Katherine Jenkins

Neath, the Royal Academy, and a million-pound signature

Katherine Jenkins was born on 29 June 1980 in Neath, south Wales. She entered the Royal Academy of Music in London at 17 and left with honours and a music teacher's diploma, a training more conventional than the career that followed. Rather than the opera-house route, she went into the recording industry's classical-crossover lane at the moment it was commercially wide open.

The deal that launched her was a six-album contract with Universal Classics and Jazz, reported at around £1 million and described at the time as the most lucrative in British classical recording history. It was an unusual bet on an unproven graduate, and it paid off quickly. Her debut, Premiere, arrived in 2004 and made her the fastest-selling mezzo-soprano recorded to that point. Second Nature followed in the same year, making her the first British classical crossover artist to place two number-one albums inside a single twelve-month stretch.

The albums, and the numbers attached to them

Between 2004 and 2008 she released seven studio albums and six of them reached number one in the UK classical chart, together shifting more than four million copies. Living a Dream (2005), Serenade (2006), Rejoice (2007) and Sacred Arias (2008) ran out at a pace closer to a pop schedule than a classical one. The Classical BRIT Awards gave her Album of the Year in consecutive years, 2005 and 2006 — the first woman to take it twice in a row.

Her label history since has moved in a loop. She left Universal for Warner Bros, releasing Believe in 2009 and Daydream in 2011, with the festive This Is Christmas appearing on Reprise in 2012. She then signed to Decca, where Home Sweet Home (2014), Celebration (2016) and Guiding Light (2018) followed. Cinema Paradiso, a film-music collection, came in July 2020, trailed at the end of that year by Christmas Spectacular from the Royal Albert Hall.

The industry tallies kept pace. In August 2017 she was named the best-selling classical artist of the previous 25 years in the UK, and by 2019 she had become the first classical artist to reach 13 number-one albums. Since Cinema Paradiso she has worked in singles rather than albums, the most recent being Golden in 2025.

Stage, screen and the work beside the singing

The concert platform has never been her only stage. In 2007 she toured Viva la Diva with the dancer Darcey Bussell, a hybrid show that paired the two disciplines. A decade later she took a proper acting-and-singing role, playing Julie Jordan in English National Opera's Carousel in 2017, directed by Lonny Price and opposite Alfie Boe — the closest she has come to committing to a full theatrical run rather than a concert programme.

She has also appeared in film, with credits including Dream Horse and Minamata. Her public-occasion work runs alongside all of it: she recorded God Save the King for the BBC in September 2022, following the death of Queen Elizabeth II, and she is Lady Sponsor of the Royal Navy frigate HMS Cardiff, a role tied to two decades of performing for the armed forces. She was appointed OBE in the 2014 New Year Honours for services to music and charity.

Outside music she owns Cygnet, a Welsh-made gin launched in June 2023 and extended into canned gin and tonic in March 2024. She married the American artist and film-maker Andrew Levitas at Hampton Court Palace on 27 September 2014; they have a daughter born in September 2015 and a son born in April 2018.

Standing in 2026

Her position now is less about chart placings than durability, and she has begun talking about the cost of it. In an interview published on 26 September 2026 she described the line of questioning she faced early on about childcare, the kind rarely put to male musicians, and recalled a journalist telling her the paper would eventually turn on her. She also pushed back on the assumption that she was merely the face of the gin rather than the person who built it, and said she finds it grating that ambition read differently when attached to a woman. Her stated next ambition is voice work in animation. One story she tells with more pleasure: a classical reading of a Dolly Parton song that Parton approved of, leading to a backstage meeting at the O2.

The practical development is the tour. The 25 Year Anniversary Tour is her first in five years, an 18-date run through the UK and Ireland between 2 and 27 October 2026. It opens at the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester on 2 October and closes at the Waterfront Hall in Belfast on 27 October, taking in Liverpool Philharmonic Hall, the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff, Brighton Dome, the Cliffs Pavilion in Southend, Bournemouth Pavilion, New Theatre Oxford, Symphony Hall in Birmingham, the London Palladium on 14 October, York Barbican, Venue Cymru in Llandudno, The Glasshouse in Gateshead, Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, the Princess Theatre in Torquay, Aylesbury Waterside, The Anvil in Basingstoke and the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre in Dublin on 25 October.

The cellist on the bill

On 5 August 2026 the tour's special guest was confirmed as Jodok Cello — the Swiss player Jodok Vuille, who has built an audience of more than 18 million social-media followers filming himself performing outdoors, frequently barefoot, in mountain landscapes. He built the instrument he plays himself, spending 568 hours on it as a school project, and has worked with Andrea Bocelli, Il Divo and Plácido Domingo Jr. The October run is his first live appearance in the UK.

The pairing is not just a support slot. The two have recorded a new reading of the Flower Duet from Lakmé, setting Jenkins's voice against solo cello rather than a second soprano, and it forms part of the shows. Vuille said that from the first note they played together it felt natural — a straightforward endorsement, but one that signals the arrangement is built for the two of them rather than bolted on.