OLIVIA KEMP: Harry Styles is about to completely disappear from public life. Trust me, I'm a superfan who has been studying his every move for years - and THIS is why I'm convinced

Landing in inboxes shortly after midnight, the email message ought to have been the news every Harry Styles devotee had been waiting for: his blockbuster Together, Together tour will continue into 2027.

After all, the show – which began in May this year – has already carried him through a record-breaking 12-night residency at Wembley Stadium and across Europe and South America. The singer is currently part-way through an extraordinary run of 30 concerts at New York’s Madison Square Garden.

Night after night, tens of thousands of fans – known as Harries – arrive in sequins, feather boas and carefully crafted homemade outfits to dance inside the joyful world of the former One Direction star.

But instead of prompting unqualified celebration among all fans, Styles’s announcement threw a number of them into a state of agitation.

For it contained cryptic clues about his future – ones which only eagle-eyed superfans, like myself, may have picked up on.

And, they suggest just one thing – that Harry Styles is set to completely disappear from public life.

As a long-time devotee of the singer, I have pieced together a number of recent public hints which can only point to this devastating conclusion.

Firstly, Styles’s email was not a triumphant promise of more to come. It was reflective, unusually vulnerable and freighted with references to endings.

He began by telling us that he had always known the 2026 tour would be ‘special’, but that what fans had turned it into was ‘far beyond what I could have imagined’.

‘I love playing music, I love being with all of you and being a part of the love and joy you all create together every night,’ he wrote.

So far, reassuring.

But then came the first clue: his admission that extending the tour into next year had, at first, felt ‘daunting’.

For a performer who has spent half his life in front of enormous crowds, it was a curious word to use. Why should extending a tour – something Styles has done many times before – suddenly feel so daunting?

He continued: ‘Being an artist is the only life I’ve ever known really, I have been doing this since I was 16 years old, and I feel like the luckiest person in the world to still be sharing these moments with you.’

And then came the sentences which transformed the 2027 tour announcement into something resembling a farewell.

‘Tomorrow’s announcement will be the final cities of Together, Together,’ he wrote. ‘After that, I don’t know what comes next for me, but I know that I’m excited to find out.’

As a die-hard follower of Styles, I am well practised in analysing his every word. This is, after all, an artist who communicates with his fans through cryptic websites, unexplained posters and carefully placed visual clues.

But little decoding was required here.

The reference to the ‘final cities’ introduced a firm ending to the tour, while his uncertainty over what comes next appeared to suggest he was closing a chapter.

Even the structure of the message felt telling. Styles looked back at what his fans had created, reflected upon a career which began in adolescence and thanked us for our support ‘over the years’ before simply signing off: ‘All my love, H.’

To those of us who have followed Styles from one elaborately teased ‘era’ to the next, this clue was impossible to miss.

His previous messages have invariably contained a wink towards another record, film or reinvention. This one offered no future at all.

And the reaction online was immediate.

‘Harry Styles, your email simultaneously ruined and made my day, thanks for that,’ wrote one fan.

Another joked: ‘Woken up and Harry Styles has broken up with me over email.’

Others asked how he had managed to make an announcement about extra concerts sound so sad, while one recipient described waking up to a ‘threatening email from Harry Styles’.

Yet the theory that Styles is contemplating disappearing for good is based on more than just panicked social media posts.

One source tells me: ‘It really does seem as though he wants to step away and focus on his personal life away from stardom.

‘He’s engaged, so it’s quite reasonable he wants to stop to enjoy that, get married, enjoy married life, and start a family of his own.’

Styles is reportedly engaged to American actress Zoë Kravitz, 37, after the couple were first linked last summer.

Ms Kravitz has since been a discreet but near-constant presence throughout the Together, Together tour, watching his Wembley shows alongside his mother Anne Twist and sister Gemma, and joining him in New York ahead of the Madison Square Garden residency too.

And while the couple have not formally confirmed their engagement or disclosed their wedding plans, Styles has spoken with surprising candour about his desire to make room for marriage and children.

In an interview with DJ Zane Lowe earlier this year, he revealed that he had asked himself what he wanted his life to look like in five years.

‘I want to be fulfilled, and I want to be in great relationships with people,’ he said. ‘I want a family.’

Perhaps the most compelling clue, however, came barely a fortnight before his email was sent.

In an interview published by W Magazine last month, Styles discussed how his near three-year break from touring after Love On Tour in 2023 transformed his relationship with fame.

‘In the time that I took away from touring, I watered a side of my life I hadn’t paid much attention to previously,’ he said, adding: ‘The idea of not touring is less frightening to me.’

Crucially, he then declared: ‘I’m not going to do this forever.’

From an artist normally so careful not to define what comes next, it was a definitive statement.

Combined with that midnight email, it begins to resemble advance notice that Together, Together could be his last tour for a very long time – if not his last altogether.

Styles is only 32 but his email carries the weariness of somebody who has already completed several lifetimes in showbusiness.

Since auditioning for The X Factor as a floppy-haired 16-year-old in 2010, he has released nine albums – five with One Direction and four as a solo artist – and spent a cumulative five years and eight months on tour.

One Direction released five records in five years while completing four headline tours, so the band grew up in airports, hotels and stadiums under relentless scrutiny.

Styles’s previous solo tour then stretched across 22 months and 169 shows before concluding in Italy in July 2023, having grossed more than £480million.

The contrast with Styles’s previous end-of-tour message only strengthens my suspicion.

I was at the final Wembley night of the Love On Tour three years ago and returned for the last London show of Together, Together this summer. Both were deeply emotional, but after Love On Tour I do not recall receiving any message quite as loaded as this one.

Nor has Styles ever spoken so openly about ending his touring life for good, creating space for a family or becoming comfortable with disappearing.

This time, his public remarks and private message all appear to suggest the same thing.

There may yet be one suitably momentous curtain call, as Styles has been tipped as a possible headliner for Glastonbury when the festival returns in June 2027 after a fallow year.

A debut performance on the Pyramid Stage would be a fitting climax to this final run: Britain’s biggest male pop star conquering one of the greatest British stages still missing from his résumé, before walking away at the very height of his powers.

I desperately want to find reasons not to dig out the black veil just yet. So on the positive side... Styles uses the word ‘love’ four times in his brief email. He says he loves playing music, loves being with his audience and cannot wait for everybody to ‘keep dancing’.

More importantly, he does not sound unhappy about the unknown. He says he is ‘excited to find out’ what comes next.

I hope – and truly believe – that Styles will follow the path of performers such as Bruce Springsteen, returning across the decades whenever the time feels right.

And whenever he decides it is time for us to dance together again, there will be no shortage of fans waiting.