Madonna announces The Celebration global world tour to mark 40th anniversary
Madonna has announced a major world tour marking her 40th anniversary, including a show at London’s O2 Arena.
The announcement comes after weeks of speculation the Queen of Pop had been planning something big to celebrate her career since the release of her self-titled debut album, which launched her on the path to stardom with hits including Holiday, Lucky Star and Borderline.
Writing on Instagram – after previously clearing her page to make way for the news – Madonna simply said: “Come join the party!” In a statement sent to Sky News, she said: “I am excited to explore as many songs as possible in hopes to give my fans the show they have been waiting for.”
Madonna has announced the Celebration tour, marking 40 years of her greatest hits. Pic: Ricardo Gomes
The Celebration tour will feature the 64-year-old artist’s four decades of greatest hits, starting in Vancouver, Canada, on 15 July. The star will play gigs across Canada and the US between July and October, before starting the European leg at the O2 on 14 October.
She will follow this with shows in cities including Barcelona, Paris and Berlin, before finishing in Amsterdam on 1 December – taking in 35 cities in total.
Tickets will likely sell out quickly, so it is possible there could be an announcement of further shows to come.
As the tour was revealed on big screens in London, Madonna also released a video featuring stars including Diplo, Judd Apatow, Jack Black, Lil Wayne and Bob The Drag Queen, culminating with Amy Schumer daring the star to go on tour and perform her four decades of mega hits.
Madonna is one of the biggest-selling artists of all time and the best-selling female artist in the world, holding numerous records in the US and UK – with 13 number one singles in the UK she has more than any other female artist, as well as 12 number one albums.
In 2022, she became the first woman to chart in the US Billboard top 10 in every decade since the 1980s.
Her last tour was the smaller Madame X tour in 2019 and 2020, which saw the star performing at more intimate theatre venues. However, the shows were delayed due to the singer suffering knee and hip problems, and some were cancelled due to the pandemic. This time round, she will be on stage at major arenas, including Madison Square Garden in New York.
Over the years she has been known for continuously reinventing her music and her image, with hits including Like A Virgin, Into The Groove, Papa Don’t Preach and Like A Prayer in the 1980s; Vogue, Justify My Love, Erotica and Frozen in the 1990s; and Music, Hung Up, Sorry and collaborations with Britney Spears (Me Against The Music) and Justin Timberlake (4 Minutes) in the 2000s.
Her first greatest hits album, The Immaculate Collection, released in 1990, is one of the best-selling albums of all time, with reported sales of around 30 million. Overall, she is reported to have sold up to 300 million records worldwide.
A multi-Grammy, Brit and Ivor Novello winning performer, she was also inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame in 2008, her first year of eligibility, for which she was described in her introduction as “the record-setting, line-crossing, sexuality-flaunting, ever-evolving Material Girl”.
It continued: “Madonna is an icon. With her larger than life persona and penchant for provocation, she needs no introduction.”
Madonna in her famous cone bra top designed by Jean Paul Gaultier, during the Blonde Ambition tour in Philadelphia. Pic: AP Photo/Sean Kardon
As well as her music, the star is almost as famous for pushing boundaries with fashion and her choices of explicit outfits over the decades.
In the early days of her career, she pioneered the “underwear as outerwear” trend by wearing a corset bodysuit with conical bra cups, designed by Jean Paul Gaultier.
And in 2016, she attended the Met Gala in a bondage-inspired Givenchy outfit featuring leather, lace, thigh-high boots, a thong and nipple pasties.
In 2021, she hit out at Instagram for taking down provocative photographs in which her nipple was exposed, saying: “It is still astounding to me that we live in a culture that allows every inch of a woman’s body to be shown except a nipple. As if that is the only part of a woman’s anatomy that could be sexualized. The nipple that nourishes the baby! Can’t a mans nipple be experienced as erotic ??!!”
In 2022, the singer revisited a number of tracks which made her an international star, including a new take on her 1998 classic Frozen, which she recorded with Canadian musician Sickick, and a remix of her dance hit Hung Up with Dominican rapper Tokischa.
It followed a reformed partnership with her previous long-time record label Warner Music Group, which produced her debut single in 1982.
Tickets for Madonna: The Celebration tour will go on sale on Friday.
Video footage has shown the moment singer and actress Ariana Grande was accosted by a fan at a film premiere.
Ms Grande was in Singapore for the debut of Wicked: For Good when the incident unfolded on Thursday.
The video captured the moment the fan scaled the barricade and pushed past photographers towards Ms Grande.
Pic: tacotrvck_vb/X/via REUTERS
He then threw his arms around her, before co-star Cynthia Erivo intervened and security swoops in to stop him.
The man, now identified as Johnson Wen, 26, is reportedly a notorious red carpet crasher.
Wen, who has since been charged with being a public nuisance, goes by the nickname Pyjama Man, and gloated as he shared footage of the intrusion online.
“Dear Ariana Grande, Thank You for letting me Jump on the Yellow Carpet with You,” he wrote on Instagram.
Pic: tacotrvck_vb/X/via REUTERS
In video stories posted to the site beforehand, he was seen at the Universal Studios venue, revealing his intentions.
In one, he said: “I feel like I’m in a dream, that’s my best friend, Ariana Grande, and I’m gonna meet her. I’ve been dreaming about that.”
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The Australian has ambushed several performers on stage, according to reports, including Katy Perry and The Chainsmokers at concerts in Sydney, and The Weeknd in Melbourne.
It has been reported that Wen intends to plead guilty and that he could face a fine of more than £1,000.
Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo at the London premiere for Wicked: For Good
Ms Grande took a moment to gather herself in the aftermath of the intrusion, visibly shocked by the incident.
She didn’t address the incident on her own Instagram, but shared some photos with the caption “thank you, Singapore”, adding “we love you”.
The singer battled post-traumatic stress disorder after her 2017 concert in Manchester was bombed, leaving 22 people dead.
She told Vogue in 2018: “It’s hard to talk about because so many people have suffered such severe, tremendous loss. But, yeah, it’s a real thing.
“I know those families and my fans, and everyone there experienced a tremendous amount of it as well. Time is the biggest thing.
“I feel like I shouldn’t even be talking about my own experience – like I shouldn’t even say anything. I don’t think I’ll ever know how to talk about it and not cry.”
In the same interview she also addressed her own anxiety, saying she has “always” had it.
Ms Grande plays Galinda Upland in Wicked: For Good, the character who becomes Glinda the Good Witch. Ms Erivo plays Elphaba, the character who becomes the Wicked Witch of the West.
The film is released in UK cinemas on 21 November.
Entertainment
A third of daily music uploads are AI-generated and 97% of people can’t tell the difference, says report
Do you care if the music you’re listening to is artificially generated?
That question – once the realm of science fiction – is becoming increasingly urgent.
An AI-generated country track, Walk My Walk, is currently sitting at number one on the US Billboard chart of digital sales and a new report by streaming platform Deezer has revealed the sheer scale of AI production in the music industry.
Deezer’s AI-detection system found that around 50,000 fully AI-generated tracks are now uploaded every day, accounting for 34% of all daily uploads.
File pic: iStock
The true number is most likely higher, as Deezer’s AI-detection system does not catch every AI-generated track. Nor does this figure include partially AI-generated tracks.
In January 2025, Deezer’s system identified 10% of uploaded tracks as fully AI-generated.
Since then, the proportion of AI tracks – made using written prompts such as “country, 1990s style, male singer” – has more than tripled, leading the platform’s chief executive, Alexis Lanternier, to say that AI music is “flooding music streaming”.
‘Siphoning money from royalty pool’
What’s more, when Deezer surveyed 9,000 people in eight countries – the US, Canada, Brazil, UK, France, Netherlands, Germany and Japan – and asked them to detect whether three tracks were real or AI, 97% could not tell the difference.
That’s despite the fact that the motivation behind the surge of AI music is not in the least bit creative, according to Deezer. The company says that roughly 70% of fully AI-generated tracks are what it calls “fraudulent” – that is, designed purely to make money.
“The common denominator is the ambition to boost streams on specific tracks in order to siphon money from the royalty pool,” a Deezer spokesperson told Sky News.
“With AI-generated content, you can easily create massive amounts of tracks that can be used for this purpose.”
File pic: Reuters
The tracks themselves are not actually fraudulent, Deezer says, but the behaviour around them is. Someone will upload an AI track then use an automated system – a bot – to listen to a song over and over again to make royalties from it.
Even though the total number of streams for each individual track is very low – Deezer estimates that together they account for 0.5% of all streams – the work needed to make an AI track is so tiny that the rewards justify the effort.
Are fully-AI tracks being removed?
Deezer is investing in AI-detection software and has filed two patents for systems that spot AI music. But it is not taking down the tracks it marks as fully-AI.
Instead it removes them from algorithmic recommendations and editorial playlists, a measure designed to stop the tracks getting streams and therefore generating royalties, and marks the tracks as “AI-generated content”.
“If people want to listen to an AI-generated track however, they can and we are not stopping them from doing so – we just want to make sure they are making a conscious decision,” the Deezer spokesperson says.
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Deezer’s survey found that more than half (52%) of respondents felt uncomfortable with not being able to tell the difference between AI and human-made music.
“The survey results clearly show that people care about music and want to know if they’re listening to AI or human-made tracks or not,” said the company’s boss Alexis Lanternier.
“There’s also no doubt that there are concerns about how AI-generated music will affect the livelihood of artists.”
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Musicians protests AI copyright plans
Earlier this year, more than 1,000 musicians – including Annie Lennox, Damon Albarn and Kate Bush – released a silent album to protest plans by the UK government to let artificial intelligence companies use copyright-protected work without permission.
A recent study commissioned by the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers suggested that generative AI music could be worth £146bn a year in 2028 and account for around 60% of music libraries’ revenues.
By this metric, the authors concluded, 25% of creators’ revenues are at risk by 2028, a sum of £3.5bn.
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