Rock in Rio Lisboa Opens Parque Tejo's 11th Edition with a Sold-Out Katy Perry-Charlie Puth-Pedro Sampaio Pop Day — 20-21 and 27-28 June Weekends Roll the Multi-Stage Programme Across an Expanded Cidade do Rock

Rock in Rio Lisboa opens on Saturday for its 11th edition at the Parque Tejo grounds in eastern Lisbon, with the first weekend (20 and 21 June) and the second weekend (27 and 28 June) both anchored to a Cidade do Rock (City of Rock) site that has been enlarged by 25,000 square metres relative to the 2024 edition. Both Saturday and Sunday of the first weekend are sold out before the gates open.

Saturday's Palco Mundo (World Stage) lineup is built around a Katy Perry headline slot — her return to Rock in Rio Lisboa after the 2018 edition — with Charlie Puth, Pedro Sampaio and the Cabo Verdean trio Calema also on the main stage. The day's secondary stages add ALOK, Bebe Rexha, Audrey Nuna, Nena, Maninho and Bárbara Bandeira, among others, in a programme weighted toward pop, funk and Lusophone-Brazilian crossover.

The festival operator confirmed the sold-out status for the first weekend on Friday. Roberta Medina, the Executive Vice-President of Rock in Rio and the public face of the franchise across its Lisbon, Brazilian and international editions, said the early sell-out for the Pop Day reflected demand the team had pre-priced for — and that the expanded grounds were the operational answer to the 2024 capacity strain.

The full weekend roster fans out across four festival days. Sunday 21 June carries a separate Palco Mundo bill. The second weekend is split into a Saturday 27 June 'Legends Day' anchored on Rod Stewart, Cyndi Lauper, Shaggy and 4 Non Blondes — a programme aimed squarely at the 40-plus pop-rock audience — and a Sunday 28 June day built around hip-hop and Afrobeats with 21 Savage, Central Cee, Rema and Matuê on the headline run.

Gates open at 13:00 on each of the four days, closing at 02:00 on 20, 21 and 28 June, and at 03:00 on 27 June. The 2026 edition adds a new audiovisual stack on the Palco Mundo, an unprecedented HalfTime Show built into the headline-act pause, a denser fireworks programme and additional interactive attractions, with circulation between stages reworked around the enlarged footprint.

The economics of the festival sit on three pillars. The first is ticketing — both Saturday and Sunday of the first weekend are confirmed sold out, with the second weekend still selling and the operator publicly steering buyers toward 21 June. The second is the Lisbon hospitality stack — hotels, short-let stock, restaurants and the airline lift into Humberto Delgado airport — which the Câmara Municipal de Lisboa (Lisbon City Council) typically tracks for its post-edition tourism read. The third is the brand value of the festival itself, which Roberta Medina's organisation parlays into the parallel Brazilian, Madrid and Lisbon-based editions.

Logistically, public transport will absorb the bulk of attendee movement. The Carris Metropolitana network is running reinforced services to the Parque Tejo side of the city across all four days, and the Metropolitano de Lisboa (Lisbon Metro) Red Line — which connects to the Estação do Oriente interchange a short walk from the festival — extends its operating hours until 02:30 on the festival nights, in line with the operator's published service plan for 20-22 June.

For visitors arriving for the weekend, the most consequential operational detail remains the same as in past editions: the festival sets a clear no-bag-over-cabin-size cap at the perimeter, and the line-up sequencing means the Palco Mundo doors fill up well before the headline slot. With the day already sold out, the Cidade do Rock will run at capacity on Saturday from mid-afternoon onwards.