The Jacksons – Greatest Hits at de Doelen Rotterdam: A Sunday Night of Pure Soul and Pop History, May 24, 2026

Some names belong to the history of popular music so completely that they need no introduction — no career summary, no genre label, no explanation of why a Sunday evening in their company is worth clearing your calendar for. The Jacksons are one of those names. And on Sunday, May 24, 2026 at 20:30, they bring their "Greatest Hits" show to the magnificent de Doelen concert hall in Rotterdam — one of the finest acoustically engineered venues in the Netherlands — for a night that spans more than five decades of pop, soul, and funk music that has shaped the sound of the modern world.

Tickets from €79 to €99 (face value) at Ticketmaster.

This is one of a very limited number of European dates in 2026 for The Jacksons. Rotterdam plays before Amsterdam (Royal Concertgebouw, July 24–25) and before the UK summer shows — making the de Doelen night one of the first European opportunities to see the brothers live this year.

The Jackson Family: Where the Story Begins

The story of The Jacksons begins not in a recording studio or on a stage, but in a small house on Jackson Street in Gary, Indiana — the steel city on Lake Michigan that gave the family their name and their early musical education.

Joe Jackson, the family patriarch, recognised the musical talent of his sons early and channelled it with the focused intensity of a man who understood that talent alone is not enough — that it requires discipline, practice, and the willingness to perform before you feel ready. In the mid-1960s, the brothers began performing as the Jackson Brothers at local clubs and talent shows, building the stagecraft and the ensemble instinct that would define their career.

The group's breakthrough came when they won the Amateur Night at the Apollo Theater in Harlem — the most famous proving ground in American Black music — in 1967. The win led to a deal with Motown Records in 1969, and the commercial explosion that followed was immediate and total: "I Want You Back" (1969), "ABC" (1970), "The Love You Save" (1970), and "I'll Be There" (1970) all reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in rapid succession, making the Jackson 5 the most successful family act in American music history and Michael Jackson — then 11 years old — the most charismatic and instinctively gifted young performer American pop had ever seen.

From Jackson 5 to The Jacksons: The Evolution of a Legend

The transition from Jackson 5 to The Jacksons came in 1975, when the brothers left Motown for CBS/Epic Records in a move that gave them greater creative control but required them to change their name due to contractual restrictions.

The Epic period produced some of the most significant music of the brothers' career:

• "Enjoy Yourself" (1976) — the debut single on Epic, confirming the new chapter
• "Blame It on the Boogie" (1978) — the infectious funk track that became one of the defining songs of the late disco era and one of The Jacksons' most enduring live classics
• "Shake Your Body (Down to the Ground)" (1978) — a co-write between Michael and Randy, this exuberant nine-minute funk workout confirmed The Jacksons' ability to create music that belonged to the future as much as it celebrated the present
• "Can You Feel It" (1981) — the epic, almost cinematic funk anthem from the "Triumph" album, accompanied by one of the first major-budget music videos in history and widely regarded as one of The Jacksons' greatest artistic statements
• "State of Shock" (1984, with Mick Jagger) — a hard rock/funk crossover from the "Victory" album that reached number three on the Billboard Hot 100

The "Victory Tour" of 1984 — the commercial and physical scale of which had never been seen for a pop act — remains one of the most celebrated live events in the history of popular music, drawing 5.5 million audience members across 55 concerts in the United States and Canada.

Throughout the CBS/Epic period, Michael Jackson pursued his parallel solo career alongside the group — "Off the Wall" (1979) and "Thriller" (1982), the best-selling album in history with over 70 million copies sold, were created during the same years as the Jackson albums. His death on June 25, 2009 ended the possibility of the reunion that fans had anticipated for decades — but Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, and Marlon have continued to perform as The Jacksons, and the live show they bring to de Doelen on May 24 is built on the full breadth of that extraordinary catalogue.

"Greatest Hits": What the Rotterdam Show Delivers

The "Greatest Hits" show format that The Jacksons are touring in 2026 does exactly what the title promises: a comprehensive run through the most loved songs from the full career of both the Jackson 5 and The Jacksons eras, delivered by the brothers who created them alongside their touring band and backing vocalists.

Expect a setlist that includes:

From the Motown/Jackson 5 era:

• "I Want You Back"
• "ABC"
• "The Love You Save"
• "I'll Be There"
• "Never Can Say Goodbye"
• "Dancing Machine"

From The Jacksons / Epic era:

• "Blame It on the Boogie"
• "Shake Your Body (Down to the Ground)"
• "Can You Feel It"
• "Enjoy Yourself"
• "Lovely One"
• "State of Shock"
• "Torture"
• "Show You the Way to Go"

The Rotterdam show at de Doelen offers something that larger arena concerts cannot: the intimacy of a 2,200-seat concert hall that was designed specifically for musical performance, where every seat has been engineered to deliver the best possible acoustic experience, and where the distance between the audience and the performers creates a connection that stadium-scale events routinely sacrifice.

De Doelen: Rotterdam's Greatest Concert Hall

The history of de Doelen is, in miniature, the history of Rotterdam itself.

The original de Doelen concert hall was built on this site in 1934 — a statement of civic cultural ambition in a working-class port city that was determined to take music seriously. On May 14, 1940, the German Luftwaffe bombed Rotterdam in one of the most devastating air attacks on a civilian city in the early Second World War, destroying approximately 25,000 buildings and the entire city centre, including de Doelen.

The rebuilding of Rotterdam that followed over the next decades was one of the most ambitious urban reconstruction projects in European history — and de Doelen was rebuilt as part of that project, reopening in 1966 to designs by architect B. Kraaijvanger. The acoustic consultants were Prof. C.W. Kosten and P.A. de Lange — specialists whose design created a concert hall with a volume of approximately 27,000 cubic metres and acoustic properties that have been consistently ranked among the finest in Europe.

In the 1990s, two additional halls were added to the complex: the Willem Burger Zaal (700 seats) and the Jurriaanse Zaal (465 seats in theatre configuration), creating the full de Doelen complex as it exists today.

In 2015, de Doelen was designated a Rijksmonument (National Monument) — formally recognising its architectural and cultural significance for the Netherlands.

Today, de Doelen is simultaneously:

• The home of the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra — one of Europe's great orchestras, whose chief conductors have included Valery Gergiev, Semyon Bychkov, and current chief Lahav Shani
• The Central Box Office for the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) — the second-largest film festival in Europe
• A venue for jazz, world music, and popular music alongside its classical programming
• The largest combined concert hall and congress centre in the Netherlands (capacity up to 3,000 delegates)

Address: Schouwburgplein 50, 3012 CL Rotterdam, Netherlands

The venue is located on the Schouwburgplein — Rotterdam's main cultural square, surrounded by the Centraal Bibliotheek Rotterdam (Central Library), the Rotterdam Stadsschouwburg (City Theatre), and the Pathé Schouwburgplein cinema complex, making the square the most concentrated cultural destination in the city.

Rotterdam: The City That Reinvented Itself

The context in which de Doelen sits makes the Rotterdam show for The Jacksons something more than a single concert in a fine hall.

Rotterdam is a city whose character was forged by two defining forces: its position as Europe's largest port (handling approximately 467 million tonnes of cargo annually and serving as the gateway for a significant proportion of European trade), and its near-total physical rebuilding after the 1940 bombardment. The combination produced a city that is architecturally unlike any other in Europe — modern, ambitious, experimental, built with the confidence of people who had to start from scratch and chose to see that as an opportunity rather than a loss.

The Erasmusbrug (the iconic cable-stayed bridge over the Maas River, completed 1996), the Kubuswoningen (the tilted cube houses of architect Piet Blom in the Blaak area, 1984), the Markthal (the extraordinary indoor market with residential apartments in its arching walls, opened 2014), and the Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen (the mirrored sphere art storage building, opened 2021) together form a contemporary architectural landscape that is one of the most visited in the Netherlands.

The Erasmus University Rotterdam (founded 1913) adds an academic dimension to the city's 650,000-strong population, and the city's cultural scene — concentrated around the Schouwburgplein, the Witte de Withstraat gallery and cafe district, and the Katendrecht harbour neighbourhood — is one of the most active and most genuinely international in the Netherlands.

De Doelen sits at the centre of all of this, on the Schouwburgplein, equidistant from the shopping of the Lijnbaan and the water of the Maas.

Practical Information for May 24, 2026

Date: Sunday, May 24, 2026

Show time: 20:30

Venue: De Doelen, Rotterdam

Address: Schouwburgplein 50, 3012 CL Rotterdam, Netherlands

Phone: +31 10 217 1717

Face value tickets: €79–€99

Primary ticketing: Ticketmaster

Secondary market: Viagogo, Topticketshop, Festivaly.eu, GoTicketShop

Getting to de Doelen:

• By metro: Rotterdam Centraal station is 10 minutes' walk from de Doelen; the entire Rotterdam metro network (RET) converges at Centraal; from the station, walk south through the Lijnbaan shopping street to Schouwburgplein
• By tram: Tram line 24 stops at Kruisplein, one block from de Doelen; trams 21, 23, 24, 25 all serve the Churchillplein/Kruisplein area
• By train: Rotterdam Centraal is on the Dutch main rail network with direct connections from Amsterdam (40 minutes), Utrecht (40 minutes), The Hague (25 minutes), Eindhoven (55 minutes), and Brussels (1 hour 30 minutes, Thalys/Intercity Direct); from the UK via Eurostar London to Brussels, then direct train
• From Rotterdam The Hague Airport (RTM): 20 minutes by metro to Rotterdam Centraal, then 10 minutes walk; taxi approximately 25 minutes to de Doelen
• By car: De Doelen is in central Rotterdam; parking in the Markthal garage, Weena garage, or along Weena street

One Sunday in May That Belongs to Pop History

The brothers who recorded "ABC" and "I Want You Back" as children in Gary, Indiana, who staged the Victory Tour to five and a half million people in 1984, and who have continued performing through every chapter of the decades since — these are the artists who take the de Doelen stage on Sunday, May 24, 2026 at 20:30.

Rotterdam has one of Europe's great concert halls. The Jacksons have one of the greatest popular music catalogues ever assembled. On Sunday, May 24, those two things belong in the same room.

Tickets from €79 at Ticketmaster.

Verified Information at a Glance