Most visitors to a musical in a single theatre

The show that has been seen by the most people in a single venue is the long-running production of the Andrew Lloyd Webber and Richard Stilgoe musical Starlight Express in Bochum, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. As of January 2025, more than 19 million people have attended the show.

The German production of Starlight Express has been running since 12 June 1988. Because of the unusual demands of this show – which requires performers on roller-skates to be able to circle around the audience on ramps – the producers decided to have an entirely new venue, the Starlight Express Theater, built specifically for the production.

The show has undergone many revisions over the years, with several songs added, cut or rewritten. The Bochum production of Starlight Express was substantially reworked in 2018 for the show's 30th anniversary, including changes to make it more "gender friendly". These changes were made after composer Andrew Lloyd Webber saw a one-off English-language version of the production and was concerned by how little it now resembled his original show.

This revised version of Starlight Express was the basis for the English-language revival of the show, which opened at the purpose-built Starlight Auditorium at Troubadour Wembley Park Theatre in London, UK, on 8 June 2024.