Bruno Mars played the second of four nights at SoFi Stadium on Saturday, the Los Angeles stop on "The Romantic Tour," his first full headline stadium run in nearly a decade and the centerpiece of a comeback built around his first solo album in ten years.
The Inglewood stand, which continues Oct. 6 and 7, is one stretch of a tour that has already filled stadiums from Las Vegas to Toronto to London since it opened in April, with Anderson .Paak performing as "DJ Pee .Wee" at every stop and RAYE joining as a featured guest for the Los Angeles shows. Promoter Live Nation said the tour had produced the largest single-day ticket sales in the company's North American touring history, a measure of demand for an artist who had not toured behind a solo album since his "24K Magic" run in 2017 and 2018. Tickets for the North American leg went through an artist presale in mid-January before a general on-sale the following day, and the SoFi dates were among the stops that drew the heaviest early demand.
A Decade in the Making
Mars opened the tour April 10 at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas with a sold-out show that doubled as a hometown-style coronation: the city declared it "Bruno Mars Day," renamed a street in his honor alongside Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra, and handed him a key to the city, according to a recap from The Source. Backed by a 12-piece band, he opened with "Risk It All," "Cha Cha Cha" and "On My Soul" before reworking older hits like "24K Magic," "Perm" and "Finesse" with new arrangements. A highlight of that night, and of the tour since, has been a Silk Sonic reunion segment with Anderson .Paak — the pair's first live performance together outside their Las Vegas residency — built around "Leave the Door Open."
The tour is built around "The Romantic," Mars's nine-track, 31-minute solo album released Feb. 27 — his fourth studio album and his first solo full-length since 2016's "24K Magic," following a decade in which his only other full-length release was 2021's collaborative "An Evening With Silk Sonic" alongside Anderson .Paak. Reviews were mixed: NME called it "a more mature deployment of romantic clichés" from an artist settling into a steadier, more grown-up register, while other critics found the brief track list thin after such a long wait. Co-produced with D'Mile, the record leans on live horns and conga-driven rhythms, with detours into bolero and mariachi textures that have shown up in the touring band's arrangements as well.
A Tour That Keeps Expanding
What began as a North American and European run has since grown. Live Nation added Australian, New Zealand and additional Asian dates for 2027 in August, extending a tour that originally launched with roughly 30 cities across eight countries and has been adding stops ever since, according to concert-industry trade coverage of the expansion. The Los Angeles stand alone accounts for four of those dates at SoFi Stadium, a roughly 70,000-seat venue that has become one of the marquee stops on any global stadium tour since it opened in 2020, with Wednesday and Thursday shows still ahead before the tour moves on toward its European leg.
For an artist who spent much of the past decade on side projects — the Silk Sonic collaboration with .Paak, a Las Vegas residency, guest features on other artists' records — "The Romantic Tour" marks his first time carrying a full stadium show under his own name since 2018. Four sold-out-caliber nights at one of the country's largest stadiums suggest that demand for his return, whatever the album's mixed reviews, has not been in question.
