Ariana Grande attends the 83rd Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton on January 11, 2026. Grande launched her Eternal Sunshine tour at Oakland Arena with a 23-song set before two more Bay Area dates.
Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic/Getty Images
Ariana Grande’s first headlining tour in nearly seven years started in the Bay Area, not far from where her last one ended.
The pop star returned to the concert stage Saturday, June 6, at Oakland Arena, opening her Eternal Sunshine tour with a 23-song production built around her latest album and the complicated business of moving on.
Ariana Grande: 7:30 p.m. Tuesday-Wednesday, June 9-10. Oakland Arena, 7000 S. Coliseum Way, Oakland. 510-569-2121. www.ticketmaster.com
Local news organizations, including the Chronicle, were not credentialed to review opening night. But national outlets that attended described a lavish, theatrical comeback that leaned heavily on “Eternal Sunshine” while giving fans the first look at one of the year’s biggest pop tours.
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Saturday’s opener marked the start of a multi-city tour that places Grande in arenas for multiple nights in select cities rather than sending her to a new city after each show.
Grande is scheduled to return to Oakland Arena on Tuesday-Wednesday, June 9-10, completing a three-night Bay Area run. Her last major tour, the Sweetener World Tour, wound down at San Francisco’s Chase Center in December 2019 before ending days later in Southern California.
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Grande’s Bay Area takeover started before she ever reached Oakland Arena. On Thursday, June 4, fans lined up around the block outside her popup store on Powell Street in San Francisco, hoping to buy apparel, albums and other merchandise ahead of the concerts.
Since the Sweetener World Tour, Grande has moved in and out of the center of pop culture, releasing her 2020 album “Positions,” starring as Glinda in both installments of “Wicked” and returning with “Eternal Sunshine,” her seventh studio album about memory, heartbreak and self-protection. Onstage, according to reviews of the Oakland show, she built the concert around those same themes.
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The production unfolded in five acts, with Grande moving through a visual world of flooded rooms, damaged houses and eerie dreamscapes. Reviewers noted the show’s clear connection to the memory-erasure premise of the 2004 sci-fi rom-com “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” giving the concert a narrative shape beyond a standard arena-pop set.
Grande opened with “Yes, And?,” followed by “Positions,” “Dandelion” and “The Boy Is Mine.” The early sequence placed her recent work at the center of the night rather than treating it as a bridge to older hits.
Her voice remained the main attraction, according to reviews. Even with dancers, video interludes, costume changes and elaborate staging, the strongest moments reportedly came when Grande stood still and sang.
“Eternal Sunshine” served as one of the night’s early centerpieces, setting the emotional terms for a show less interested in nostalgia than in reintroducing Grande after years away from touring.
The middle stretch broadened the set. “Just Like Magic” brought in the “Positions” era, while “Thank U, Next” and “7 Rings” reportedly drew some of the loudest reactions of the night.
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Other older songs, including “One Last Time,” “Dangerous Woman,” “Honeymoon Avenue,” “Rain on Me” and “Into You,” gave the concert flashes of a career-spanning set without turning it into a night of greatest hits.
But the “Eternal Sunshine” material dominated. Songs including “Imperfect for You,” “Warm,” “Twilight Zone,” “Past Life” and “Hampstead” gave the show a quieter, more interior mood, pulling it away from the easy rush of a hits parade.
“Hampstead,” performed with minimal staging, was singled out by reviewers as one of the night’s more intimate moments — a small song allowed to hold its own inside a massive arena.
A damaged house served as the central image on the stage, shifting across the night from wreckage toward renewal. Dancers moved around Grande as part of the show’s larger themes of memory, desire and conflict, while the choreography left space for her vocals to carry the emotional weight.
Near the end, Grande looked ahead with “Hate That I Made You Love Me,” from her forthcoming album “Petal.” The placement made the song feel less like a promotional preview and more like a hint of where she may be headed next.
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By the time she reached “We Can’t Be Friends (Wait for Your Love)” and “Supernatural,” the shape of the night was clear. Grande did not return to touring by simply picking up where she left off. She built the Oakland opener around the years in between.
Ariana Grande Eternal Sunshine Tour setlist
Ariana Grande opened her Eternal Sunshine tour at Oakland Arena with a 23-song set that leaned into her latest era while revisiting older hits.
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5. “Saturn Returns Interlude”
6. “Eternal Sunshine”
9. “Imperfect for You”
17. “Dangerous Woman”
18. “Honeymoon Avenue”
21. “Hate That I Made You Love Me”
22. “We Can’t Be Friends (Wait for Your Love)”