Promising Projections: Q1 Numbers Show Five-Year Highs, Bad Bunny & Lady Gaga Lead The Way

With global box-office results tallied for the first quarter of 2026, the forecast is positive for the upcoming year as Q1 figures for the top 100 touring artists show five-year highs almost across the board, with Bad Bunny and Lady Gaga crowing the chart. The overall totals for gross and ticket sales, as well as their averages per show, all reflect increases compared with 2025. They are also higher than any other year since 2022, the first full year of live entertainment after the pandemic shutdown.

Box-office totals from the first three months of Pollstar’s 2026 chart year (Nov. 13, 2025-Feb. 11, 2026) reflect a worldwide gross of $1,356,347,469 for the top 100 touring artists, an increase of 15.7% compared with 2025’s $1.17 billion at Q1. Likewise, the average gross per show comes to $1,296,699 this year, topping last year’s $1.1 million average by 16.9%. Overall ticket sales are also higher in 2026 with an increase of 4.8% for the top 100 artists, as 12,485,579 tickets were sold at live performances around the world during the past three months. Likewise, the 11,937-ticket average per show also tops last year, by 5.9%.

Ticket sales are the one area that has seen year-to-year growth continuously over the past five years. In 2022, the top 100 touring artists sold 6.36 million tickets, and that number increased to 9.85 million in 2023. Then in 2024, ticket sales topped 10 million for the first time, hitting 10.16 million, then increased again last year to 11.92 million.

The same scenario can be seen in per-show ticket averages, as the average number of tickets sold in 2022 reached 6,894, then rose to 8,800 the following year. 2024 again saw an increase with the top 100 artists averaging 9,488 sold seats per show, while last year’s total was 11,274.

There was almost a year-to-year continuous growth trajectory for grosses, too, but 2025 provided the only slip in the past five years. Last year, both the overall and average gross totals dropped slightly compared to the prior year, by 6.4% and 5.1%, respectively, but in each of the three previous years, both gross figures increased year over year.

In 2026, the average ticket price for Q1 is the only category that does not reflect a five-year high, yet it does beat last year’s average. This year, the average ticket price is $108.63, 10.4% higher than the $98.40 average ticket last year. The highest ticket price since 2022, though, was $123.25 in 2024. And it retains the five-year record, as this year’s price is 11.9% lower.

Sometimes the number of shows reported during a specific quarterly timeframe can affect percentage differences in box-office totals. That is not the case this year, as the number of shows for the top 100 touring artists in Q1 is almost identical to 2025. A total of 1,046 shows were reported during the past three months, while in 2025 the show count was 1,057.

One difference in a year-to-year analysis is that the two artists at the top of the chart this year, Bad Bunny and Lady Gaga, both had grosses well over $100 million – $161.3 million and $122 million, respectively. In 2025, no one topped $100 million at Q1. Coldplay was No. 1 with $69.4 million and Trans-Siberian Orchestra followed with $68.1 million. The top 10 artists this year grossed $562.3 million compared to $394.9 million in 2025 with tickets in 2026 totaling 4,571,718, just over 1 million more than last year.

That continues with the top 50 as well, as their combined gross figure in 2026 totals $1.11 billion, while the top 50 last year brought in $918 million. This year, the top 50 artists sold 9.5 million tickets at Q1, and last year that number was 8.6 million.