NEED TO KNOW
Ariana Grande is downsizing — at least when it comes to her upcoming stage tour.
The actress and pop star opened up about her plans for the upcoming Eternal Sunshine world tour in a conversation with Nicole Kidman for Interview magazine published on Nov. 24. During the discussion, Grande revealed that the 2026 tour will have fewer stops compared to previous ones.
“We’re doing a small amount compared to what I used to do back in the day. I think it’s 45 shows,” Grande, 32, said, adding, “It’s not that small, but it’s at least half of what I used to do.”
The singer went on to say that she’s “excited” for the experience, despite its smaller scope.
“I feel really grateful and excited about it in a way that feels so different to me. I’ve just been healing my relationship to music and touring over the past couple of years,” she explained.
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Grande additionally said she has spent “a lot of time redoing” her “system when it comes to making music.”
“With Eternal Sunshine, that felt like a very different experience for me,” she said. “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, or the [negative] things that come with being an artist, in a box somewhere else, and say, ‘Okay. I don’t have to let go of this thing that I love. I can just put those things over here, and not lose sight of my gifts.’ ”
She went on to say that she feels as though her time spent playing Glinda in Wicked and Wicked: For Good has helped her work towards a better relationship with her identity as a pop star.
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“I’ve just been taking baby steps towards healing my relationship to music and touring, and I think my time with Glinda and with acting really helped me build the strength to be able to do that …I think it just held some traumas for me before, and I feel those dissipating, and that is such an extraordinarily beautiful thing,” she explained.
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Grande also reflected on what she said was, in hindsight, a tough adjustment to life in the public eye when she first rose to fame.
“There was a tricky adjustment period in the very beginning, when my pop career took off the way that it did,” she said. “And I hope this doesn’t sound ungrateful, but it’s just a big adjustment when your life changes in that very drastic way … I’m so grateful to be able to do what I love. I just wasn’t expecting certain pieces of it.”
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The Grammy-winner went on to admit that she used to struggle with taking certain things said about her and her creative work in the media personally.
“I used to actually do that quite a bit and it became so exhausting. I felt like, ‘This is my ego doing this.’ Again, I just feel like, should that dance have to be a part of being an artist, or should that just be put in a box far away from me, and I’ll just do my art and not let that ruin my relationship to it?”
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Grande said that now, when something bothers her, she just does “a meditation and move on.”
Grande’s Eternal Sunshine tour is scheduled to kick off in June 2026 in Oakland, Calif., and will wrap up in London by late August.
