The Art of Personal Chaos was a concert series by American singer Lady Gaga in support of her eighth studio album, Mayhem (2025), beginning with promotional performances and continuing with her eighth concert tour, the Mayhem Ball. Gaga first presented the show with headlining performances at the Coachella festival on April 11 and 18, followed by concerts in Mexico, Brazil, and Singapore, marking her first appearances in those countries since the Born This Way Ball in 2012. The Mayhem Ball began on July 16, 2025, at T-Mobile Arena in Paradise, Nevada, and concluded on April 13, 2026, at Madison Square Garden in New York City, spanning 86 shows across Asia, Europe, North America, and Oceania. In Australia, these were her first shows since 2014's ArtRave: The Artpop Ball.
The Art of Personal Chaos presented a five-act theatrical show built around themes of duality and inner chaos, with large-scale staging, a Colosseum-like opera house set, couture-inspired fashion, and a narrative exploring duality, death, and rebirth. The production was revised for the arena-based Mayhem Ball, with changes to the setlist and several new outfits. Gaga developed the show with Parris Goebel, who also served as choreographer, and her fiancé, Michael Polansky. Both the initial incarnation of the show and the tour version received widespread critical acclaim, particularly for their theatricality, Gaga's vocal performance, production design, costumes, and choreography. Critics also regarded the Mayhem Ball as a celebration of Gaga's career, and the tour received several industry award nominations, including from the American Music Awards, Pollstar Awards, and iHeartRadio Music Awards.
Following the final concert of the series on April 13, 2026, Billboard reported that it had grossed $419.5 million and sold nearly two million tickets across 93 shows, including the Mayhem Ball and the ticketed promotional concerts in Mexico City and Singapore. The free concert at Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro attracted an estimated 2.5 million people, becoming the largest performance of Gaga's career and the most-attended concert by a female artist.
Background Lady Gaga's last headlining concert tour, the Chromatica Ball (2022), consisted of a brief itinerary of 20 shows at outdoor stadiums throughout North America, Europe, and Japan. As the tour began, Gaga revealed that she was able to perform without much of the chronic pain caused by her long-term fibromyalgia for the first time "in ages". Health improvements and the tour's commercial success and positive critical reception reignited her confidence in her performance and her ability to tour. The tour was chronicled via Gaga Chromatica Ball, a critically acclaimed concert film released on May 25, 2024, in collaboration with HBO and its streaming service, HBO Max.
Alongside editing Gaga Chromatica Ball and completing her duties associated with her role in Joker: Folie à Deux (2024) and its accompanying soundtrack, Gaga spent most of 2023 and 2024 recording what she referred to as "some of the best songs [she] can remember". These sessions culminated in two studio albums, 2024's Harlequin and 2025's Mayhem, the latter of which reached the top of music charts in over 20 countries around the world and was described as a "chaotic blur of genres" focused in Gaga's pop roots. Before the concert series, the album was supported by the release of the singles, "Disease" and "Abracadabra".
Announcements Original shows
Gaga first headlined Coachella in 2017 as a last-minute replacement for Beyoncé, who stepped down due to her pregnancy. In November 2024, Gaga announced her return to the festival in 2025 on social media. Describing it as "a massive night of chaos in the desert", she explained that she had a vision for Coachella that she could not fully realize earlier because of timing constraints, but was ready to present it to fans. In the days leading up to the event, Gaga told Rolling Stone that she had worked with choreographer Parris Goebel on a "very special" performance, crafted "moment by moment," while choosing not to reveal further details. Prior to the festival, her performance had been teased as "Mayhem in the Desert".
The concerts held in Mexico City were hinted during the Brazilian press conference on February 21, 2025, indicating that Gaga would be offering "a couple of stadium shows between her appearances at Coachella and Copacabana". The official announcement was released on March 3, with the event dubbed "Long Live Mayhem" (), and scheduled for April 26 and 27 at Estadio GNP Seguros.
Gaga performed a free concert on May 3, 2025, at Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She announced the event with the moniker "Mayhem on the Beach" () on February 21, 2025, through her social media. Her statement coincided with a press conference at the Prio Theater in Rio de Janeiro, where the event's production company, Bonus Track, confirmed that it was organized as part of the Todo Mundo no Rio initiative, in collaboration with the city government and the state administration. A public rehearsal with an incomplete, out-of-order set list was held the day before the show. She last visited the country as part of the Born This Way Ball tour in 2012, which included shows in Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, and Porto Alegre. She was scheduled to headline the Rock in Rio festival in September 2017, but had to cancel due to severe pain caused by fibromyalgia, the same condition that ultimately forced her to end the Joanne World Tour later that year.
On March 10, Gaga announced on Instagram that she would perform four shows at Singapore National Stadium. This followed media speculation that Singapore would be the exclusive Southeast Asian host for Gaga's "largest world tour in her career". The concerts, billed as "Lion City Mayhem" (), were promoted as Gaga's only shows in Asia in 2025.
The Mayhem Ball On March 26, 2025, Gaga announced the Mayhem Ball concert tour through her social media accounts, unveiling an initial run of thirty-two dates in North American and European cities. Due to an overwhelming commercial response, additional concerts in both continents were announced throughout the next week, which included extra dates in New York City, Paradise, London and Paris, among others.Various citations concerning the supplementary dates announced in March and April 2025:
Following these announcements, Hits and Rolling Stone identified the previously revealed outdoor promotional concerts as part of the tour, though Live Nation, the official promoter, and Billboard listed them separately under distinct titles, indicating they were not part of the Mayhem Ball.
To promote the tour, Gaga launched a tarot-themed minigame that invited fans to discover their "lyrical prophecy" through cards inspired by the show's narrative themes and connected to the tour's imagery and merchandise. On April 8, 2025, Gaga announced three dates scheduled for December at outdoor stadiums in Australia, marking her first shows in the country since ArtRave: The Artpop Ball tour in 2014. Due to initial demand, second shows in both Melbourne and Sydney, respectively, were added to the tour's itinerary. On April 22, 2025, succeeding Gaga's performances at Coachella, three shows in San Francisco and four shows in Inglewood were announced.
On June 9, 2025, Gaga announced five shows in Japan, scheduled at the Tokyo Dome and Osaka Dome for the following January. This announcement officially extended the tour to 2026. One month later, an additional show in Tokyo was announced due to overwhelming demand. In September 2025, Gaga announced additional dates throughout North America scheduled for 2026, including stops in new cities such as Washington, D.C., Montréal, Boston, and Saint Paul.
Production Production of the original shows
The first performance, held at the Coachella festival, marked the beginning of the stage proposal, with production directed by Gaga alongside Goebel, who also handled choreography. The two worked collaboratively from the overall concept to the staging, sharing visual references and designing each segment as a vignette with its own aesthetic and choreography. According to Goebel, the team began rehearsals on a short timeline and only managed one full run-through before the debut, due to the show's technical complexity. The set design, custom-made costumes, and lighting were crafted to reflect different facets of the Mayhem universe, drawing influence from experimental theater and designers such as Alexander McQueen, whose aesthetic inspired moments like the "Poker Face" performance. Several dance routines blended elements from Gaga's past choreography with new concepts, which Goebel described as balancing her legacy with a "fresh twist". Goebel emphasized the importance of the show's on-screen presentation, noting that much of the festival audience watched through large screens and that she worked closely with the director of photography to ensure the performance translated effectively to both the venue screens and the livestream.
For the Copacabana Beach concert in Rio de Janeiro, the production involved a large-scale technical deployment. The main stage covered 1,260 square meters and was elevated 2.2 meters above the sand to improve visibility. Behind it, a continuous LED screen measuring 60 meters wide and 806.25 square meters in surface area was installed, accompanied by 16 delay towers equipped with 9-meter-high screens distributed along the beach, providing consistent visuals across the venue.
Conception and stage setup
Both the initial promotional concerts and the tour were conceived as a theatrical show divided into acts, with a visual narrative inspired by opera and psychological drama. The tour was produced by Lady Gaga and Michael Polansky, and directed by Gaga and Ben Dalgleish of Human Person. Creative direction was handled by Gaga, Polansky, Human Person, and Goebel, who also served as choreographer. The production and stage design were created by Jason Ardizzone-West and Es Devlin. During the production phase, Gaga emphasized creative control and theatrical ambition, explaining that arenas allowed her to "control the details" in ways stadiums could not, while designing the production as a "theatrical and electrifying experience" intended to bring Mayhem to life as she envisioned it.
The main set piece is a Colosseum-like opera house with balconies and boxes, where Gaga, the band, and twenty-two dancers perform, featuring a pendulum-shaped catwalk that extends into the crowd as a B-stage and changes appearance throughout the show, with effects such as simulated blood flow or a multicolored parquet floor depending on the number. The show expanded on the operatic and psychological themes first introduced earlier that year, incorporating new choreography, custom-made costumes, and large-scale staging that emphasized transformation and chaos within the Mayhem universe.