Ariana Grande Plans a Lighter Tour and a Brighter Outlook

Ariana Grande is not shrinking herself, but she is shrinking her tour schedule. In a fresh and surprisingly playful conversation with Nicole Kidman for Interview magazine, the superstar talked about why her upcoming Eternal Sunshine world tour in 2026 will look a little different from the high-speed marathons she used to run.

Grande explained that this time around, she is choosing a gentler pace. “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. “It’s not that small, but it’s at least half of what I used to do.”

Even though the tour is shorter, she is not disappointed. In fact, she seems thrilled. “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 shared that 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.’ ”

Playing Glinda in Wicked and Wicked: For Good seems to have done more than help her hit high notes. It helped her find strength in her identity again. “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 admitted that she used to take comments about her and her work very 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, rather than spiraling, she has a calmer routine. Grande said that if something gets under her skin, she simply does “a meditation and move on.”

The Eternal Sunshine tour begins in June 2026 in Oakland, California, and will wrap up in London by late August. With fewer stops and a clearer mind, Grande seems ready to shine in a way that feels new even for