Highest attendance at a ticketed concert by a female artist

On 16 January 1988, for the final date on the South American leg of her Break Every Rule World Tour, US-born Tina Turner (Switzerland, b. Anna Mae Bullock) performed a concert at the Estádio do Maracanã in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, with 180,000 fans in attendance. The Break Every Rule World Tour, in support of her sixth solo studio album, grossed $60 million (£32.2 million) from 218 shows between 4 March 1987 and 30 March 1988 and was witnessed by 4 million people. It was the highest-grossing tour of the 1980s by a female artist.

Turner’s momentous gig was, at the time, the biggest crowd ever assembled for a ticketed concert (excluding music festivals), breaking Frank Sinatra’s record of 175,000 at the same venue on 26 January 1980.

Paul McCartney, Roger Waters and Argentina’s Indio Solari (Carlos Alberto Solari) have all taken the record since Turner’s date at the Maracanã, with current holder Solari attracting half a million people to his Predio Rural “La Colmena” concert in Olavarría, Argentina, on 11 March 2017.

Among female artists, home-country gigs by Ceca (Serbian singer Svetlana Ražnatović) and German vocalist Helene Fischer, plus international outings by Madonna (in France and Brazil) and Shakira (in Egypt) have all attracted crowds of at least 100,000.