Candlestick Park Site, Where the Beatles Played Their Last Concert

The Beatles played their last paid concert at Candlestick Park, on Candlestick Point in southeast San Francisco, on 29 August 1966, before about 25,000 people. The stadium was demolished in 2015. The site stood mostly empty until a large housing and office development broke ground in September 2026. No marker records the concert.

29 August 1966

San Francisco was the closing date of the Beatles' 1966 US tour. Candlestick Park did not sell out. About 25,000 people came, and the promoter, Tempo Productions, lost money after paying the band's fee. Accounts of how many seats went unsold differ, so the attendance is the firmer figure. Tickets were priced from $3.89 to $7.00.

The stage was set up at second base behind a fence about six feet high. The band played 11 songs in a little over half an hour and closed with Long Tall Sally. Lennon and McCartney brought cameras on stage and took pictures of the crowd and of each other. As soon as the last song ended, the four were driven away in an armored car.

McCartney asked the press officer Tony Barrow to record the show on a hand-held cassette machine. The tape ran out partway through Long Tall Sally, so the final minutes were never captured. That recording has never had an official release.

Calling it the last Beatles concert needs one qualifier. It was the last paid, announced show. In January 1969 the band played once more, unannounced, on the roof of their Apple offices in London, a performance marked today by the rooftop concert plaque on Savile Row.

McCartney closes the stadium in 2014

Candlestick hosted one more Beatles-related night before it came down. Paul McCartney played the stadium's final concert on 14 August 2014, to 53,477 people. During the show he used film of the 1966 concert shot by a fan in the crowd.

Crews began removing seats in November 2014, heavy demolition followed in early 2015, and the work was finished on 24 September 2015.

What is on the site now

For more than a decade the land stayed largely empty while redevelopment plans were drawn up, revised and delayed. On 10 September 2026 the developer FivePoint broke ground on the 270-acre Candlestick project, which plans 7,200 homes and 2.8 million square feet of office space. The first phase is roads, sidewalks and utilities, so for now the site is a construction zone rather than a place to walk around.

No plaque, sign or other marker for the Beatles concert, or for the stadium itself, is recorded at the site. Whether one will be part of the new neighborhood has not been reported.

Other stops in the Beatles' touring years

Six days earlier the band had played their second concert at Shea Stadium in New York. Earlier in 1966 they performed at the Nippon Budokan in Tokyo and at the Rizal Memorial Stadium in Manila. The Hollywood Bowl, where they had played in 1964 and 1965, is the California venue from those years that still stands.