Bruno Mars opened the Atlanta leg of his Romantic Tour on Saturday night with a packed show at Georgia Tech’s Bobby Dodd Stadium in Midtown, the first of two nights in the city. The 16-time Grammy winner came out around 8:45 p.m. after Anderson.Paak and Leon Thomas warmed up the crowd.
Fans filled the stadium with kids, couples, young friend groups, seniors and single concertgoers, and many wore red silk pajamas as a nod to the cover of Mars’ 2016 album 24K Magic..Paak, performing as DJ Pee.Wee, played for 30 minutes after taking the stage a few minutes after 7 p.m., then Thomas followed before Mars took over.
Mars began with a visual of himself praying inside a church and then launched into “Risk It All,” “Cha Cha Cha” and “On My Soul.” He followed early with “24K Magic” and “I Just Might,” and later performed “Why You Wanna Fight?” during the two-hour show.
The Atlanta stop mattered because it was Mars’ first proper tour date in the city since a 2017 24K Magic Tour appearance at the now-defunct Music Midtown. He also headlined the Super Bowl Music Fest at State Farm Arena in 2019, but Saturday’s concert marked the return of a full Mars tour show to Atlanta after years away. The venue, Bobby Dodd Stadium, gave the night a bigger frame and helped turn the city’s first of two concerts into a stadium-scale event.
What stood out most was the gap between the polished celebration onstage and the long wait behind it. Mars did not just play a greatest-hits sprint; he stretched the set into a two-hour show and built it around a slow reveal, beginning with a prayer image before moving into the newer material and then the songs that made the crowd move. By the end, the answer to the night’s biggest question was simple: the first Atlanta date delivered exactly the kind of spectacle Mars promised, a show they’ll never forget.
