The Perfect Soundstorm – Everything’s Buoyant In The Middle East

The year 2025 in the Middle East kicked off with a bang, when Coldplay brought their “Music Of The Spheres World Tour” to Zayed Sports City Stadium in Abu Dhabi, Jan. 9-14, selling 203,160 tickets to gross $28,081,406, as reported to Pollstar.

James Craven, president, Live Nation Middle East, promoter of the show, calls it “a defining moment for live entertainment in the Middle East. It was the largest four-day single-artist event ever staged in the region. Beyond the scale, it showed how the UAE’s connectivity, infrastructure, and hospitality make it a global destination for major touring artists. It set a new benchmark for what’s possible here.”

The capital of the UAE knows how to put on great shows. When this issue went to print, the 2025 F1 Grand Prix of Abu Dhabi on Yas Island had just wrapped. The lineup of this year’s Yasalam After-Race Concerts taking place at Etihad Park featured Katy Perry, Benson Boone, Post Malone, and Metallica. The park also hosted music festivals Club Social, headlined by Raye, and Offlimits, headlined by Ed Sheeran this year.

Etihad Arena, also located on the Island, welcomed tours by Travis Scott, Scorpions, André Rieu, Jennifer Lopez, Hans Zimmer, and more. The 18,000-capacity building also hosted the Abu Dhabi Comedy Season in June, headlined by Dave Chapelle, and a variety of musicals over the course of 2025.

The main curator of live experiences in Abu Dhabi is Miral; its events director, Leon Marsh, says the annual calendar features more than 200 events ranging from sports to concerts and family shows. Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee Rod Stewart, and Bollywood icon Arijit Singh are still on the lineup ahead of New Year, and 2026 will see Linkin Park make their anticipated return to the UAE after last visiting in 2010 as part of the “From Zero World Tour.”

Nearby Saadiyat Island will welcome Diana Ross and Seal, Lewis Capaldi, Ricky Martin, and Mariah Carey to the Saadiyat Nights concert series, which kicks off at the end of December. “We are experiencing robust and consistent growth in consumer and business events on Yas Island, thanks to our strong partnership with Department of Culture & Tourism – Abu Dhabi (DCT Abu Dhabi) and Abu Dhabi Convention Bureau; as well as our strategic event partners and destination stakeholders,” Marsh said.

One of them is OVG Middle East, which operates in the region through a joint venture with Ethara, signed 18 months ago. Since then, OVGME has added 32 venues to its portfolio, either operating or collaborating with them. There are 48 people working at the OVG and Ethara HQ, and a total 213 full-time staff employed across the region.

“That’s boots on the ground. We have offices in Riyadh and Abu Dhabi, with more to come. It’s exciting times,” says Iain Campbell, OVG president for the MENA region. Campbell has been working in the Middle East on and off, but mostly on, for the past 16 years. He remembers how the UAE would just be dead in the summer, in terms of activities, given the lack of air-conditioned venues. “To now see concerts doing so well in the height of summer represents a material shift in the business we do,” he says, and shares his favorite example of how far the region has come: this year’s performance at Etihad Arena by Jennifer Lopez, July 29. It would have been inconceivable to see 13,500 people inside a building to see a show in the summer, without investments into state-of-the-art arenas.

The lack of such spaces is the reason that Bahrain, Qatar, Oman and other territories are not yet part of a summer routing. “A fully fledged Regional Middle East tour would call for indoor infrastructure and a change in market habits in some of the warmer countries,” says Nadia Murtaza, partner, MD at Bluebird Music Management, “It is still ideal to link in with ‘outer perimeter’ countries such as Turkey, Cyprus and Armenia to make the most of a region in close proximity geographically.”

Aside from the UAE, Saudi Arabia is a buzzing market, largely thanks to MDLBEAST, who’ve been making waves with their flagship festival Soundstrom, as well as the XP music conference and various initiatives to foster the next generation of live entertainment professionals and artists in the region. The lineup of Soundstorm, scheduled to return to Riyadh Dec. 11-13, features Post Malone, Benson Boone, Halsey, Cardi B, Pitbull, Swedish House Mafia, Calvin Harris, Metro Boomin and many more.

MDLBEAST completely redesigned the festival grounds for 2025, adding six stages to bring the total number up to 14, and a central festival area called Downtown, which branches out into four festival districts distinguished by their unique style and beats. Up to 200,000 daily visitors are expected to descend upon the Saudi capital for the occasion.

MDLBEAST also operates the 12,000-capacity Onyx Arena in Jeddah, which has seen “an amazing summer season,” according to marketing and commercial director Mazen Khamis. “We managed to bring so many regional and international artists to Jeddah like Bayou, The Black Eyed Peas, Central Cee, Metro Boomin, and many more. It was an ambitious project for us to pull off so many shows in a row in what is essentially a stadium scale production, and we couldn’t be happier with the feedback and turnout we received from both the audience and the artists that performed.” Onyx Arena was also named best event venue at this year’s Saudi Event Awards.

While Saudi Arabia and the UAE are the most mature markets in the region, Bahrain is close behind, offering fantastic venues, according to Thomas Ovesen, CEO of All Things Live Middle East, “from Al Dana Amphitheater [see page 205] to some indoor exhibition centers. And the government that owns those venues is very active in programming them.”

One of Ovesen’s stand-out shows this year was Teddy Swims selling out Dubai’s Coca-Cola Arena, Nov. 22 (13,165 tickets, $1,543,800 grossed), following his headline performance at the invitation-only 2025 Dubai Airshow Gala Dinner two nights earlier. It was a roaring success given that it was the artist’s first-ever visit to Dubai.

According to Nadia Murtaza, “the circuit is real. The biggest misconception out there is that the middle east is limited to just the GCC. Beyond the GCC is North Africa and The Levant, both of which are within the Middle Eastern and Arab bracket. It is undeniable that Egypt’s ‘New Capital’ is quickly becoming a must-stop due its growing entertainment investment budget and high profile Giza situated concerts. There are hopes of Beirut, Lebanon, Amman, Jordan, Tel Aviv, Israel making a return to the international live music circuit in the coming year which will be incredibly advantageous in building larger sub-continental Middle East specific tours.”

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