Lady Gaga Performs to Record-Breaking Crowd at Rio’s Copacabana Beach

Lady Gaga performed to a record-breaking crowd Saturday at Rio De Janeiro, Brazil as an estimated 2.5 million people attended the singer’s free concert on Copacabana Beach.

The gig marked the highest attended concert by a female artist in history, according to the singer’s reps, eclipsing the 1.6 million people Madonna drew to the same venue last year.

“Tonight, we’re making history… Thank you for making history with me,” Lady Gaga told the crowd, which included over a million Brazilians as well as a reported 500,000 Little Monsters who flew in for the special show, which injected over $100 million into Rio’s economy, NPR reported.

The record holder for largest concert crowd in history — according to Guinness World Records — remains Rod Stewart, who attracted a crowd of over 4 million to Copacabana Beach on New Year’s Eve in 1994.

The Copacabana Beach concert marked Lady Gaga’s first concert in Brazil since 2012. “I’ve missed you so much”, she told an enormous crowd that gathered the previous night just to watch her soundcheck. “I know that this is not the first show here, I know this is just a rehearsal, it feels like it’s the real show.”

The concert itself found Gaga replicating the five-act “gothic opera” that she performed during her headlining sets at Coachella and other Mayhem Ball stops thus far. She’ll next travel to Singapore for four shows in that country later this month before the North American arena leg of the Mayhem Ball tour begins in July.

Rio De Janeiro’s tourism department previously announced plans to continue staging free Copacabana Beach concerts until at least 2028