The Weeknd

Three songs, no name, December 2010

Abel Makkonen Tesfaye was born on 16 February 1990 in the Toronto area, the son of Ethiopian immigrants who separated shortly after his birth, and was raised in Scarborough by his mother and grandmother. He left school at seventeen and moved to Parkdale — the move supplied the stage name, with the final 'e' dropped to avoid a trademark clash with a Canadian pop-rock band. He began putting music on YouTube anonymously in August 2009.

In December 2010 he uploaded three songs with no face and no biography attached. Drake acknowledged them in a blog post, and the hunt for whoever had made them began. The debut mixtape House of Balloons followed on 21 March 2011 and was shortlisted for that year's Polaris Music Prize; two more free tapes arrived before the year was out. Republic signed him in September 2012, the compilation Trilogy collected the three mixtapes on 13 November 2012, and the first album proper, Kiss Land, arrived on 10 September 2013.

From the edge of radio to the middle of it

Beauty Behind the Madness (28 August 2015) moved the murk of the mixtapes into the charts, and Starboy (25 November 2016) finished the job. After Hours (20 March 2020) produced the song that still ends every night of the current tour, and Dawn FM (7 January 2022) built an album around the conceit of a radio station broadcasting to the dead.

Hurry Up Tomorrow, released on 31 January 2025 through XO and Republic, closed that run as the third panel of a trilogy. At 84 minutes it debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 with 490,500 album-equivalent units — his fifth chart-topper and his biggest opening week — and went to number one in sixteen countries. Critics were respectful rather than converted: a Metacritic score of 75 from eleven reviews, with praise for the production and scope and complaints that the emotional register stayed shallow. Its singles were Timeless with Playboi Carti (27 September 2024), São Paulo with Anitta (30 October 2024) and Cry for Me (4 February 2025).

A film of the same name, directed by Trey Edward Shults and co-starring Jenna Ortega and Barry Keoghan, opened on 16 May 2025 and marked Tesfaye's acting debut. It was poorly received, and the gap between the album's commercial result and the film's reception is the clearest indication so far of where his audience will and will not follow him.

The retirement that was called off in public

Tesfaye said in 2023 that he intended to 'kill the Weeknd', and for the next two years the line held: Hurry Up Tomorrow would be the final record under the name, after which the work would carry his own.

He abandoned it on stage. At a show in Solna, outside Stockholm, in early August 2026 he told the crowd he would 'be here forever with you' and that 'I tested retirement a little bit, and I don't like the way it feels'. In an interview with GQ Hong Kong published on 17 September 2026 he put it flatly: 'I had a glimpse of what retirement looks like, and it isn't for me. The Weeknd isn't going anywhere.' The name change is off with it. What he describes instead is hibernation — taking one project at a time rather than running an album, a film and a stadium tour at once — and he claims he has not felt this inspired since the start of his career. During the Wembley run in August he spoke from the stage about coming back for ten nights at the same venue.

The numbers behind the final leg

After Hours til Dawn opened in Philadelphia on 14 July 2022 and has run, in stops and starts, ever since: North America in 2022, Europe and Latin America in 2023, two Australian cities in 2024, a 42-show North American return in 2025, and Latin America, Europe and Asia across 2026. When the closing Asia dates were announced on 11 May 2026, the tour had passed one billion dollars across 153 shows, making Tesfaye the highest-grossing male solo touring artist on record; the announcement put ticket sales at 7.5 million. It is produced by Live Nation, and he has given more than 8.5 million dollars to the XO Humanitarian Fund and Global Citizen, with a share of tour proceeds going to the FIFA Global Citizen Education Fund.

The attendance records sit alongside that total. London Stadium drew 159,574 over two nights in July 2023; Wembley logged 89,179 at a traditional-stage show in August 2023; MetLife Stadium took more than 162,831 across three nights in June 2025; and the 2026 European leg included six consecutive sell-outs at the Stade de France. Away from the box office, he became the first artist past 100 million monthly Spotify listeners on 27 February 2023 and, by 30 December 2025, the first with thirty songs above a billion streams each. He headlined the Super Bowl LV halftime show on 7 February 2021 as the first Canadian solo artist to do so, reportedly putting seven million dollars of his own money into the production, and his shelf holds four Grammys, twenty Billboard Music Awards, twenty-two Junos, six American Music Awards and a Latin Grammy.

What the staging has become

The production has been rebuilt roughly every leg. The 2022 shows used LED screens showing a ruined Toronto and an inflatable moon; in 2023 the screens gave way to physical chrome sculptures of the CN Tower and the Empire State Building with a Hajime Sorayama robot at the centre. The 2026 version is the largest of them: a 40-foot gold Sorayama android rotating at the middle of a crucifix-shaped walkway, golden ruins and burnt landmarks — St Paul's Cathedral among them on the London dates — lasers, flamethrowers and around thirty cloaked and masked dancers. Tesfaye opens the set masked and unmasks part-way through.

Reviews of the European leg were strong with a consistent reservation. Rolling Stone UK's Nick Reilly gave the first Wembley night, on 15 August 2026 in front of more than 60,000, four stars, admiring the showmanship and the cinematic finish but noting that abbreviated songs tipped into 'mega-mix territory' and that the show was 'perhaps slick to a level where you wonder if it begins to lose a level of connection'. Writing for the Evening Standard, Gemma Samways made the same point about songs reduced to snippets while calling Starboy a show-stealer and concluding that 'the mainstream remains all the more weird and wonderful for Tesfaye's presence'. Contactmusic's Ben Jolley gave the 19 August finale, in front of 90,000, nine out of ten, singling out the a cappella passages where Tesfaye conducts the stadium, and quoted a fan who attended all five nights calling them the best of his life.

Where the tour is now

The Asia run that ends the whole thing began at the Belluna Dome in Saitama on 20 September 2026 and continued to Jakarta International Stadium on 26 and 27 September. Singapore's National Stadium follows on 2 and 3 October, then Goyang Stadium in Seoul on 7 and 8 October, Rajamangala Stadium in Bangkok on 11 October, Kai Tak Stadium in Hong Kong on 30 and 31 October, and TM Stadium National in Kuala Lumpur on 4 November, where the tour stops.

Support changes by territory. Anitta opened the Latin American dates in April and May; Playboi Carti and Prince 85 handled Europe, with Carti joining Tesfaye on two songs in the main set; the Asia leg has the Japanese hip-hop duo Creepy Nuts on most nights and the DJ ¥ØU$UK€ ¥UK1MAT$U at selected shows. After Kuala Lumpur there is no announced release and no announced tour — only the stated intention to work on one thing at a time, and the ten Wembley nights he has talked about wanting.