Concert History | King Baudouin Stadium — Three Identical Stages Kept the Stadium Leg Moving

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Billboard’s 9 July 2005 Boxscore fixes this session at Koning Boudewijn Stadion—the Dutch name for King Baudouin Stadium—in Brussels on 10 June. It names U2 above The Thrills and Snow Patrol and records a sellout of 60,499 tickets sold from 60,499 available. Bertrand Perron’s photograph, timestamped 21:58 that night, identifies the concert as the opening of the European Vertigo leg and shows the outdoor video wall behind the band. Sources: https://www.worldradiohistory.com/Archive-All-Music/Billboard/00s/2005/BB-2005-07-09.pdf and https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:U2_brussels_2005-06-10.jpg

The change was logistical as much as visual. The North American arena production used retractable MiSphere curtains: show designer Willie Williams told Live Design that their open structure preserved views from behind the stage and could roll away. The European stadium build could not depend on a single arena rig moving from roof to roof. A contemporary VPLT trade report describes a 60-metre-wide, 23-metre-high Stageco structure with semicircular LED screens integrating parts of the lighting and sound system. To cover the distances between European dates, Stageco built three identical stages; each structural package used thirteen trucks. Brussels was therefore the first dated session at which the tour’s stadium scale depended on parallel hardware, not merely a larger version of the same room. Sources: https://www.livedesignonline.com/concerts/experiencing-vertigo and https://doczz.net/doc/6062191/vplt.magazin.38-df

Coordinate method: Wikidata places the stadium at 50.895706, 4.334083, while the independently maintained GeoNames Belgium gazetteer places feature 6948621 at 50.895800, 4.333890—about 17 metres apart. The pin uses the centre of the stadium footprint, not the temporary stage position. A 180-metre precision radius honestly covers the bowl and field because the surviving sources do not establish where within the field the 2005 stage datum should be pinned. Sources: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q622671 and https://www.geonames.org/6948621/king-baudouin-stadium.html

Image: Bertrand Perron’s exact-session photograph shows U2 and the curved LED wall at King Baudouin Stadium on 10 June 2005. Perron, uploading as Bperron, released it under CC BY-SA 2.5; the file retains same-night EXIF and links to his original photo site. It is not a later concert or promotional still. Credit and license: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:U2_brussels_2005-06-10.jpg

Status note, checked 9 September 2026: King Baudouin Stadium remains extant on this footprint. U2 is a living-subject band; this account is limited to documented 2005 production and box-office records.