Ariana Grande is scaling back, at least when it comes to her next major tour.
In a conversation with Nicole Kidman for Interview magazine published on Nov. 24, the actress and pop star opened up about her plans for the upcoming Eternal Sunshine world tour. During their discussion, Grande revealed that the 2026 run will feature fewer stops than her past tours.
“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, shared, noting, “It’s not that small, but it’s at least half of what I used to do.”
Even with its reduced size, the singer said she’s “excited” about what’s ahead.
“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.
Grande also said she has spent considerable time revisiting her creative process. “A lot of time redoing” her “system when it comes to making music,” she shared. “With Eternal Sunshine, that felt like a very different experience for me.
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 added that her time playing Glinda in Wicked and Wicked: For Good helped her rebuild her sense of self as a pop performer.
“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 said.
Grande also reflected on the early days of her fame, admitting that adjusting to sudden visibility came with unexpected challenges.
“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.”
The Grammy winner acknowledged that she once struggled with taking public commentary about her and her work too 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?”
Now, when something bothers her, Grande said she opts for “a meditation and move on.”
The Eternal Sunshine tour is set to kick off in June 2026 in Oakland, Calif., and will finish in London by late August.