As Saudi Arabia celebrates becoming football’s World Cup hosts in 2034, it was enjoying a huge music festival that was breaking world records.

MDLBEAST set a Guinness World Record for the Largest Continuous Outdoor LED Screen (Temporary) during its flagship Soundstorm 2024 music festival. Stars such as Eminem, Muse, Linkin Park and more are performing at the MENA region’s biggest music festival, with the concluding night this weekend.

On opening night of the Soundstorm festival, Eminem captivated the audience with a high-energy display of fan-favourite tracks, including Love the Way You Lie. His performance was taken in by the 75,000 capacity crowd, who were also able to watch along on the record-breaking screen which spanned 4808.84 metres squared. The huge screen beat the previous record that had been held by Adele in Munich earlier this year.

The screen broke a Guinness World Record

The record-breaking screen is a seamless, high-resolution LED marvel designed to elevate the audience experience to unprecedented heights. The screen’s size and visuals have transformed the festival’s main stage into an impressive canvas, displaying cutting-edge visuals and immersive content synchronised with the performances of some of the biggest names in music today.

Executive Director Events at MDLBEAST, Michael Jobson, spoke on the technical elements of the achievement: “The screen represents more than just a technical achievement. This stage is the result of over two months of on-site work and thousands of man-hours leading up to its completion. Numerous teams came together with a shared goal, working harmoniously both throughout the festival weekend and long before, to ensure we could achieve this record-breaking feat. From engineers and designers to artists and technicians, every individual played a vital role in creating something truly extraordinary. With meticulous planning, testing, and adjustments taking place long beforehand to ensure everything was perfect.”

Eminem’s appearance comes just weeks after his mum, Debbie Nelson, tragically died after being diagnosed with advanced lung cancer. Last week, the rapper whose real name is Marshall Mathers returned to the stage seemingly with a subtle message.

He took to the stage at the Abu Dhabi F1 Grand Prix, where he appeared to pay tribute to his mum by choosing not to rap the infamous lyric “F**k you, Debbie”. While fans continued to sing it, Eminem’s silence may have been louder than his words of grief could have ever been.

The mother and son had a mostly estranged relationship before her passing. The rapper appeared to use his music to help him process the emotions he felt toward her at times with the occasional brutal lyrics. Some even resulted in a defamation lawsuit filed by Debbie, where she sought $10 million in compensation and caused even more of a divide between them. Debbie’s defamation case was settled, with the majority of the $25,000 she won going toward her legal fees