Pearl Jam, Beyonce, Ed Sheeran and Coldplay will headline the 2015 Global Citizen Festival, a free-ticketed event on the Great Lawn in Central Park in New York City on Saturday, September 26, 2015. The Festival is timed to coincide with the launch of the United Nations’ new Global Goals designed to fight inequality, protect our planet and end extreme poverty by 2030. The Global Citizen Festival will channel the power of hundreds of thousands of global citizens lending their voices to achieve policy and financial commitments that will shape the success of these Goals.
msnbc will serve as a media partner of the Global Citizen Festival for the second year in a row. The network will air a live simulcast of the full concert on msnbc and msnbc.com. The Festival will be produced by Emmy Award-winning producer, Ken Ehrlich (Grammy Awards). Academy Award-nominated screenwriter Richard Curtis (Bridget Jones’s Diary, Love Actually) will produce a one-hour special of the event to air on NBC on Sunday, September 27 and BBC One in the UK on Monday, September 28. BBC Worldwide will serve as the global distributor for the TV special.
YouTube is a worldwide digital streaming partner for the Festival and will feature a special livestream of the full concert at YouTube.com/GlobalCitizen, presented by T-Mobile. iHeartRadio will digitally stream the audio of the Festival on iHeartRadio.com and in their app. TIDAL, the innovative music and entertainment platform, will also digitally stream the audio of the Festival on Tidal.com as well as in their app. Radio Everyone, the global pop up radio station, as part of the Global Goals campaign will then air highlights of the concert around the globe.
Starting today, free tickets to the Festival are available to global citizens who visit globalcitizenfestival.com, and take “action” to earn their admission. All fans will participate in an Action Journey by making phone calls, volunteering and attending events, taking part in creating a just, equitable and healthy world. Once they complete an Action Journey, fans can enter to win free tickets. Ticket draws will occur throughout the summer and fans will be notified via Global Citizen when they have been selected. A limited number of VIP tickets will also be available for purchase through Ticketmaster starting on Friday, July 10 at 10 a.m. Citi is proud partner of the Global Citizen Festival and Citi credit card members will have exclusive access to VIP offers at the early bird pricing through Thursday, July 16.
Building on the extraordinary momentum over the past 15 years, the Global Goals carry the promise of equal rights and opportunity for women and men: the promise to live a healthy and dignified life, the promise for every child to survive and thrive.
CHIME FOR CHANGE, the successful campaign founded by Gucci and led by co-founders Beyonce Knowles-Carter and Salma Hayek Pinault, will join Global Citizen in a groundbreaking partnership to raise global visibility for girls’ and women’s equality within GlobalCitizen.org. Global Citizen and CHIME FOR CHANGE have come together to build a community of people who want to learn about and take action on the biggest challenges faced by girls and women, because gender equality is fundamental to the long-term objective of ending extreme poverty by 2030. Together, CHIME FOR CHANGE and Global Citizen will unite to strengthen the voices speaking out for girls and women around the world.
“Through our CHIME FOR CHANGE campaign, over the last three years we have been able to convene and activate a powerful coalition of those who share our belief that girls and women globally should have an equal opportunity for education, health and justice,” said Gucci President Marco Bizzarri. “This new partnership with Global Citizen will increase the momentum and impact of our campaign by harnessing the scale and global platform of Global Citizen to engage millions – especially young people – by educating them and encouraging meaningful action in support of girls and women.”
“The 2015 Global Citizen Festival will serve as a critical moment to shed light on the world’s agenda for the next 15 years,” said Hugh Evans, CEO of The Global Poverty Project. “We are now at a moment where we can eliminate extreme poverty by 2030, but this cannot be achieved by the words of politicians alone. The Global Citizen Festival serves to channel the unwavering call for action from global citizens who want to see equality, change and justice reach those who need it most.”
Said Stone Gossard of Pearl Jam, “We hope Pearl Jam fans will sign up to become Global Citizens — not just to earn tickets to the show — but to be part of a movement that encourages leaders of nations with the greatest wealth to apply aid, trade and governance policies in support of nations and communities in the greatest need. People living on less than $1.50-a-day deserve the opportunity to lift themselves up out of extreme poverty.”
“I am honored to be a part of the Global Citizen Festival,” said Beyonce. “It has always stood for improving the lives of people everywhere, but this year is especially rewarding as we all join focuses and utilize our talents for one goal: to end extreme poverty globally.”
Ed Sheeran said, “It’s at once a great honor and very humbling to participate in the Global Citizen Festival. I look forward to sharing the stage with such an amazing lineup of artists in an effort to raise awareness, educate others, and work toward the goal of ending extreme poverty by 2030. I truly believe it’s possible if we all work together.”
Said Chris Martin of Coldplay, “We are so proud to be playing this year’s Global Citizen Festival. We love the Global Citizen movement and we love opening for Beyonce so this ticks both boxes.” Chris Martin of Coldplay serves as a curator of the Global Citizen Festival.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio stated, “The City of New York is proud to once again welcome the Global Citizen Festival back to Central Park. Our city has a rich history of hosting movements to call for change and equality both here in our nation and across the world—and this event provides another important opportunity for New Yorkers to come together to help eradicate extreme poverty. I want to thank the Global Citizen Festival event organizers, participants, and attendees for joining together in this critical mission and helping bring this effort to the forefront.”
Richard Curtis, who serves as the creative director for the 2015 Global Citizen Festival, said, “I am delighted to be working with Global Citizen and the UN on this amazing festival. We want to give the Global Goals for Sustainable Development the noisiest launch in history in the belief that the more famous they are, the more effective they will be. My particular job is to turn the Festival into an hour-long TV program – all part of a huge campaign to get the word of the Goals out through TV, cinema, schools, on-line and through Radio Everyone, a unique global network of broadcasters and talent. We hope to leave no stone unturned to support the Goals that could spell the end of extreme poverty and the threat of climate change.”
One of the first “actions” fans will be asked to complete is to call the U.S. State Department and tell them to commit 50% of the U.S. foreign aid budget to the world’s poorest countries at next week’s Conference on Financing for Development. By making this call, we will show the U.S. Administration that the world is watching and demand concrete solutions that will lead to the end of extreme poverty by 2030. This is the moment when world leaders will decide on how to fund the roadmap for ending extreme poverty and propel the next generation into a sustainable future. Without aggressive commitments, the new Global Goals risk being a mere wish list.
Over the last four years, global citizens have taken nearly 3 million actions in the fight against extreme poverty. These actions have resulted in 87 commitments and policy announcements, including cash commitments valued at U.S. $18.3 billion.
Previous headliners of the Global Citizen Festival include: in 2014, JAY Z (with special guest Beyonce), No Doubt, fun., Carrie Underwood, The Roots, Tiesto; in 2013, Stevie Wonder, John Mayer, Alicia Keys, Kings of Leon; in 2012, Neil Young with Crazy Horse, Foo Fighters, The Black Keys, John Legend, and Band of Horses. In April 2015, Global Citizen hosted ‘Global Citizen 2015 Earth Day’ in partnership with Earth Day Network, which brought No Doubt, Usher, Mary J. Blige, Fall Out Boy and more to the National Mall in Washington D.C.
