On June 18, Kendrick Lamar and SZA wrapped the North American leg of their co-billed Grand National Tour. The run’s 23 shows grossed $256.4 million and sold 1.1 million tickets, according to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore. That makes it the highest grossing reported co-headline tour ever.
After the first leg of the tour, Lamar and SZA top Billboard’s ranking of the 40 biggest co-billed tours in Boxscore history. It’s a narrow victory, surpassing Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s On the Run II Tour (2018) by less than $3 million, or just 1%. In terms of ticket sales, the Carters still reign with 2.2 million tickets sold, though Lamar and SZA could make up the difference by the time the tour wraps later this year.
The Grand National Tour and On the Run II Tour are the only co-headline runs that have made more than $200 million, while just four more crossed $100 million, including Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s first On the Run Tour in 2014. The co-headline ranking is littered with classic rock and country tours, but hip-hop easily takes the top two spots, and half of the top six.
While Beyoncé’s Renaissance World Tour still looms in the distance among the highest grossing tours by R&B artists ($579.8 million), Lamar now has the biggest stadium tour ever among rappers.
The Grand National Tour kicked off on April 19 in Minneapolis and then hit 18 more cities in the United States and Canada. That routing included double-headers in New York and Toronto, and three shows in Los Angeles.
The L.A. stop at SoFi Stadium was a homecoming for Lamar, yielding the biggest gross and attendance of the tour so far. On May 21, 23 and 24, the Grand National Tour grossed a collective $40.4 million from 147,000 tickets. The June 4 show in SZA’s hometown of St. Louis (The Dome at America’s Center) was just as well attended as any of the L.A. dates (48,600) on a gross of $8.8 million.
The Grand National Tour is easily the biggest concert run of Lamar and SZA’s careers to date. The former sold out arenas on The Big Steppers Tour in 2022-23, and the latter did so on the SOS Tour in 2023-24. But while those international jaunts averaged $1.6 million and $1.8 million per show, respectively, Grand National is pacing $11.1 million each night, toppling both solo runs six times over.
In the case of any successful co-headline tour, one plus one should equal two (at least). But beyond the simple math of combining these rap and R&B superstars, both acts are riding buzzing momentum. Lamar released GNX in November and SZA dropped SOS Deluxe: LANA in December. Each record featured a Lamar/SZA duet, and the former’s “Luther” spent 13 weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100, topping the chart beyond the tour’s first month. Add to that, both shared the stage during the Super Bowl LIX halftime show following Grammy wins for 2024 hits “Not Like Us” and “Saturn.”
Lamar and SZA will kick off the tour’s European leg on July 2 in Cologne, Germany. It’s the first of 16 shows, including double-headers in Frankfurt, London and Paris. Then, they hit Latin America for five dates before two nights in Australia December, when the tour will hit Sydney and Melbourne. Both artists are bigger earners in the U.S. than overseas, which is to be expected for any American act, especially in hip-hop. Still, a 15%-20% dip in nightly grosses in Australia and a 35% drop-off in Europe and Latin America would put the Grand National Tour on track for a $400 million finish.
