Metallica opened the 2026 leg of their M72 World Tour in historic fashion on May 9, 2026, playing Athens’ Olympic Stadium and reportedly drawing more than 90,000 fans — a new attendance record for the venue. The band later said the crowd was over 90,000 and called the show the perfect way to begin this part of the tour.
The record-setting crowd was especially notable because Athens’ Olympic Stadium typically seats about 75,000. Loudwire noted that Metallica’s circular, in-the-round stage setup likely helped the band break the venue record by leaving more seats available than a traditional end-stage concert would. That staging choice has been a defining feature of the M72 World Tour.
The Athens performance was not just a standalone milestone — it was the first announced 2026 date on Metallica’s official tour schedule, marking the start of a packed European run. After Greece, the band is set to continue to Bucharest on May 13, then move through Poland, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Hungary, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and England before heading to a separate run of shows at the Sphere in Las Vegas later in the year.
For Metallica, the Athens show adds another major achievement to a tour already full of headline-making moments. Loudwire pointed out that the M72 World Tour previously drew massive crowds at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles in 2023 and even outdrew Taylor Swift’s concert attendance record at that venue at the time. The Athens milestone shows the band continuing to expand its live legacy nearly four decades into its career.
The official Metallica tour page confirms that Athens was the band’s first 2026 stop, with the date listed as May 9, 2026, at Olympic Stadium. The listing also shows sold-out enhanced experiences and travel packages, underlining the scale of demand around the show and the tour as a whole.
