On an island of just 100,000 people, it is rare to see two of the Caribbean’s biggest soca stars share the same stage—but tonight, Grenada is pulling off just that.
Kes and Machel Montano, two of the region’s most celebrated headline acts, will bring their high-energy performances to the National Stadium in a blockbuster concert marking Sunshine Promotions’ 25 years in the business.
For a small island, and an industry where major acts rarely converge on the same bill, it is a scheduling coup worthy of the occasion.
The big show is Carnival Encore — Sunset Over White at Grenada National Cricket Stadium, in St. George’s.
Genre loading: in the reggae world, it would be like having Vybz Kartel and Buju Banton on the same stage, outside of Jamaica.
Kes, who had just completed his Roots, Rock, Soca, arrived on the island on Sunday, salivating for Grenada’s traditional Jab J’ouvert on Monday morning.
And Machel landed on Monday afternoon, fresh from two back-to-back sold-out concerts at NY’s Central Park. He grounded with Grenada at Monday night mas.
Machel, usually promoted as the King of Soca because of his international outreach, had last performed on the island in 2019.
Back then, it was a learning experience for Ian St Bernard (Judah), the pioneering Grenada events promoter who realised that he had not quite achieved the traction needed to cover the cost of the most expensive soca act on the circuit.
“Machel works with you for cost, but is expensive to book, and seven years ago we did not announce the date of the show early enough for the visiting people to arrange their flights to suit,” Akiera Paterson, the Marketing and Promotions Director at Sunshine Promotions, told Caribbean Pulse.
“It’s easier with Kes; once he is free, he is technically a retainer artist with us, having been a consistent performer more recently,” she added.
This time around, Machel was signed and sealed in November 2025.
“We announced the show in January, and the reception we got was just great,” she said.
“The VIP Cabanas were sold out by February, and it is the largest VIP section, ever, for any Sunshine Promotions’ events in our history,” she explained about the show, which coincides with the 25th anniversary of the born-and-bred, made-from-scratch, Grenadian promotion and entertainment production and sound company.
“By the time we announced Kes, people were inquiring whether they would be on the same show, or if it was a festival,” Akiera said, explaining the process towards Wednesday’s big event.
“As producers, we know the type of creative space they need, so they are each going to get 90 minutes to perform. The show will open with local performers including V’ghn, Boyzie, Dash, Luni Spark & Electrify, and veteran soca icon Inspector and then Kes, who will integrate some of Grenada’s hit songs in his set, after which Machel will close the show.
It’s an open-air show, and there’s no real entertainment venue in Grenada outside of the stadium for a show of this magnitude. And it brings engineering and sound system challenges.
There are reasons for hosting the big show on the Wednesday after SpiceMas, Akeira explained.
And that’s mainly because Sunshine Promotions rented a lot of their equipment and their sound system over the carnival weekend for the major shows like the Soca Monarch, Panorama, and the Calypso Monarch competition, which runs back-to-back from Carnival Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
The first Carnival Encore show was held last year in Grenada with Kes as the headline act, and it included Trinidadian artist Voice and a slew of Grenadian superstars.
“Yes, we have a population of 100,000 people, but it’s so much more than money. We produce shows for the love of the people and the culture, and we attract people by the quality of the events and the standards we set, which has been the vision of Judah,” Akiera confessed to Caribbean Pulse.
The most recent major concert by Sunshine Promotions was Buju Banton’s Long Walk to Freedom tour in 2019.
Grenada was the only Eastern Caribbean small state that hosted the show.
It’s a rare confluence of two globe-trotting soca acts.
On the same stage, on the same night, somewhere outside of Trinidad Carnival.
While both Machel and Kes were headline acts at two carnival fetes at Carnival 2026 (QRC Fete Royale and CIC Fete with the Saints), they last appeared on the same stage at the Essence Festival of Culture at the Caesars Superdome, New Orleans, Louisiana, in July 2022, along with a host of other Caribbean acts.
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