With bright lights and fireworks, Ed Sheeran burst onto the stage at Ta’ Qali for Malta’s largest-ever paid concert. 

“This is my very, very first time in Malta and I’m so glad to be here,” he told an estimated 35,000 cheering fans. 

Starting out in a black T-shirt stamped with ‘Malta’ in multicoloured letters, the British musical icon was in the national team’s football shirt by the time the concert ended just over two hours later. 

Fireworks lit up the crowd of some 35,000 cheering fans. Photo: Roberto Sarcia

It began with high-octane energy as Sheeran belted out his first track Castle on the Hill. 

After giving a lesson on his trademark loop pedal, he took the crowd on a whirlwind of hits from his Mathematics series of albums. 

Sheeran was in the national team’s football shirt by the time the concert ended.

Describing himself as their “vocal coach”, the singer-songwriter got the crowd harmonising for anthems like Give Me Love. 

In-between tracks he talked about his music career from turning up to pubs in England where “no-one cared” to “travelling the world”.

Encouraging everyone to hold their phones aloft for his global hit A-Team, he confessed he thought the song that made him famous would be a one-hit wonder. 

Involving the crowd in many of his songs, he also brought on his band for classics like Lego House and introduced violinist Alicia Enstrom for hit Galway Girl.

There was an emotional moment when he spoke of the death of his best friend in 2022. 

“It only hit me when I put dirt on his grave that he was not coming home," he said before revealing the tragedy inspired his track Eyes Closed.

One of the highlights was a medley of songs like River, Beautiful People and I Don’t Care on which he has famously collaborated with other stars. Another crowd pleaser was Thinking Out Loud, which he introduced as “the song your grandmother knows”.

The latter half of the concert was a lullaby of gentler songs like Happier, Photograph, Perfect and Afterglow.

Describing the country as a “lovely place”, he switched outfits to a Malta football shirt before the stomping Bad Habits encore.

“It’s been a wonderful gig,” he said. The huge crowd no doubt agreed.

The run-up to the concert was dominated by concerns about traffic and parking arrangements but there were no reports of any major complaints or mishaps before the concert at Ta' Qali. 

The record crowd. Photo: Roberto Sarcia