Metallica make concert history at first 2026 show in Greece

Metallica kicked off the 2026 leg of their M72 World Tour in Athens, Greece on Saturday night by breaking the attendance record at the city’s Olympic Stadium.

More than 90,000 fans packed into the OAKA Stadium to watch the metal icons play their first Greek show in almost 16 years. Which is already outrageous considering the venue’s usual capacity is around 75,000.

The band posted about the achievement on social media this week, writing: “Over 90,000 of you packed in and trust us... we could feel it! We couldn’t think of a better way to kick off this leg of the M72 World Tour.”

Turns out they really could feel it too.

According to reports out of Greek news outlet The Pappas Post, seismologists from the Geodynamic Institute of the National Observatory of Athens were actually monitoring the gig to study the “concert quakes” caused by thousands of fans moving in unison during tracks like “Creeping Death”. 

Pretty cool that scientists actually use the data to study how the energy from thousands of stomping metalheads travels through the ground.

Greek fans also got a couple of surprise local shoutouts mid-set, with Kirk Hammett and Robert Trujillo ripping through parts of Zorba’s Dance and “Den Horas Pouthena” by legendary Greek rock band Trypes.

At this point, setting absurd records is basically part of Metallica’s warm-up routine. These are still the same blokes who played Antarctica in 2013 and became the first band to perform on all seven continents. Completely normal carry on from the world’s biggest metal band.