Beyoncé has been declared a billionaire by Forbes, making her the fifth musician to join its list of the world’s wealthiest people.
The American star has joined an elite group of musicians with 10-figure fortunes, Forbes reports, including Taylor Swift, Rihanna, Bruce Springsteen and her husband Jay-Z, who the business magazine lists as having a net worth of $2.5bn (£1.85bn).
Earlier this month, Forbes estimated Beyoncé’s net worth of $800m (£593m) and predicted she would cross the billionaire threshold for the first time following years of success.
Her 2023 Renaissance World Tour grossed nearly $600m, making her one of the biggest pop music icons in the world alongside Taylor Swift.
Beyoncé produced a film of the concert performance, which was her first solo tour in seven years, and distributed it directly via a deal with the AMC theater chain, which saw her pocketing nearly half of the film’s $44m (£33m) global box office gross.
Her 2024 album Cowboy Carter, which celebrates and contextualises the black roots of country music, was met with critical acclaim and won album of the year at the Grammy Awards – the first time Beyoncé had won the prestigious award, despite being nominated four times.
Forbes estimates the Cowboy Carter tour – which included guest appearances from Jay-Z, two of their three children and former Destiny’s Child bandmates – racked up a total of more than $400m in ticket sales and another $50m in merchandise sold at the shows.
While the tour broke ticket records at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London and Stade De France in Paris, it was beset with slow ticket sales with promoters slashing some prices in a bid to fill seats.
However, it was the highest top-priced ticket of any artist visiting the UK in 2025 at £950, with the cheapest costing £71.
A special halftime show for Netflix’s first Christmas Day NFL game amassed an estimated $50m, on top of $10m for a string of Levi’s commercials, Forbes said.
Bloomberg, which runs its own billionaire index, included Selena Gomez among its list of musicians – with a reported net worth of $1.3bn (£962m) in 2024.
But Forbes has disputed this figure, instead estimating Gomez to be worth $700m (£518m).
By BBC News
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