Rumors have been swirling for the last several days that Beyoncé will stop by the Democratic National Convention — but no one seems to know if it will actually happen.
Hours before Vice President Kamala Harris is set to accept the Democratic presidential nomination Thursday night, Rolling Stone has learned that Democratic party organizers and Chicago government officials have been preparing for the possibility of Beyoncé’s arrival.
According to two sources familiar with the matter, government officials, including Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson’s office, local law enforcement personnel, and DNC organizers have been rushing to prepare for potential Beyoncé-related chaos in the Windy City — even if she does not end up showing up.
“It’s been crazy,” says one person familiar with the matter. “People running the show and working here obviously will prepare for Beyoncépalooza… We just keep being told ‘I don’t know’ when this comes up,” adds the source. “It has come up frequently.”
Two on-the-ground sources at the DNC say they heard a marching band sound-checking Beyoncé’s song ”Cuff It” on Thursday, although there were no official sightings of the singer.
If Beyoncé does show up, city officials have war-gamed possible scenarios and preemptively allocated resources to accommodate such an event, the sources add.
One potential scenario that has been actively discussed is the possibility of Beyoncé arriving at the Soldier Field stadium to perform and endorse the Harris-Walz ticket. The Chicago Bears stadium, which saw Beyoncé for her Renaissance tour last July, is set to host a watch party for the overflow crowd who want to watch Harris receive the nomination, but could not get into the convention perimeter.
A separate source close to the campaign tells Rolling Stone that if Beyoncé does arrive at the DNC, they “couldn’t imagine” the singer not appearing onstage with Harris in the arena where the convention is being held.
Chicago officials and Team Kamala organizers have discussed making law enforcement and logistical considerations for Beyoncé’s appearance for days but were hamstrung by the fact that the singer’s team and senior ranks of the Harris campaign would not, or could not, confirm if she is coming.
The Harris-Walz ticket has been using Beyoncé’s Lemonade song “Freedom” on the campaign trail, and in a campaign ad that dropped at night one of the DNC this week. “The Moon? Landed on it. The future? Building it. Freedom? Nobody loves it more,” declares actor Jeffrey Wright in the ad, soundtracked by Queen Bey’s track.
Beyoncé’s team reportedly permitted Harris to use “Freedom” during her campaign just a few hours before her campaign launch event in July. In the aftermath, “Freedom” saw a big uptick in streams, jumping 1,300 percent according to data from Luminate.
Beyoncé and Jay-Z are longtime Democrats. Beyoncé endorsed the Biden-Harris ticket a day before the election in 2020, spoke publicly at a Hillary Clinton rally ahead of the 2016 election, and raised funds for and penned a letter to President Barack Obama amid his re-election campaign in 2012.
President Donald Trump discussing Venezuela at a press conference at Mar-a-Lago.
Why Venezuela Could Be a Turning Point in Gen Z’s Support for Trump
When Donald Trump called himself “the peace president” during his 2024 campaign, it was not just a slogan that my fellow Gen Z men and I took seriously, but also a promise we took personally. For a generation raised in the shadow of endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it felt reassuring. It told us there was a new Republican Party that had learned from its failures and wouldn’t ask our generation to fight another war for regime change. That belief stood strong until the U.S. overthrew Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
Growing up in the long wake of the wars in Iraq in Afghanistan shaped how my generation learned to see Republicans. For us, “traditional” Republican foreign policy became synonymous with unnecessary conflicts that caused young people to bear the consequences. We heard how Iraq was sold to the public as a necessary war to destroy weapons of mass destruction, only to become a long conflict that defined the early adulthood of many millennials. Many of us grew up watching older siblings come home from deployments changed, and hearing teachers and coaches talk about friends who never fully came back. By the time we were old enough to pay attention, distrust of Bush-era Republicans wasn’t ideological, it was inherited from what we had heard.
As the 2024 election was rolling around, that dynamic had flipped. After watching wars in Ukraine and Gaza dominate headlines while Joe Biden was president, the Democrats were now the warmongers. My friends constantly told me how a vote for Kamala Harris was a vote to go to war. On the other hand, Donald Trump and the Republicans were the ones my friends thought could keep us safe. “I’m not voting for Trump because I love him,” one friend told me. “I’m voting for him because he cares about us and I don’t want to go fight in a stupid war.” For many of my friends, much of their vote came down to one question: Who was less likely to send us to fight? The answer to them was pretty clear.
Fast forward to now, and Venezuela has begun to complicate that belief. Even without talk of a draft or a formal declaration of war, the renewed focus on U.S. involvement and troops on the ground has brought back the same language of escalation my generation was taught to distrust. Young men online have been voicing the same worries, concerned that the ousting of Maduro mirrors the early stages of wars they were raised to fear. When I asked a friend what he thought about Venezuela, he shared that same sentiment. “This is how all these wars always start,” he told me. “They might try to make it sound like it’s not actually a war, but people our age always end up being the ones that pay the price for it.” For young men who supported Trump because they believed he represented a break from interventionist politics, Venezuela blurs the line between the “new” Republican Party they thought they were backing and the old one they were raised to reject.
For many young men, Venezuela has become a major part of a broader shift of how they view Trump. A recent poll from Speaking with American Men (SAM) found that Trump’s approval rating has fallen 10 percent among young men, with only 27 percent agreeing with the statement that Trump is “delivering for you”.
Gen Z men’s support of Trump was never about ideology or party loyalty, it was about the idea that he had their back and would fight for them. But that’s no longer the case. Recently, Trump proposed adding $500 billion to the military budget. Ideas like that will only hurt the president with young men. My friends don’t want more military spending that could get us entangled in foreign wars; they want a president who keeps them home and fights for their economic and social needs. As Trump pushes for a bigger military and more intervention abroad, the promise that once made him feel like a protector of young men now feels out of reach.
For my generation, Venezuela isn’t just another foreign policy dispute, it’s a conflict many young men worry they could be the ones sent to fight. Gen Z men didn’t support Trump because he was a Republican, but because they believed he was different from the old Republicans. He would be a president who would have their back, fight for their interests and keep them from fighting unnecessary wars. Now, that promise feels fragile, and the fear of being the ones asked to face the consequences has returned. For a generation raised on the effects of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the idea of another war isn’t abstract, it’s personal.