Ariana Grande launches first tour in seven years with Oakland comeback

Ariana Grande’s first tour in seven years opened as both a concert and a statement of intent. At Oakland Arena, Grande launched the Eternal Sunshine Tour on June 6 with a set that leaned on her 2024 album while reaching back across the pop catalog that made her one of the industry’s most dependable live draws.

The opening night mattered because it was bigger than a single arena show. It came after years in which Grande’s focus shifted toward acting, including work tied to Jon M. Chu’s Wicked film projects, and it immediately signaled that live performance is again central to how she wants to be seen. Grande followed the show by thanking fans on social media the next morning and saying she missed them, a small gesture that fit the larger message of a comeback built on loyalty, scale and reinvention.

The demand was visible in the numbers. Local reporting described the Oakland opener as the first of three sold-out shows at the venue, and Billboard said nearly 20,000 fans were in attendance. The official schedule shows that Oakland was only the first stop in a 41-show trek produced by Live Nation, with multiple-night runs planned in Los Angeles, Austin, Sunrise, Atlanta, Brooklyn, Boston, Montreal, Chicago and London. The tour’s final stretch is especially notable: official listings show nine London shows at The O2, making this a transatlantic booking rather than a short victory lap.

Grande’s setlist underlined why the rollout reads as a career reset rather than a routine album cycle. Opening-night reports included “thank u, next” in full for the first time since 2019, along with “One Last Time,” “Break Free,” “Dangerous Woman,” “yes, and?,” “we can’t be friends (wait for your love)” and “eternal sunshine.” That mix gave longtime fans the nostalgia they came for while reinforcing the identity of the new era.

The scale of the return also stands out against Grande’s last major tour. The Sweetener World Tour ran from March 18 to December 22, 2019, played 97 dates and drew 1.3 million fans. This new run, with tickets going on sale in September 2025 and Oakland dates also set for June 9 and June 10, suggests that Grande is not simply touring again. She is reintroducing herself as a live headliner at full scale.