The Weeknd abandons retirement plans: 'Imma be here forever with you'

Fans of The Weeknd can breathe a sigh of relief. Canadian singer Abel Tesfaye, who has been releasing music under his well known stage name since 2011, has officially reversed his plans to retire that name. At the opening night of a three concert run in Stockholm, Sweden, he told the crowd he had changed his mind. "I'll never disappear. I love this too much to ever disappear. I tested retirement a little bit, and I don't like the way it feels. Imma be here forever with you," he said, with footage from fans showing him delivering those last two sentences in an almost sung tone.

The announcement that The Weeknd might step away from his alter ego came in early 2025. In an interview with Variety, Tesfaye explained at the time that his sixth studio album Hurry Up Tomorrow, released in January 2025, would serve as the closing chapter of a trilogy that began with After Hours in 2020 and continued with Dawn FM. Social media posts reading "The Weeknd, The End is Near, 8 beautiful chapters in this story" had already hinted that something was shifting. In that interview he said he wanted to retire the name once his current commitments were wrapped up. "It's a headspace I've gotta get into that I just don't have any more desire for," he said. "You have a persona, but then you have the competition of it all. It becomes this rat race: more accolades, more success, more shows, more albums, more awards and more No. 1s. It never ends until you end it."

Tesfaye also pointed to a particularly emotional performance in 2022 at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles, where he lost his voice during a rendition of Can't Feel My Face and had to cut the concert short after just four songs. A doctor found nothing physically wrong, and Tesfaye interpreted the incident as a possible mental signal. "Don't overstay at the party, you can end it now and live a happy life," he said about it. He did stress at the time that he had no intention of stopping music altogether, but that he had fully exhausted what he could do as The Weeknd. "No one's gonna do the Weeknd better than me, and I'm not gonna do it better than what it is right now," he added.

Now, midway through his ongoing After Hours Til Dawn tour, that reasoning appears to have faded into the background. The European leg of the tour had already kicked off in Copenhagen and Manchester before Stockholm, and continues with five nights at Wembley Stadium in London on August 14, 15, 16, 18 and 19, followed by two shows at Croke Park in Dublin, Ireland, on August 22 and 23. Dates in Asia are scheduled after that, including stops in Tokyo, Jakarta, Singapore, Seoul, Bangkok, Hong Kong and Kuala Lumpur. The After Hours Til Dawn tour has since grown into the highest grossing tour ever by a male solo artist, pulling in over a billion dollars in revenue and selling more than 7.5 million tickets.

The production itself is also seriously impressive. A forty foot tall golden sculpture designed by Japanese artist Hajime Sorayama serves as the centrepiece of the stage design, and is said to be the largest commissioned artwork ever created for a live concert production. Golden ruins, immersive visuals, lasers and flames round out the spectacle. Tesfaye has also tied the tour to a charitable cause, with a portion of every ticket sold going toward educational access for underprivileged children and food aid through a partnership with Global Citizen. Through the XO Humanitarian Fund and Global Citizen, the tour has already generated over 8.5 million dollars in donations.

For Dutch and Belgian fans who may have been hoping for a farewell tour or were worried The Weeknd was about to vanish, his words in Stockholm make things clear: Tesfaye is carrying on under his familiar name and has no plans to walk away from the stage.