On Saturday night (June 6) in Oakland, Calif., nearly 20,000 fans learned that good things really do come to those who wait.

The evening kicked off Ariana Grande’s long-awaited, highly-anticipated return to touring after a seven year hiatus. Grande last traveled the globe in 2019 on her Sweetener World Tour that spanned 100 shows. The trek was the biggest of her career at the time, with a gross of $146 million and 1.3 million tickets sold according to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore.

Since then, Grande has released not just one album but two — with a third on the way. (Petal arrives July 31, amid the tour.) So, naturally, when she announced her Eternal Sunshine Tour last August, excitement — and demand — was at an all-time high. Especially considering that this outing is significantly scaled back, by comparison, spanning just 41 dates across a limited number of cities.

Since 2019, Grande released Positions in 2020 and Eternal Sunshine in 2024, both of which were Grammy nominated for best pop vocal album. She famously starred in Wicked and Wicked: For Good as Glinda, a role for which she was Oscar nominated. And still to come, in addition to releasing a new album this summer, she will appear in the forthcoming Focker-In-Law and in a West End revival of Sunday in the Park with George. And those are just the things we know about.

Given Grande’s schedule and expanding stardom, seeing her back on stage felt more special than ever. And not only because, as one user on X put it, she didn’t have to tour, but because despite the outing’s namesake, this won’t last forever.

In fact, Ari even teased this could be her last tour for some time, telling Amy Poehler on the Good Hang podcast in November, “I don’t want to say anything definitive. I do know that I’m very excited to do this small tour, but I think it might not happen again for a long, long, long, long, long time. I’m going to give it my all and it’s going to be beautiful. I think that’s why I’m doing it because I’m like, ‘One last hurrah!’”

And whether that holds true, night one had the same energy as the last first day of school. Grande was equal parts composed and silly, dangerous and delicate, confident and contemplative — a vibrant spectrum of being that not only comes from experience, but from embracing that experience.

And that’s exactly what Eternal Sunshine celebrates: Ariana in all her forms. Past, present and future. So even if her tour can’t last forever, its message surely will — because in the end, what’s more eternally radiant than loving exactly where you are because you’re proud of where you’ve been? And perhaps even more excited for where you’re going.

Below, find the five best moments from Grande’s opening night of her Eternal Sunshine Tour.

As any Ari fan knows too well, there was a lot to catch up on with the launch of the star’s Eternal Sunshine tour. Since Grande’s last trek — her mega 2019 Sweetener World Tour — she has released not one but two albums (Positions, Eternal Sunshine) with a third on its way (Petal, which arrives during tour on July 31). Plus, there was her 2025 Eternal Sunshine Deluxe: Brighter Days Ahead project that included six new songs — a handful of which made their way into the opening night setlist.

And while the show largely focused on Positions and Eternal Sunshine — rightfully so — the pop star included many of her biggest career-spanning hits as well; in fact, every album was represented except for Sweetener. But hey, that album had its time to shine. (Though, Thank U, Next hits including the title track and “7 Rings,” both of which were performed on the Sweetener World Tour, made their way into the Eternal Sunshine show as well).

The set was divided into five sections, with section three including a trio of pop bangers back-to-back-to-back (“One Last Time,” “Rain On Me” and “Break Free”) and section four following “Dangerous Woman” with early fan favorite “Honeymoon Avenue.” The last section featured a fake-out finale of “Into You,” before Grande live debuted Petal’s lead single, “Hate That I Made You Love Me,” which so far is the only preview of the new album (she didn’t opt to perform anything unreleased on night one, at least).

With so much anticipation for the Eternal Sunshine Tour, Billboard speculated what Ari’s show might look like back in May, crafting this dream set list. But now, we know for sure — and it’s a dream indeed.

See the set list for night one of Grande’s Eternal Sunshine Tour below.

The 24th edition of the Primavera Sound festival — coming a full quarter-century after a much more modest version of the festival initially debuted in 2001 — went down this week in Barcelona. While a handful of acts (including buzzy indie-rockers Wet Leg) officially kicked off the fest on Wednesday (June 3), and a few more (ending with legendary house DJ Carl Cox) will see it out on Sunday (June 7), the crux of the festival transpired over June 4-6, with three days of genre-and-globe-spanning artists adding up to one of the richest festival experiences currently available anywhere on the map.

Unfortunately, the first of those three main days got largely washed out, as the rains came in early evening and lasted till early morning. The weather resulted in messy conditions and great confusion, with poor communication between organizers, staffers and attendees, as nearly all the stages were at least temporarily suspended, and the night’s main-stage acts saw their sets suspended and ultimately canceled — including the trio of Wednesday headliners, U.K. trip-hop greats Massive Attack, U.S. pop-rap star Doja Cat and Spain rhythmic hitmaker Bad Gyal. (Several of the side stages ultimately reopened, with plenty of strong options remaining for those who stuck around.)

However, the festival rebounded with a drier and significantly less dramatic Friday and Saturday, as the second and third full days went on essentially without a hitch, bringing the stunning variety and consistently high quality of artists for which the festival has become renowned. Addison Rae, The Cure and Skirllex headlined the Estrealla Damm and Revolut main stages on Friday, while My Bloody Valentine, The xx and Gorillaz closed them out on Saturday. And the final full day also included a special treat on the Occident stage courtesy of pop superstar Olivia Rodrigo, who helped erase whatever memories still lingered of Friday’s disappointment with an exhilarating 11-song surprise set, including a returning guest from the previous night’s spate of headliners.

Below, see 10 of our favorite moments from the three (well, two and two-thirds) full days of Primavera Sound Barcelona 2026.

“SURPRISE, BARCELONA!” Olivia Rodrigo proclaimed after the first song of her Primavera Sound 2026 set on Saturday night (June 6). Well… yes and no. Yes, Rodrigo’s performance was an unannounced part of the festival until just hours before her 10:20 p.m. local-time performance, with the pop-rock superstar revealing the news herself on her Instagram as the fest’s third full day was kicking into gear on Saturday evening.

But no, it wasn’t totally a surprise: Rodrigo had been hinting at a Primavera appearance on her socials earlier in the weekend, and eagle-eyed festival attendees noted a conspicuous gap in the Occident stage schedule for Saturday night where a surprise guest could have easily slotted in. And at a press conference earlier that day, the festival organizers even confirmed that a surprise set was in the offing for the fest’s final full day from a major artist, though they played coy about the exact who, where and when.

Beyond that, even, Rodrigo’s appearance made total sense for her in both short-term promotion and long-term legacy senses. Rodrigo has a new album to promote, of course, with third LP You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love arriving this Friday (June 12), and a surprise appearance at one of the globe’s buzziest and most-revered fests to debut a new song — one of the few moves she hasn’t already deployed on this promo cycle — is a great way for her to stay top-of-mind heading into her release week.

And Primavera is one of the few remaining festivals that a pop star like Rodrigo can claim to have “always wanted to play” and actually have it make sense that it’d be true. Aside from its unique location by the water in Barcelona, Primavera has remained intentional and discerning enough in its lineup curation over the years that an appearance there still connotes a certain level of cred. The fest maintains a continuity of cool across the generations, to the point where not only can a contemporary pop star like Addison Rae and a 50-year-old alt-rock band like The Cure appear back-to-back on the Estrella Damm main stage on Friday night and have it feel logical, but Rodrigo can make a surprise Saturday appearance that coincides with a competing set from ’90s shoegaze legends My Bloody Valentine, and it can result in a true conflict of interest for a considerable percentage of the attendees. (This writer may have been among them.)

But speaking of The Cure, there was of course another reason why Rodrigo’s appearance at Primavera Sound 2026 made particular sense, as was revealed 2/3 of the way through her set: She was about to reach the final level of her recent artistic infatuation with Robert Smith & Co. The dalliance began last summer, with Rodrigo bringing Smith out to perform signature Cure hit “Just Like Heaven” with him at Glastonbury, and has continued in various forms through the first two Pretty Sad singles, and now reaches its summation with “What’s Wrong With Me,” the quasi-surprise Rodrigo-Smith duet debuted by the duo during the former’s quasi-surprise performance. If anyone had remaining doubts about Rodrigo’s alt-rock bonafides, such an cosign from one of the genre’s godfathers at a modern indie institution like Primavera just might finally do the trick.

Of course, the Primavera set itself also likely helped there. With only 50 minutes on a relatively smaller stage to work with, Rodrigo and her band stripped away most of the pop star-level production and theatrics — as well as most of the ballads — of her usual show, for a leaner, meaner setlist and sound that focused on her ability to rock any stage she’s on with the high-kicking athleticism of Gwen Stefani, the emotional intensity of Hayley Williams and the overall magnetism of both. You couldn’t quite say this was her indie club set — even in such relatively tight quarters, her natural pop star luminescence always shines through a little too bright for anyone to confuse her with, say, Karly Hartzman of Wednesday. But it did feel special to such a big-scale arena-filler in a slightly scrappier state, and even the slow songs Rodrigo performed on Saturday punched with a little extra ferocity.

Whether or not her set came as a total surprise to fans in attendance, it won’t be one they forget any time soon, and may even go on to be one of the moments that ends up defining this album era of Rodrigo’s. Here were the five most memorable moments from Rodrigo’s Primavera sound performance, as well as the full setlist at the end.