Shakira Opens Up About Piqué Split and Her Life Today

Shakira Opens Up About Piqué Split: "Darkest Moment" of Her Life

Four years is a long time. Long enough to rebuild, to heal, and apparently, long enough to finally talk about it without the wound tearing back open. Shakira sat down with The Times of London this week and did something she rarely does — she got completely honest about what the 2022 breakup from Gerard Piqué actually felt like from the inside.

Image FTE News 

And it was not pretty.

"The Dissolution of My Family"

The 49-year-old Grammy-winning singer did not sugarcoat a single word. According to E! News, Shakira described the split as the darkest moment of her life, specifically pointing to the moment she realized her family was falling apart — the family she had spent over a decade building and had genuinely believed she would have forever.

"I saw the dissolution of my family, the family that I had dreamt to keep forever," she said. "I've been through so much pain, but it has made me perhaps in an unforeseen way a wiser person — or stronger, at least."

That line about strength is one you hear from people who have actually been through something real, not from a publicist's talking points. Shakira has clearly done the work.

And Then Her Father Fell

What makes this chapter of her life even harder to process is that the breakup did not arrive alone. As Just Jared reported, right around the time her relationship with Piqué was collapsing, her father flew to Barcelona to be by her side — and suffered a severe fall when he arrived. Shakira found herself navigating one of the most emotionally devastating periods of her personal life while simultaneously being a caregiver for her dad. There was no quiet space to just fall apart. She had to hold everything together at once.

That kind of pressure either breaks you or changes you completely. For Shakira, it clearly did the latter.

Gratitude, Not Bitterness

What is genuinely striking about this interview is the absence of anger. Shakira and Piqué's split played out very publicly, and anyone who followed the story knows it was messy. But sitting here in 2026, four years out, she is not in the business of holding grudges.

"I will always have that gratitude in my heart for the father of my kids," she told The Times, "and for turning me into the mother that I am today."

She shares sons Milan, 13, and Sasha, 11, with the retired Spanish footballer, and it is clear that co-parenting with some level of peace matters to her more than the satisfaction of staying angry. That is a harder choice than it sounds.

No Romance, No Rush

Naturally, the question of her love life came up. After the Piqué split, Shakira was briefly linked to NBA star Jimmy Butler and British actor Lucien Laviscount, but neither situation developed into anything serious. Right now, she says, that is completely fine by her.

"No romance for me for now," she told The Times plainly. "There's no space or time in my life for that. My plate is quite full."

She went on to say something that felt genuinely refreshing to hear from someone at her level of fame — that she is, in her own words, in love with her career like she has never been before. She is enjoying her time alone. She is not performing happiness or performing healing. She just seems to actually mean it.

Her kids come first. Her music comes second. Everything else can wait.

Career at an All-Time High

And her career? It is hard to argue with where she stands right now. Shakira recently teamed up with Nigerian Afrobeats superstar Burna Boy on a new track called "Dai Dai," which has been confirmed as the official anthem for the 2026 FIFA World Cup — a full-circle moment for the woman whose "Waka Waka" became the soundtrack of the 2010 tournament and, coincidentally, the song on whose set she first met Gerard Piqué all those years ago.

She met him during the filming of that video. He told her he was going to win the World Cup so they could see each other at the finals. He did win. And it all began.

Now, sixteen years later, she is back as the voice of the World Cup — this time on her own terms, with no one else in the picture, and a clearer sense of herself than she has ever had. Sometimes the story ends up being better than the one you originally planned for yourself. Shakira seems to know that now.

From FTE News