Ariana Grande Says Her 2026 Tour Will Be ‘Half’ the Size of Her Past Runs

Ariana Grande is rethinking what touring looks like as she heads into a new chapter of her career.

In a newly published conversation with Nicole Kidman for Interview magazine on Nov. 24, the singer and actress opened up about her upcoming Eternal Sunshine world tour, revealing that the run will be intentionally smaller than the massive global treks she’s mounted in the past.

“We’re doing a small amount compared to what I used to do back in the day. I think it’s 45 shows,” Grande said. “It’s not that small, but it’s at least half of what I used to do.”

The 2026 tour follows her Billboard No. 1 album Eternal Sunshine, released earlier this year, and marks her return to full-scale live performance after stepping away from music to film the two-part Wicked movie franchise. That period, Grande said, played a transformative role in reshaping her relationship with fame, creativity and the pressures that accompany commercial success.

“I’ve just been healing my relationship to music and touring over the past couple of years,” she told Kidman, explaining that acting helped her reconnect with the joy of creating without the intensity that once accompanied her pop stardom. She described Eternal Sunshine as an album that allowed her to rebuild her process: “I think the time away from it helped me reclaim certain pieces of it and put certain feelings that maybe belonged to my relationship to fame… in a box somewhere else.”

Grande said her time playing Glinda in Wicked and Wicked: For Good helped her “take baby steps toward healing,” particularly around the anxiety she felt early in her pop breakout. “I think it just held some traumas for me before, and I feel those dissipating,” she said. “That is such an extraordinarily beautiful thing.”

She also reflected on how she has learned to detach from public commentary and criticism, saying that she now relies on meditation rather than internalizing negative reactions. “Should that dance have to be a part of being an artist,” she wondered, “or should that just be put in a box far away from me?”

Grande’s Eternal Sunshine tour will launch in June 2026 in Oakland, Cali., before heading through North America and Europe, concluding in London in late August.

This article was first published by Billboard U.S.