ISTANBUL, Turkey — In his first European performance in over a decade, American rapper Kanye West defied a wave of international cancellations to perform before a record-breaking crowd of 118,000 fans at Istanbul’s Atatürk Olympic Stadium on Saturday night.
The two-hour spectacle marked the largest stadium concert attendance of the 48-year-old artist’s career, drawing tens of thousands of international travelers from the United Kingdom, Germany, Russia, Poland, and across the Middle East.
Okay News reports that West, now legally known as Ye, took the stage atop a massive, high-resolution projection sphere designed to look like a rotating Earth. The performance served as a major commercial comeback following years of severe professional backlash, business losses, and entry bans sparked by a series of controversial and antisemitic public remarks.
Addressing the roaring crowd from the center of the arena, West celebrated the milestone, declaring it the “largest stadium performance of all time.” The career-spanning setlist featured iconic hits such as “Power,” “Runaway,” “Heartless,” and “Stronger.” Despite the overwhelming turnout in Turkey, the rapper continues to face steep resistance elsewhere in Europe; the British government recently denied him entry on public safety grounds, forcing the cancellation of his scheduled Wireless Festival appearance in London, alongside similar pushback from authorities in France and Poland.
