Harry Styles recalls X Factor audition at Wembley as residency begins

Harry Styles used the first night of his Wembley Stadium residency to trace the line from a teenage TV audition to one of the biggest concert runs in the venue’s history. Standing before a sold-out crowd in London, Styles recalled that his sister first brought him to the city for his X Factor audition at nearby Wembley Arena, and he thanked his mother, Anne Styles, for secretly signing him up for the show when he was 16.

That 2010 audition became the hinge point for the rest of his career. Styles said it led to One Direction, the boy band formed after he first appeared on the program as a soloist, placing him on a path that would eventually carry him from reality television to a 12-night stadium residency. The opening show also made clear how much that pipeline still matters, not just to Styles’ career but to the broader pop economy that now stretches from British talent shows to global tours and fan-driven branding.

The original audition sequence, now widely remembered in extended form, began with Train’s “Hey, Soul Sister.” Simon Cowell then asked Styles to sing without music, prompting him to move into Stevie Wonder’s “Isn’t She Lovely.” The performance, first broadcast in 2010, helped set in motion the formation of One Direction, whose members also included Liam Payne, Louis Tomlinson, Zayn Malik and Niall Horan.

Styles’ Wembley run began on June 12, 2026 and is scheduled to continue through July 4, 2026. The 12-night stand is billed as the longest single-artist run in Wembley Stadium history, surpassing Coldplay’s 10 nights in 2025 and Taylor Swift’s eight in 2024. Around 80,000 fans were expected at each show.

The concerts are part of his Together, Together global residency and support his fourth studio album, Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally., which was released on March 6, 2026. On opening night, Styles’ remarks about his early days drew screams from the crowd, a response that matched the scene outside and inside the stadium, where fans arrived in sequins, feather boas, waistcoats, ties and home-made signs. The spectacle underscored how a moment in a Wembley Arena audition room evolved into a mass cultural event at Wembley Stadium, with fan communities now as central to the story as the performer himself.