Last year, New York’s Global Citizen Festival boasted a headlining set from rap mogul Jay Z, who performed as part of the festival’s efforts to raise money and awareness for the Global Poverty Project. Although presumably exciting at the time, said big get must have left the organizers in a bit of a pickle when it came time to set the lineup for this year’s iteration of the show: how does one go about topping one of the world’s most successful stars?
So anyway, festival organizers announced today that Beyoncé (who actually made a surprise appearance last year as part of her husband’s set) will be headlining the 2015 Festival, which will be held on September 26 in New York’s Central Park. VIP tickets for the festival go on sale tomorrow, but the cash-poor and Twitter-rich can earn themselves a chance to attend by going on “Action Journeys” on the festival’s web site. So far, said Activity Sojourns mostly involve sending emails and signing petitions in favor of the Global Poverty Project’s various charitable goals, but there’s nothing to say that they won’t get a little more intense. “Slay the Great Dragon Poverty,” one might exhort, or “Climb to the top of Everest and look for litter to remove. Remember, you might get to see Beyoncé!” The world is expected to be permanently fixed by the time the concert rolls around in the fall.
Other performers on the bill include Pearl Jam, Ed Sheeran, and Coldplay, whose frontman Chris Martin is the festival’s new creative director. “We love the Global Citizen movement and we love opening for Beyoncé, so this ticks both boxes,” Martin said, in a statement that both was, and was not, a joke about his position in the world relative to that of Beyoncé.