Superstars perform “Permission to Dance” and “Magic Shop” as surprise song encore as stadium trek comes stateside
After concerts in Seoul and Tokyo, BTS brought their Arirang World Tour to North America on Saturday with the first of three sold-out nights at Tampa, Florida’s Raymond James Stadium.
The superstars’ set list didn’t deviate too far from their previous shows on the trek, but there were some surprises during the encore. For night one in Tampa, it was the tour debut of BTS’ 2021 hit single “Permission to Dance”:
Right after that, the group launched into “Magic Shop” for the first time this time, and the first time since 2019:
BTS will perform Sunday and Tuesday in Tampa before the Arirang World Tour moves to El Paso, Texas on May 2 and 3. After three nights in Mexico City, the tour moves to Santa Clara, California’s Stanford Stadium for three shows in May before BTS set up shop at Las Vegas’ Allegiant Stadium.
The group will then embark on a European leg in June and July before returning stateside on August 1 for two shows at East Rutherford, New Jersey’s Metlife Stadium. As of now, the Arirang World Tour — the group’s first trek since completing their mandatory military service — keeps BTS on the road until March 2027.
“I think we’ll probably get back into touring harmony without much trouble. All of the members have been wanting to tour so bad; they’ve been going at it with gritted teeth. It’s been tough for me to keep up, but I’ll do my best,” Jin told Rolling Stone of going back on tour with BTS.
“My biggest dream has been to go on tour with BTS and meet as many fans as I can, from all over the world. But when we first got our tour plans, it didn’t have very many stops, and it was only going to last about three to four months. I said, ‘Now that we’re back, we promised so many people that we would come and meet them, and I feel like this is breaking our promise. I’d like to restructure this tour so that we can touch on more cities than this.’ So that’s how we landed on the final tour schedule. We were able to extend a four-month tour to over a year.”
