After 149 shows in 53 cities across five continents, more than 10 million fans and several records shattered, Taylor Swift has concluded her world-spanning Eras Tour.
The US pop star played the final show of her tour in rain-soaked Vancouver, where she told her audience that these shows had been “the most exciting, powerful, electrifying, intense, most challenging” experience of her life.
Swift, 34, began the Eras Tour all the way back in March last year, at the State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona. In a five-star review for The Independent, critic Kelsey Barnes noted how the singer seemed “as liberated as she’s ever been” as she delivered a 44-song setlist spanning three hours and 15 minutes.
The Grammy-winning artist would go on to do this a further 148 times, flanked by a dance crew whose members became stars in their own right, and incorporating elaborate staging, pyrotechnics, confetti, dance routines and several costume changes.
In Vancouver, Swift told the audience how the “lasting legacy” of the tour would be the friendship bracelets fans began making, inspired by a lyric from her song “You’re On Your Own Kid”.
Since that first show, hundreds of thousands of handmade friendship bracelets have traded hands, including by Swift’s celebrity audience members such as Sir Paul McCartney, Selena Gomez, Lupita Nyong’o, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Nicole Kidman and Reese Witherspoon.
“I never thought that writing one line about friendship bracelets would have you guys all making [them], making friends and bringing joy to each other,” Swift said.
“This is the lasting legacy of this tour. I couldn’t be more proud of you.”
Swift’s tour has made international headlines not least for becoming the first tour in history to surpass $1bn (£786m) in ticket sales.
At its conclusion, The New York Times reports that this figure stands at $2,077,618,725 in ticket sales, confirmed by her production company, Taylor Swift Touring. It is estimated that merchandise will have brought in an extra $400m (£314m).
Such was the demand for tickets that it caused Ticketmaster’s systems to crash, prompting a hearing into the company’s practices, during which US senators ripped into executives using Swift’s own lyrics.
In January last year, Democrat Richard Blumenthal, from Connecticut, told Joe Berchtold – president of Ticketmaster’s parent company Live Nation – he had accomplished the “stunning achievement” of unifying both parties behind a common cause.
Using lyrics from Swift’s 2022 hit Anti-Hero, the 76-year-old added: “Ticketmaster ought to look in the mirror and say: ‘I’m the problem. It’s me.’”
The Eras Tour also managed to spark a diplomatic row in March this year after Singapore guaranteed a lucrative six-night residency from Swift, at the expense of its disgruntled neighbours in Thailand and the Philippines.
Pop and politics overlapped once again in August, when Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer was gifted Swift tickets worth £4,000 while on the campaign trail ahead of the general election.
Then, in October, reports emerged that the singer’s mother, Andrea Swift, pushed for a special police escort in the wake of a foiled alleged terror plot in Vienna, Austria, which led to Swift cancelling three shows, which were not rescheduled.
The Metropolitan Police was said to have felt pressured after talks with home secretary Yvette Cooper and London mayor Sadiq Khan about protection for the popstar at two of her Wembley Eras Tour gigs.
A Met Police spokesperson said at the time: “The Met is operationally independent.
“Our decision-making is based on a thorough assessment of threat, risk and harm and the circumstances of each case.
“It is our longstanding position that we don’t comment on the specific details of protective security arrangements.”
Yet amid the political squabbling, Swift herself has earnt praise for her generosity during this tour, donating hundreds of thousands of pounds to food banks in the cities where she performed.
Throughout the tour, she also made sure to keep plenty of surprises in store for each show, from “secret songs” appearing on her setlist for one night only, to surprise guests.
At her eighth and final Wembley show, she brought out British pop star Florence Welch for a rendition of “Florida!”, from her 11th album The Tortured Poets Department.
She also invited her longtime collaborator Jack Antonoff on to the stage for an acoustic duet of 2019’s “Death by a Thousand Cuts” and 2017’s “Getaway Car”, both of which were co-written and produced with the Bleacher frontman.
Her boyfriend Travis Kelce, tight end for the Kansas City Chiefs, has attended many of her shows since they began dating in summer 2023. But fans were shocked when he turned up on stage as the circus ringleader during a skit that preceded her TTPD song, “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart”.
Swift said after the show that she was still “cracking up” and “swooning” over the American football star’s cameo: “Never going to forget these shows,” she wrote.
Much has changed in Swift’s personal life since that first concert in Arizona. She is believed to have split from her boyfriend of six years, British actor Joe Alwyn, right around the time the tour was beginning, which many fans believed was the cause of some particularly emotional performances of songs such as “Champagne Problems”.
The Eras tour comprised a number of hits believed to have been inspired by Alwyn, including the title track from her 2019 album Lover. Alwyn also collaborated with Swift on her albums Folklore, Evermore and Midnights under the pseudonym William Bowery.
A few weeks after news of the split was reported, Swift briefly dated The 1975 frontman Matty Healy, to the dismay of some of her fans who objected to the British singer’s string of controversies. They were reported to have split after just a couple of weeks.
Swift then wrong-footed her audience when she released The Tortured Poets Department in April 2024, many songs on which seemed to be inspired by Healy instead of Alwyn, including “But Daddy I Love Him” – a tongue-in-cheek anthem about being with someone others deem “wrong” for her.
Others appeared to skewer Healy for misleading her about the nature of the relationship, such as “Fortnights”, “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived”, “Down Bad” and “The Black Dog”.
But Swift also seemingly addressed the aftermath of her split from Alwyn on “So Long, London”, which she performed for the first time at her final Wembley show.
She has released three albums during the Eras Tour: her re-recorded versions of Speak Now and 1989, as part of her ongoing mission to reclaim her masters, and TTPD, which has been nominated for a number of awards at the 2025 Grammys. Her three-hour concert film, Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour, was released in October last year and sold around $93m in tickets during its opening weekend, later landing on Disney+ through an exclusive streaming deal.
In December 2023, her staggering achievements in the music industry were acknowledged by Time magazine, who named Swift its Person of the Year, as she also acknowledged her many highs and lows. “Make no mistake,” she told the publication in a rare interview, “my career was taken away from me. I’ve been raised up and down the flagpole of public opinion so many times in the last 20 years. I’ve been given a tiara, then had it taken away.”
In that same interview, she revealed in her Time interview that she first began thinking about those artistic transitions fans saw during her Eras Tour back in 2009. “I realised every record label was actively working to try to replace me,” she said. “I thought instead, I’d replace myself first with a new me. It’s harder to hit a moving target.”
She also revealed the gruelling lengths she went to in order to prepare herself for the physical demands of the show, training for dix months with a cardio regime that involved singing her entire setlist while running on a treadmill.
What’s next for Swift? She will celebrate her 35th birthday on 13 December – fans in Vancouver serenaded her with a chorus of “Happy Birthday”. Many believed she would use her last concert to announce her next career move, with a “Taylor’s Version” of her sixth album, Reputation, at the top of their list.
However, Swift chose to end the show on its own merit, with a set spanning 18 years worth of songwriting.
“I want to thank every single one of you for being a part of the most thrilling chapter of my entire life to date – my beloved Eras Tour,” she said as she prepared to play the final song of the set, “Karma”.
As the final notes rang out, she embraced her dancers as they left the stage together.
