The El Dorado World Tour was the sixth world tour by Colombian singer Shakira, in support of her diamond certified eleventh studio album, El Dorado. Comprising a total of 54 shows, the tour visited Europe, Asia, North America and Latin America. It was her first tour in seven years, the last being The Sun Comes Out World Tour. The tour began on 3 June 2018, in Hamburg, Germany and ended on 3 November 2018 in Bogotá, Colombia. The tour was set to begin in November 2017, but due to a haemorrhage at Shakira's right vocal chord acquired at her last round of rehearsals, the entire tour was postponed to start mid-2018.
Background
After an anticipation tweet from Shakira's official account featuring the flags of 18 countries and a link to a newsletter subscription to her music label, the tour was announced three days later, on 27 June 2017, primarily sponsored by Rakuten. Also teaming on the tour were Live Nation Entertainment's Global Touring Division (that had previously collaborated with Shakira on her The Sun Comes Out World Tour) and Citi, which were, respectively, the producer and the credit card for the North American leg of the tour. As part of the tour introduction, Live Nation posted a video via their official social networks as a further reminder.
The tour was planned to begin on 8 November, in Cologne, Germany, but due to vocal strain during her tour rehearsals, the date was cancelled one day prior to the original tour schedule. On 9 November she announced the postponement of the dates for both shows in Paris, as well as the ones in Antwerp and Amsterdam. On 14 November, she announced through her social networks that she had acquired a haemorrhage on her right vocal chord at the end of October during her last batch of rehearsals, and needed to rest her voice to be cured; so all the European legs were postponed until 2018. On 27 December 2017, she also announced the postponement of all North American dates, and the rescheduling of all announced dates so far; the tour officially started in June 2018.
On 22 January 2018, she announced three additional European dates for the cities of Hamburg, London and Bordeaux. A second Los Angeles show was added on 9 May; and, a day after, Shakira announced a date for Istanbul, 11 years after visiting Turkey with her Oral Fixation Tour, as well as the Latin American dates. After these, it was announced that the Colombian singer would visit Lebanon, to perform at the Cedars International Festival. Although some Israeli media had reported a concert would held on 9 July 2018 in Tel Aviv, which caused some negative reactions, and a threat of boycotting her Lebanese concert, supported by BDS, Live Nation confirmed through their Twitter account that no date had been set for Israel due to scheduling problems.
On 29 June 2018, it was confirmed by the mayor of Shakira's hometown Barranquilla, Alejandro Char, that the native singer would perform at the inauguration of 2018 edition of the Central American and Caribbean Games, to be held in the Colombian city. For this special event, Shakira performed 3 songs ("Me Enamoré," "Hips Don't Lie," and "La Bicicleta") in the Estadio Metropolitano Roberto Meléndez on 19 July.
Development
Preparations for the tour as originally scheduled started in late August 2017, with rehearsals taking place in Barcelona, as revealed by the singer herself. Shakira posted through her social networks a series of videos documenting the creative process of the tour from its earliest stages. Among the first videos was one where she introduced part of her crew, and one posted a day later showed her working out. As rehearsals continued during October, more videos from backstage and rehearsals came out. One of the videos most commented on by the press was one posted by Shakira's partner, Gerard Piqué, of him attending her performance of her 1997 single, "Antología". After the tour hiatus for the singer's recovery, rehearsals resumed on 9 May 2018, and Shakira continued documenting her tour preparation through her social networks.