Madonna is set to perform for a massive crowd at Rio de Janeiro’s world-famous Copacabana Beach in early May, Brazilian media and tourism officials announced.
“Yes, it’s true: Madonna is coming to Brazil for a mega show on May 4, which can potentially become the largest show of the Queen of Pop’s four-decade career,” the Rio de Janeiro-based newspaper O Globo, one of the country’s most traditional publications, reported Thursday.
Rio de Janeiro’s official tourism office, Visit Rio, also told Brazilians to “get ready” for “a free and historic” show with Madonna at Copacabana Beach, adding the singer has chosen the city to wrap her international Celebration Tour.
The show, which is being paid for by the Brazilian bank Itaú, is said to be a celebration of Madonna’s 40-year career and the bank’s 100th anniversary.
For months, social media platforms in Brazil have been inundated with rumors of a possible Madonna concert in Brazil, where she last performed in 2012, bringing her ninth concert tour, MDNA, to three different cities in the country.
Last year, after the multi-Grammy-winning artist announced she would go on a world tour to celebrate her 40-year career, fans in South America couldn’t hide their disappointment when it was announced the 80-stop tour would only include cities in North America and Europe.
But according to Brazilian media, that likely changed after the “Express Yourself” singer signed a multi-million-dollar contract to create and star in a television ad for Itaú.
Directed by Madonna’s longtime collaborator Jonas Åkerlund, who directed the singer’s Grammy-winning video “Ray of Light” in 1989, the 60-second film centers around the bank’s “Made of Future” anniversary theme and earned the 65-year-old mother of six a reported $12.5 million.
While the Copacabana show has not been officially announced by the singer, the concert could easily give Madonna her largest crowd ever and beat her previous record — when 130,000 fans saw her second music tour, Who’s That Girl, in Paris in 1987.
The sands of Copacabana Beach, however, routinely see crowds of over 1 million people for free music events. Just this past December, more than 2 million people attended a multi-artist show to celebrate the New Year’s Eve festivities, while in 1994, an audience of 4.2 million people attended a New Year’s Eve show headlined by British rock superstar Rod Stewart.
Reps for Madonna didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday.
A spokesperson for Weber Shandwick, the agency handling Itaú’s PR, declined to comment, saying the company is “following the discourse” and is still in talks with its “internal teams.”
