ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. — Shakira closed the American leg of her Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran World Tour on Saturday, July 25, at Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, New Jersey, breaking the Guinness World Record for the highest-grossing Latino music tour in history to the Jersey Shore, before a packed house of fans who glittered, from the youngest to the oldest, like the ocean waiting outside.

The tour, the seventh of Shakira’s career, has earned more than $421.6 million across its first 86 concerts as of January 2026, standing as the fifth-highest-grossing tour ever by a female artist. It opened on February 11, 2025, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and is scheduled to conclude on October 11, 2026, in Madrid, Spain. For Philadelphia-area fans, the finale sat just an hour down the Atlantic City Expressway, close enough to turn a world tour into a family trip to the shore.

Inside Boardwalk Hall, the crowd was a constellation of its own: children in sparkly costumes, women in glittery dresses, men in bedazzled jean jackets and cowboy hats. The ambiance was pure anticipation. At any hint of her arrival, like a fan shouting, “There she is!”The audience rose, chanting her name, and applauding like a wave breaking against the boardwalk, only to settle back down when the stage remained empty. Then, suddenly, she was really there, making her entrance with her dancers in a shiny silver tracksuit and colorful visor sunglasses. The hall erupted as she opened the show with “La Fuerte.” The spectacle had everyone up on their feet, while wearing a light device on their wrist, which was given out at the beginning of the show. The device was controlled by the lighting staff, and lights were flashing everywhere. Lights of all colors washed the stage and the entire hall as the music changed; so did the colors. The excitement was nonstop, and the energy on stage seemed otherworldly.

Late in the night, after she sang “She Wolf,” the stage went dark, but the fans were not convinced the show was over, and they were right. Suddenly she returned to perform “Bzrp Music Sessions, Vol. 53” before closing with “Girl Like Me.” Between songs and even during one of the costume changes, Shakira addressed the crowd. That direct communication endeared her to the audience.

“It felt natural, as if we are all family,” said Gabriela Silva,  dressed in a Shakira-style outfit of a glittery top and satiny skirt, who traveled from South Philadelphia to enjoy the once-in-a-lifetime event with her mother. The tour’s title, “Women No Longer Cry,” comes directly from her viral 2023 collaboration with Argentine producer Bizarrap, “Bzrp Music Sessions, Vol. 53,” recorded as a fiery response to her 2022 separation from former soccer star Gerard Piqué. Shakira has said publicly that the music was born of the pain and suffering she endured after the betrayal of long-term partner Gerard Piqué and the dissolution of her family.

She has described the project as a process of turning frustration into productivity — transforming personal heartbreak into strength, resilience, and a cultural rebirth. On the Atlantic City stage, that alchemy was on full display: grief converted into choreography, tears into confetti.

Shakira Isabel Mebarak Ripoll was born on February 2, 1977, in Barranquilla, Colombia, to a Colombian mother and a Lebanese father, and grew up soaking in the sounds of both heritages — Latin rhythms, Middle Eastern melodies, and rock and roll sung in English. She wrote her first poem at age four and composed her first song at eight. Diagnosed with ADHD in elementary school, she taught herself belly dancing and performed locally, even after a school choir teacher told her she “sang like a goat.”

She signed a record deal with Sony Music Colombia at 13 and released her pop-rock debut album, Magia, in 1991, featuring songs she had written between the ages of eight and thirteen. It was followed by Peligro in 1993; neither found a large audience. After a break — including a turn as an actress on the soap opera El Oasís — she returned to music at 19 with her true breakthrough, Pies Descalzos (Bare Feet), in 1996. The album produced six hit singles, sold more than four million copies worldwide, reached No. 1 in sales in eight countries, and sent her touring Spanish-speaking cities around the globe for nearly two years.

Regarded as an international phenomenon, Shakira has written or co-written the vast majority of the music and lyrics she performs, blending Western and Middle Eastern influences into a sound entirely her own. Beyond her musical talents, Shakira is also a devoted philanthropist. She donates heavily to charity,  including relief donations to Venezuela, and focuses primarily on global children’s education and relief efforts through her own Barefoot Foundation (Pies Descalzos), UNICEF, and the Global Citizen initiative. In 2011, she received the Latin Recording Academy Person of the Year and Harvard Foundation Artist of the Year awards for that humanitarian work, and she was appointed to the President’s Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for Hispanics. In 2012, the French government named her a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters. She advocates for the equitable development of the Global South, the rights and interests of children and women, and the Latino community in the U.S. and Canada — the same community that filled Boardwalk Hall to see her.

By night’s end, the little girls in sequins, the women in glitter, and the men in rhinestones and cowboy hats had gotten what they came for: proof that the crying is over. All that was left to do was what the crowd had practiced all evening — stand, applaud, and shout the words that electrified the room: “There she is!”