The O2, London
On her last live dates before she steps back from the public eye, Grande holds her own – but it’s also impossible to avoid feeling concerned for her wellbeing

There’s a thrum of excitement in the air as an eight-minute countdown starts and Ariana Grande’s unmistakable silhouette appears on a giant backlit curtain on the stage of the O2. Is it actually her? Posing there for eight minutes before the show starts? It can’t be. But is it? It’s the first time we question what is and isn’t real at this Eternal Sunshine tour stop, a 10-night residency and a robust arena show that ultimately wants us to see one thing and experience another.

Collectively, we’ve been scolded for talking about it – the “endless, ongoing public scrutiny” of Ariana Grande’s body has pushed her to “[take] a step back from visibility” when this tour ends. It can’t be nice or fun to have your body examined and discussed for any reason but it is impossible to witness the 33-year-old’s frame on stage and not be gripped by genuine concern for her. Two songs in, a lump forms in my throat, which is not the intended effect of Positions, the zippy title track of her 2020 album. As the set around her is engulfed in digital flames, Grande sings about her infinite flexibility vis a vis relationship boundaries and sexual olympics and all I can think is: she looks like a little kid.

I wish I could say that expressing concern for the pop star’s health is helpful – but I know from experience it’s not that simple

The last time I opened X, a photo of Ariana Grande leaning over in a low-cut black dress, clavicle showing, was at the top of the feed. The post read: “hey @grok make Ariana Grande healthy and fat”.

Images of celebrities at their most skeletal regularly rise to the top of social feeds because they generate enormous, dissenting engagement. Social media platforms have made half-hearted efforts to suppress explicit pro-eating disorder content; Instagram and TikTok redirect searches for “thinspo” toward support resources. Yet over the past couple weeks, Grande has sent users into a frenzy that outstrips the platforms’ attempts.

Singer and actor, whose world tour ends next month, told audience in Chicago that she had been quietly planning the move for a long time

Ariana Grande has expanded upon her recent decision to take “a step back from visibility” when her tour ends next month, as a result of what a spokesperson called “endless, ongoing public scrutiny”.

On Monday night during the first show of a three-night run in Chicago, the 33-year-old musician and actor read from notes as she told fans: “The announcement that was made yesterday was not a reactive or impulsive thing. It is something that I had decided to plan quietly, a long time ago.”

Singer was due to reunite with Wicked co-star Jonathan Bailey in London production of Sunday in the Park With George

Ariana Grande has announced plans to take a break from public-facing work after her tour ends due to “endless, ongoing public scrutiny”. She is pulling out of the upcoming London revival of Sunday in the Park With George.

The pop singer was due to appear opposite her Wicked co-star Jonathan Bailey in a new production of Stephen Sondheim’s critically acclaimed musical at the Barbican in 2027.

(Republic)
Casting herself as a flower trampled underfoot, the superstar’s eighth album swaps the ​glitz of her Wicked years ​f​or dark blooms of haunted electronics

‘Tell me who’s to blame?” Ariana Grande asks, exasperated, on the title track of her eighth album, Petal. “Is it the people or myself?” As bleary, fuzzed-up drums threaten to drown her out, this shadowy carousel-ride of a song cycles through more questions than answers. Does her success only make her need more of it? Can her new record of No 1 singles stave off heartbreak? Does Grande’s life shape her music, or does her music shape her life?

Moody and muted, Petal is a riposte to the glitz and sparkle of the pop star’s Oscar-nominated turn in Wicked and the theatre kid energy of her last album, 2024’s Eternal Sunshine. She describes this record as one of “unfiltered rage”, and there’s plenty Grande could be angry about: just this week she filed a lawsuit against hackers who allegedly stole and sold numerous unreleased songs.

Pop star aims to use legal process to name ‘wrongdoers who hide in the shadows and wreak technological havoc with impunity’

Ariana Grande has filed a lawsuit against hackers who she alleges have stolen unreleased music, as well as private photos and video footage, and sold them online.

Grande filed the lawsuit in a Los Angeles court on Monday. It doesn’t name the hackers, who are referred to with the generic name John Doe. Grande will look to have them identified during the legal process “in order to hold them accountable for their invasive and reprehensible conduct”, the lawsuit reads.

Crypto.com Arena, Los Angeles
The pop star’s first tour in seven years brought the house down with emotive ballads and clubby bangers delivered with saucy wit

If faced with the choice to erase one’s most painful memories or live with them forever, à la Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, you’d be forgiven for wanting to wipe them away. On the first night of a five-show run in Los Angeles promoting her 2024 album Eternal Sunshine, Ariana Grande riffed on the idea of memory erasure in an emotive, occasionally zany show that illuminated one of her hardest-won revelations: forgetting her most painful experiences isn’t a bargain she is willing to make.

Grande has weathered tragedy and heartbreak in the public eye since her teenage years, including the death of her former boyfriend Mac Miller and the Manchester bombing that killed 22 fans at one of her concerts in 2017. She’s touched on these devastating events on past lyrics, but Eternal Sunshine marks the moment it all caught up to her. She’s spoken about the astrological concept of her Saturn return as making these challenges impossible to deny; Grande joins a long lineage of musicians, from Gwen Stefani to SZA, who have created music in the wake of this stultifying cosmic event, and the conceptually dazzling show’s 23-song setlist leaned heavily on cuts from the album. The show felt especially momentous given that Grande hadn’t been on tour since 2019, wherein she has since starred in two back-to-back Wicked films and judged The Voice.

Wicked co-star said reactions to the incident, which included suggestions she was Grande’s ‘bodyguard’, reflect an insidious view of Black women

Wicked star Cynthia Erivo has said that reactions to the incident at the Singapore premiere of Wicked: For Good, in which she stepped in to fend off a red-carpet invader who grabbed co-star Ariana Grande, revealed “the insidious nature of how we view Black women” and put her off campaigning for Oscars.

In an interview with Variety, Erivo said that she and Grande were “terrified” when Johnson Wen jumped a barrier at Universal Studios Singapore and rushed towards them. “Nobody moved. Nobody moved. So I moved because my brain went, ‘Get him away! Get him out of here!’ … And what people couldn’t see is that he wouldn’t let go [of Grande]. He wouldn’t let go. So I just kept pushing at him to get him off.”

While the reach from costuming a superstar can be ‘astronomical’, the designers who have done so say material rewards can be harder to predict

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A bikini made from tangled strands of diamantes drapes down the torso of Colombian superstar Shakira. She is singing from a floating pink bubble in the sky. It is the opening frame of the film clip for her 2024 single Puntería, which has amassed more than 78m views on YouTube.

Given the renown of the queen of Latin music, the scene’s Australian links are not immediately apparent. But the ornate bodysuit was a custom design by University of Technology Sydney graduate Caroline Reznik and handmade in her inner Sydney studio.

A costume designed by Caroline Reznik for Doja Cat’s music video for Streets

It was a great year for Sinners and One Battle After Another but films with megastars like George Clooney, Julia Roberts and The Rock all struggled

Last year’s Oscars narrative might have been more about the little films that could, from The Brutalist to Anora to Emilia Pérez, but this year has become closer to the opposite with big-budget films like Sinners, One Battle After Another and Frankenstein all leading the way.

It’s therefore not quite as easy to explain why some of Hollywood’s biggest stars, from Julia Roberts to Dwayne Johnson to George Clooney to Emily Blunt to Adam Sandler, found themselves removed from the race. So here goes …

The night’s big winners include Bad Bunny, Lady Gaga, Kendrick Lamar, Lola Young and Olivia Dean

• Bad Bunny and Kendrick Lamar win big in Grammys ceremony filled with anti-ICE sentiment

• Steven Spielberg becomes an Egot after winning Grammy for John Williams documentary
  

Bad Bunny – Debí Tirar Más Fotos – WINNER
Justin Bieber – Swag
Sabrina Carpenter – Man’s Best Friend
Clipse – Let God Sort Em Out
Lady Gaga – Mayhem
Kendrick Lamar – GNX
Leon Thomas – Mutt
Tyler, the Creator – Chromakopia

The singer will reunite with her Wicked co-star in a revival of the musical inspired by artist Georges Seurat in summer 2027

Wicked co-stars Ariana Grande and Jonathan Bailey are to reunite on stage in Stephen Sondheim’s Pulitzer prize-winning musical Sunday in the Park With George. The production, hotly rumoured and finally announced on Wednesday, will run at the Barbican Centre, London, in summer 2027.

Sunday in the Park With George, which has a book by Sondheim’s long-term collaborator James Lapine, is a tale of two artists. One is inspired by the pointillist Georges Seurat and the other is the character’s great-grandson. On Wednesday, Bailey and Grande shared a photo on Instagram of them sitting in front of the Seurat painting that inspired the production, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, which is on display in the Art Institute of Chicago.

Raye, Deftones and Yungblud do UK tours, Jill Scott returns for more neo-soul, and the classical world gears up to celebrate Hungarian composer György Kurtág at 100

• More from the 2026 culture preview

Seventeen years on from the release of her debut single, Florence Welch finds herself in an intriguingly strong position: while most of her early 00s indie peers are forgotten or in reduced circumstances, she is a major influence on pop, from Ethel Cain to the Last Dinner Party to Chappell Roan. Her recent album Everybody Scream was a strong restatement of her theatrical approach – with more light and shade than you might expect – but it’s on stage that she really comes into her own.
• UK tour begins 6 February at the SSE Arena, Belfast

Katy Perry and Justin Trudeau are the latest A-listers to announce their relationship status online. But there are many ways to do it - from fancy dress to panicked deletions

As a mark of pure intent, going Instagram official has become a firmly entrenched dating marker. To post a picture of you and your new partner on Instagram – on the grid, mind you, not hiding behind the cowardice of a story – is to not only declare that you are in love, but also that you are confident enough in your future to share it with the world.

As such, Katy Perry’s decision to go Instagram official with Justin Trudeau is a classic of the genre. Long dogged by rumours that they might be together, Perry this week debuted a sanctioned image of them both. They are cheek to cheek. They are smiling, albeit in that slightly strained hurry-up-and-take-it way you do when someone decides to shoot a whole reel of photos. Katy Perry is pulling the exact same face she did when she stared into the camera that time she sort of went into space, which is how you know that it is really serious. Good luck to the pair of them.

As Wicked: For Good premieres in the UK, find out just how close its costars are, why so many of the cast are vegan and the truth about Grande’s move away from pop

It doesn’t matter if you’ve never seen the musical, have no interest in the film or are left cold by red carpets: Wicked season is here again, and you will be made to pay attention. After last year’s chaotic press tour for the first instalment, giving rise to some of 2025’s biggest and most bizarre pop culture moments, all eyes are now on the rollout of the sequel Wicked: For Good and the theatre-kid capers of its stars, Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande. Here’s what you need to know.

1. They are still ‘holding space’ for one another …
Last year’s Wicked press tour was an infamous love-in for Grande and Erivo. Such was the intensity of their connection and mutual affection, both were frequently moved to tears in interviews. The enduring image was of Erivo stroking Grande’s index finger in response to a journalist’s unintelligible remark about people “holding space” with the song Defying Gravity. Grande poked fun at her and Erivo’s histrionics, declaring them “insufferable” and “the most annoying” – but their bond still appears unbreakable. At the New York premiere of Wicked: For Good on Monday, Erivo declined to give interviews to preserve her voice. Grande was reported to also be skipping press “in solidarity”, but couldn’t help plugging her costar’s forthcoming projects “as Erivo looked on smiling”, as CNN described the scene. Asked what they were feeling, ahead of the film’s final instalment, Grande spoke for them both: “overwhelming gratitude”. Late on Thursday, she tested positive for Covid.

Bringing her black-belt screen presence to the role of Elphaba, Erivo leads a fine cast in a zingily scored conclusion to the hit origin story

Director Jon M Chu pulls off quite a trick with this manageably proportioned second half to the epic musical prequel-myth inspired by The Wizard of Oz – and based, of course, on the hit stage show. It keeps the rainbow-coloured dreaminess and the Broadway show tune zinginess from part one, and we still get those periodic, surreal pronouncements given by the city’s notables to the diverse folk of Oz, those non-player characters crowding the streets. But now the focus narrows to the main players and their explosive romantic crises, essentially through two interlocking love triangles: Glinda the Good, Elphaba the Wicked and the Wizard – and Glinda, Elphaba and Prince Fiyero, the handsome young military officer with whom both witches are not so secretly in love, as well as possibly having feelings for each other.

Jeff Goldblum is excellent as the Wizard, who pretty much becomes the Darth Vader of Oz: a slippery carnival huckster who is realising that his seedy charm is corroding his soul. Jonathan Bailey pivots to a much more serious, less campy, more passionate Prince and Ariana Grande is, as ever, delicate and doll-like as Glinda, though with less opportunity for comedy. But the superstar among equals is Cynthia Erivo, bringing her black-belt screen presence to the role of Elphaba, and revealing a new vulnerability and maturity. Elsewhere, Marissa Bode returns as Nessarose, Elphaba’s wheelchair-using half-sister; Ethan Slater is Boq, the Munchkin working as her servant; and Michelle Yeoh brings stately sweetness to the role of the Wizard’s private secretary Madame Morrible.