Rammstein and Colombia

Rammstein announces a concert at Bogotá’s El Campín stadium for October 22, 2005, as part of their first Latin American tour as headliners (in 1999 they had already played the region opening for KISS). The community was already getting ready when the show fell through.

The cause is documented: on July 30, 2005, in Gothenburg, Sweden, Flake ran into Till with his Segway during “Amerika” and injured his knee. Every remaining date of the year was cancelled, and with them the Colombian debut. The dream would have to wait five more years.

The dream comes true: on Friday, December 3, 2010, Rammstein sets foot in Colombia for the first time, at the Centro de Eventos y Conciertos in Sopó (Cundinamarca), during the Liebe ist für alle da tour. It was the fifth of that tour’s six Latin American dates, after Santiago, Buenos Aires and two nights in São Paulo, and before Mexico City.

Together with the label and the promoter, the community actively supported the concert with events and a promotion plan. As a fan action we made the largest themed flag in the world, with a welcome message and the flags of both countries. Fire, German and thousands of Colombian voices: the founding night of the archive. From there, back to work to bring them again.

Together with Cineco Alternativo, for the worldwide cinema release of Rammstein: Paris, we sold out 15 screenings across 8 cities for that single showing. Between June and July, the community followed the band on its tour across the United States.

In May 2022, Colombian newspaper El Tiempo reported that Rammstein were negotiating to bring their stadium tour to at least four countries in the region — Colombia among them, with El Campín as the proposed venue — for mid-2023. The source was the specialist account Music Trends Colombia, not the band or its management.

Nothing was ever confirmed. We record it because it is an honest part of the story: between 2010 and today, this bond has rested more on announcements that collapse than on dates that happen.

The stadium tour Rammstein ran between 2019 and 2024 added up to 141 concerts and never reached South America: it stayed in Europe and North America. Fourteen years after Sopó, the region remained off the band’s map.

It is the most uncomfortable milestone on this page, and also the one that explains why this archive exists: as long as there is no second visit, what’s left is to document the first one properly.

The film of the three Foro Sol nights, directed by Paul Dugdale, opened in cinemas worldwide for a limited run. In Colombia it played at fourteen Cinemark, Cinépolis and Procinal screens in seven cities, from November 4 to 8: the second time the community pushed a Rammstein film into the country’s cinemas, after Paris in 2017. The live album, with the extended cut on Blu-ray, was set for November 20.