Beyoncé’s Renaissance Tour Kicks Off in Sweden: Setlist, Stage, and More

At Stockholm’s Friends Arena today, Beyoncé kicks off her first tour in four and a half years, bringing Renaissance to the stage for the very first time. She is scheduled to perform for three hours in the Swedish capital, with no opening act. Check out the setlist as it happens below; based on covert rehearsal footage, she is expected to give live debuts to “Break My Soul,” “Virgo’s Groove,” “Cuff It,” and other tracks from the record. This story will be updating as the set progresses. For now, see the stage below. The concert is expected to begin around 7 p.m. Central European Summer Time (which is 1 p.m. Eastern).

Renaissance, released last July, was Beyoncé’s seventh No. 1 album. It won her a handful of Grammy Awards—Best Dance/Electronic Recording, Best Traditional R&B Performance, Best R&B Song, and Best Dance/Electronic Music Album—making her the most decorated artist in Grammys history. (Her sometime collaborator Diplo responded with an apparent bit of snark that may or may not have been misinterpreted.) Nonetheless, by marquee pop standards, she ran a low-key campaign, and her relative scarcity has bolstered intrigue around the tour.

So far, Beyoncé has released no videos from Renaissance, and “Break My Soul” was the only official single. Before tonight, she had performed live just once since the release—controversially, at a private event in Dubai. That concert, for an audience of celebrities and special guests, featured a cover of Etta James’ “At Last” and songs spanning Beyoncé’s career up to Renaissance, but no tracks from the album itself.

The tour continues tomorrow with a second night in Stockholm; the North American leg starts in Toronto on July 8.