Salva Mubarak Senior Features Writer

Pop superstarJustin Bieber has announced that he would be making a stop in India while on his upcoming Justice world Tour. The ‘Peaches’ singer will perform in Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium on October 18, 2022. Bieber is returning to India after nearly five years, since he performed in Mumbai in 2017 during his Purpose world tour. The singer’s extensive rider, including a fleet of washing machines and a room filled with purple carnations, made news for all the wrong reasons last time and we can’t wait to see what’s on the list of demands from the pop star this time around.

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India has been a popular destination for concerts by international celebrities. Over the years, we’ve seen some of the biggest names in the industry, like Coldplay, Dua Lipa, Katy Perry, Ed Sheeran, and more performing in sold-out concerts in the country.

Here are some of the most iconic international artists who have performed in India…

Ed Sheeran in 2017

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The ‘Shape of You’ singer brought his Divided world tour to India back in 2017 and mesmerized the audience with performances of some of his biggest hits. He was also the guest-of-honor at Farah Khan’s dinner party that launched a thousand memes.

Coldplay in 2016

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British band Coldplay performed in Mumbai, as part of the Global Citizen Festival, in 2016 to a crowd of more than 80,000 people. The audience had several Bollywood celebrities in attendance, with actors like Shah Rukh Khan, Alia Bhatt, and Vidya Balan turning emcees for the occasion. Chris Martin also performed ‘Maa Tujhe Salaam’ with A.R.Rahman and sang Arijit Singh’s ‘Channa Mereya’ from Karan Johar’s Ae Dil Hai Mushkil, much to the crowd’s surprise and joy.

Coldplay’s impromptu gig in 2015

While it was not a stadium concert, Chris Martin’s impromptu performance at the Summer House Cafe in Delhi, back in 2015, remains one of the most iconic moments in recent pop culture history in India. The band was in the country to shoot the music video for their song ‘Hymn For the Weekend’ when Martin was out for dinner with musicians Vishal Dadlani, Raghu Dixit, and members of the now-defunct comedy collective AIB including Tanmay Bhat, Rohan Joshi, and Gursimran Khamba.

Dua Lipa in 2019

The ‘Levitating’ singer made her performance debut in India when she joined Katy Perry at the One Plus Music Festival in 2019. The singer’s photo with actor Shah Rukh Khan went viral as they met ahead of the concert, and SRK displayed peak dad behaviour when he called Lipa a ‘charming, young lady’. Not that we disagree.

Michael Jackson in 1996

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The King of Pop had India as one of the stops in his History world tour in 1996. Michael Jackson performed to a packed crowd in Mumbai but the show quickly became embroiled in a legal battle. Jackson had waived off his performance fees for the concert for unknown reasons and had announced that the profits from the show would be going to a Shiv Sena-run youth employment project. The political party was in power at the time and decided to waive off the entertainment tax on the concert tickets, causing consumer protection groups to take legal action against the tax waiver. The ticket sales were frozen by the courts during the long-winded legal battle and after 24 years, the tax waiver was reinstated.