Source: Local Economies (UK)
Author: Hanna Ellington
Date published: 2026-02-13
[original article can be accessed via hyperlink at the end]
As residency-style tours reshape the live landscape, with millions of fans travelling for destination-based runs like Harry Styles’ 2026 tour, the industry is strategically shifting away from traditional multi-stop, globe-spanning outings.
It’s no secret that stadium touring is reaching new heights. In just under a decade, the number of stadium concerts has more than doubled, according to exclusive IQ analysis of Billboard Boxscore data.
More artists are on the road, doing more shows, but frequently in fewer cities and countries, with an extended run allowing for a bigger, more impactful presence in defined markets – a handful of cities are turned into cultural capitals with sizable economic benefits.
This year, Harry Styles will play just seven cities in six countries, following other condensed market runs post-pandemic.
In Asia, Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour hit only two cities – Singapore and Tokyo – but with a total of 10 shows across both. Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter Tour visited Paris and London in Europe, along with only seven cities in the US, and was still crowned the highest-grossing tour of last year. And Oasis’ Live ’25 skipped over continental Europe completely, stopping only in Ireland outside the four-city run in the UK, where they played 17 out of 41 total shows.
The industry’s turn toward residency-style touring emerged following the pandemic, wherein fan demand and touring expenses both ballooned. By staying in one place for longer, tours can have a sizable impact while lowering production and travel costs.
Speaking about Usher’s concentrated arena routing in Europe last year, WME partner and agent Brian Cohen told IQ that the team pinpointed “top major markets that culturally move the needle”.
“Instead of just showing up in a city to play a show and leave immediately after, he wanted to create an event. The entire city is hearing and seeing Usher while he is in town,” he said. In London alone (where he sold 160,000 tickets), he launched an exclusive merchandise pop-up, held an intimate nightclub show, and transformed a boat into a floating club.
“Live music isn’t just growing, it’s shaping economies”
As tour routes shrink, destination experiences and music tourism are on the rise.
Around 60% of music fans travel for shows annually, with 40% of live music attendees travelling at least 500 miles for a music event last year, according to a Live Nation report of 40,000 fans from 15 countries. Tours and festivals have become major tourism catalysts, with sizable impacts on local economic growth in tour stopoffs.
“This report confirms what we’re seeing on the ground everywhere. Live music isn’t just growing, it’s shaping economies, influencing brands, and defining culture in real time,” says Russell Wallach, Live Nation’s global president of media and sponsorship.
That kind of all-consuming city takeover is likely for Harry Styles’ Together, Together tour this year, which will transform the chosen stops into Styles capitals. While more stops can be added down the line, the frantic fan fervour for tickets led to a swift ramp-up of dates in Europe, doubling the nights in London and adding four in Amsterdam, his only two cities on the continent.
At the UK’s Wembley Stadium, Styles will do a record-breaking 12 nights, setting the bar for the most performances by any artist in a single year and the most concerts performed by a solo artist during a single concert run at the venue.
The rush for tickets is accompanied by the rush for hotel rooms, as people plan their descent on the UK capital. Searches for ‘hotels near Wembley’ reportedly surged nearly 2,000% after the announcement, with hotels slammed for raising nightly rates beyond £1,000 for show nights.
“Hotels that act early by optimising rates, planning inventory and managing staffing will stand to benefit from this long-awaited tour,” said Nicola Longfield, GM for Accommodation at software platform Access Hospitality, adding that live music can be “a lifeline for hospitality”.
“Sitting in one place actually makes it more palatable”
In New York, Styles’ 30-night Madison Square Garden (cap. 19,500) residency attracted 11.5 million presale registrations. Ticketmaster says the figure marks “the largest artist presale registration performance ever seen for a single market or residency-style run,” in addition to the highest volume recorded for an artist presale in the NY market.
He’ll also do four nights in São Paulo, six in Mexico City, three in Melbourne, and two in Sydney, with a special one-night-only show at Manchester’s (and, as an investor, partly his) Co-op Live (23,500) to celebrate his new album’s release outside the tour.
For those working behind the scenes, residency-style touring can alleviate some of the pressures of travel by allowing teams to remain in one place for longer than normal. With touring operational costs rising dramatically post-COVID and overall demand for bigger and bolder productions, condensing routing is a major benefit to touring artists, their crews, and the stakeholders involved.
“The cost of touring has gone up exponentially, and the size of these productions becomes more and more intricate, but if you can sit in one place, you can actually make them a little bigger and make them a bit more impactful, and the audience is willing to come to you,” said CAA MD Rob Light on Billboard’s On The Record podcast. “Sitting in one place actually makes it more palatable.”
But not every tour follows the popularising model – BTS’s comeback Arirang World Tour is slated to take the K-pop legends around the world, with legs in Asia, North America, South America, and Australia announced. Though their outing will take them to over 30 regions, the band has also leveraged online connections for their forthcoming run.
“There’s the financial side, but there’s also just plain engagement and access and democratising of the process”
The comeback will launch with a historic show at Seoul’s Gwanghwamun Square, which Netflix will exclusively stream worldwide. Shows in Goyang, South Korea, and Tokyo, Japan, will be livestreamed to cinemas worldwide, thanks to global distributor Trafalgar Releasing. Concert films and streams have been increasingly deployed to allow audiences to live and relive the experience of a show, even if their home market is not on the list of tour stops.
“To have a huge global tour captured for prosperity makes sense, but it is a great opportunity for fans who would not otherwise get to experience it,” Trafalgar CEO Marc Allenby told IQ. “There’s the financial side, but there’s also just plain engagement and access and democratising of the process.”
BTS have already shifted over 2.4 million tickets for their forthcoming run, selling out the originally announced dates in North America, Europe, and the UK. In Mexico alone, the trio of shows at Estadio GNP Seguros (65,000) attracted more than 1.1m fans and prompted a diplomatic ask from Mexico’s president to South Korea’s for more shows. South African ambassador Sindiswa Mququ also made public remarks this week to encourage the K-pop group to visit her country.
With the scale of stadium outings showing no signs of slowing – Bad Bunny, Bruno Mars, The Weeknd, Gorillaz, Bon Jovi, and more are all out this year – the strategy behind them has taken a bit of a concentrated turn. Whether it’s in-person or online, the omnipresence of touring acts is unmistakable this year, no matter if they’re playing in a city near you.
The issues covered in this piece will be addressed in a number of ILMC sessions later this month. The Glocalisation of Live Music will look at the shifts in global touring, while Alternative Markets: The Roads Less Travelled will look at what cities and regions are doing to replace the global tours that they may have lost. Digital passes for ILMC 38 are still available here.
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