong> – Tickets sold: 13,840,415 \u2013 Total gross: $1,764,832,667 \u2013 Shows: 1,242<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Published on 09\/12\/2025 – 9:34 GMT+1 Who are the most popular touring artists of the last two decades…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":223831,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[264],"tags":[19689,18,117,19,17,337,973,91785,3380,19692],"class_list":{"0":"post-223830","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-concert","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-music","14":"tag-taylor-swift","15":"tag-ticket","16":"tag-u2","17":"tag-world-tour"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115690159754828377","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223830"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223830\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/223831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}