Today, nearly 25 years after her fifth album, ‘Laundry Service’, carried her music into the English-language mainstream, Shakira is bigger than ever.

At the time of writing, Shakira has more than 102 million monthly listeners on Spotify, making her the sixth-biggest artist on the platform. Her latest single for the FIFA World Cup 2026, ‘Dai Dai’ featuring Burna Boy, is number one on both of Billboard’s global charts, and its music video has received more than 400 million views on YouTube alone.

As well as this, Shakira’s most recent stadium tour, Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran World Tour, broke the Guinness World Record for the highest-grossing Latin tour of all time, making $421.6 million across 82 stadium shows. At the time, the tour also became the fifth-highest-grossing tour of all time by a female artist.

While this would be a remarkable feat for any musician, for Shakira, it’s just further proof that the career she’s spent more than three decades building shows no signs of slowing down. It’s safe to say that very few artists, from any generation, have ever come this close to matching her impressive global reach. 

With the recent release of ‘Dai Dai’, it might be tempting to call this a comeback. However, Shakira isn’t coming back from anywhere. She’s been here all along, working up to this new commercial peak in an industry that might have eventually caught up with the kind of global career she’s been building the whole time.

In 1995, Shakira’s breakthrough album, ‘Pies Descalzos’, helped to establish her as an artist across Latin America. Followed by ‘Dónde Están los Ladrones?’ in 1998, both Spanish-language albums combined pop and rock influences from across both Latin America and the Middle East. 

Despite the albums becoming the foundations of her career, at the time of their release, success in Latin America was still treated as a completely separate entity to international pop. While an artist could sell millions of albums in Spanish-speaking countries, they would still be described as “unknown” by the English-language music industry, creating a barrier that prevented Latin artists from reaching true global success.

However, for Shakira, this all changed in 2001 with the release of ‘Laundry Service’. Although it was her fifth studio album, thousands of listeners across the UK and US were hearing her work for the very first time. Led by ‘Whenever, Wherever’, the album helped establish Shakira as one of the most recognisable pop stars in the world, skyrocketing her career into global stardom.

Of course, it wasn’t always easy for Shakira to move into English-language music. This idea of a Latin crossover was everywhere in the early 2000s, but Latin artists were almost always expected to record in English if they wanted to be considered successful globally. While Shakira did make that move, she never removed the influences that had shaped her early albums, and she continued releasing music in both languages. 

In 2005, the Spanish-language ‘Fijación Oral, Vol. 1’ was released, followed five months later by ‘Oral Fixation, Vol. 2’. A 2005 reissue of the latter included ‘Hips Don’t Lie’ - Shakira’s first number-one single on the Billboard Hot 100. It was this decision to continue creating for both Spanish- and English-speaking audiences that helped her remain successful, and even at her most globally and commercially accessible, her songs still sounded uniquely hers.

Today, the barriers between regional and global music are far less prominent, with the internet and streaming services making it much easier for non-English-speaking artists to reach the top of worldwide charts, even selling out tours in countries that don’t speak their native tongue. As well as this, the likes of Latin music, Afrobeats and K-pop are no longer treated as occasional imports into English-speaking markets.

And this is where Shakira thrives. She hasn’t suddenly had to change her entire approach to music to suit the way the music world works in 2026. Instead, listeners and platforms have become much more open to the kind of multilingual, genre-bending career she has already been building for 30 years, putting her at the centre.

Her most recent run began well before the release of ‘Dai Dai’. In 2024, Shakira released her first studio album in seven years, ‘Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran’, which included tracks previously released as singles: ‘Te Felicito’, ‘Monotonía’, ‘TQG’ and ‘Shakira: Bzrp Music Sessions, Vol. 53’.

The latter received more than 14 million Spotify streams and 52 million YouTube views within its first 24 hours of being released, before debuting at number nine on the Billboard Hot 100. In doing this, Shakira became the first solo woman to debut inside the chart’s top ten with a Spanish-language song.

‘Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran’ focused on heartbreak, recovery and building a new life in the public eye. Turning such an intensely personal period of time into success, the album went on to win Best Latin Pop Album at the 2025 Grammy Awards. The accompanying Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran World Tour has since become the highest-grossing Hispanic tour of all time, with more than 3.3 million people attending across 82 stadium shows.

“The music industry has grown so much compared to what it was when I started my career. Breaking this record is a new milestone for me, considering that there are so many great artists who historically have toured in Latin America & Spain. After a 30-year career, that took so much effort and met so many challenges, to be living this amazing moment is unbelievable. I can only be grateful for the loyalty and passion of my fans, who give meaning to everything I do, and without them none of this would be happening. Without a doubt, they are the best fans in the world,” said Shakira.

While many artists at this stage in their career end up touring largely on nostalgia, it’s clear that Shakira’s biggest tour has arrived alongside some of her most successful new music. ‘Dai Dai’ continues the momentum built from ‘Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran’, bringing Shakira’s Latin pop background together with Burna Boy’s Afrofusion sound. So far, the song has reached number one on the Billboard Global 200, and spent three consecutive weeks at the top of the Global Excl. US chart. It has also topped Spotify’s global song chart, which makes Shakira the first artist to have reached number one with both Spanish and English-led releases. According to figures released by her team, the track has also reached number one in 12 countries, including Germany, France, Spain, South Korea, Sweden and the UAE, and climbed to number five on the UK Singles Chart.

There’s also a charitable element attached to ‘Dai Dai’. Shakira is set to donate all of her royalties from the song to the FIFA Global Citizen Education Fund, which aims to raise $100 million in order to improve access to education and sport for children across the world. Sony Music will match the first $250,000 raised, while FIFA has also pledged to donate $1 from every ticket sold across the tournament’s 104 matches.

Its success has led to another major career moment for her: on Sunday 19th July, Shakira and Burna Boy performed the song during the first-ever FIFA World Cup final half-time show. Shakira, of course, is no stranger to the World Cup, first performing at the tournament in 2006 before recording ‘Waka Waka (This Time for Africa)’ for the 2010 competition, and ‘La La La (Brazil 2014)’ for 2014. But this 2026 edition felt different, co-headlined by Madonna, Justin Bieber and BTS. 

The beauty of Shakira’s success is that it isn't just about one huge single, her World Cup performance or her record-breaking tour. In fact, Shakira is currently bigger than she’s ever been as a result of hard work, building a career that spans languages and audiences.

In the early 2000s, Shakira had to record in English before the music industry would even acknowledge her as a global artist. Today, she can reach number one with a multilingual collaboration shaped by Latin and African music, and that is a beautiful thing.

Later this year, Shakira is set to perform 12 stadium concerts in Madrid throughout September and October at the purpose-built Shakira Stadium, which has a capacity of more than 50,000 people. Tickets are available here.

Samantha Hall

@_samanthahall_

Image: Shakira, Getty Images