Every few years Miley Cyrus burns down the previous Miley and builds a new one on the lot, and the rest of us show up with opinions about the architecture. The latest renovation is the most literal yet: on August 31, 2026 she dropped the surname from her social accounts and now goes by plain Miley. She is 33, engaged, has a star on Hollywood Boulevard and a new No. 1 album, and the tattoos, the romances and the loud years still come up in every conversation about her. So let’s walk through all three, with the receipts.
How many tattoos does Miley have?
Nobody outside her tattoo artists’ appointment books has an exact count, and fan tallies disagree by a dozen, so I will not pretend otherwise. What she has shown over the years reads like a diary written in very small fonts: “Just Breathe” along her ribs, an anchor on her wrist, an equal sign on her finger, a dreamcatcher on her side, the word “Love” on her ear and a lot of small symbols in between. The one that matters most is the portrait of her grandmother, her “Mamaw”, on her arm.
Here is my read: these were never shock tattoos. They are mostly words and people she did not want to lose, which is a very old-fashioned reason to get ink.
From Hannah Montana to “Wrecking Ball”: the style years
The break with Disney came fast once “Hannah Montana” wrapped in 2011. In 2012 she cut her hair into the platinum crop that became the most copied haircut of the season, and in 2013 she released “We Can’t Stop” and Bangerz, toured in outfits designed to be discussed, and topped Maxim’s Hot 100 that year. It was loud on purpose. A 20-year-old who had spent her teens in a blonde wig was telling the world, at full volume, that the wig was off.
The “Wrecking Ball” video, with the sledgehammer and the not much else, is still the image people reach for when they say “the scandalous Miley.” Looking back from 2026, I think it was the moment she learned that outrage is a tool you can pick up and put down. She has been picking it up less and less ever since.
Miley Cyrus’s boyfriends and girlfriends, in order
The early chapter belongs to Nick Jonas, her teen-years boyfriend, and then model Justin Gaston. The long one belongs to Liam Hemsworth, whom she met on “The Last Song” in 2009. They got engaged in 2012, split in 2013, and in that gap she was linked to Patrick Schwarzenegger and later to model Stella Maxwell.
She and Hemsworth reunited in 2016, married on December 23, 2018 at their home in Nashville, announced their separation in August 2019, and the divorce was finalized in January 2020. Right after the split came Kaitlynn Carter and then Australian singer Cody Simpson, a relationship that ended in 2020. Her 2023 single “Flowers”, released on Hemsworth’s birthday, was widely read as the last word on that marriage, and it won her first two Grammys in February 2024, Record of the Year and Best Pop Solo Performance. If you are going to write a breakup song, apparently that is how you do it.
Maxx Morando: the quiet one
The current chapter is the least dramatic, which is exactly why it is interesting. Cyrus has been with drummer Maxx Morando of the band Liily since late 2021. In December 2025 she arrived at the “Avatar: Fire and Ash” premiere wearing a ring, and the engagement was confirmed the next day, after four years together. Neither of them made a big announcement. In May 2026 her mother, Tish, appeared to call Morando her “husband” at the Walk of Fame ceremony, and the internet decided there had been a secret wedding. There is no confirmation of that, and her representatives have not commented. Wedding-date reports from “insiders” are just that.
What strikes me is how hard she protects this one. The woman who once narrated every romance in public now keeps the biggest one almost completely offline, and she has told People that keeping it small and private is something she was surprised she could manage.
The loud statements, then and now
In 2015 interviews she described herself as pansexual and gender-fluid and founded the Happy Hippie Foundation for homeless and LGBTQ youth. That was the loudest thing she said in those years, and it has aged far better than the costumes.
2026 has been her busiest year in a while. On May 22 she unveiled star No. 2,845 on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, timed to the 20th anniversary of “Hannah Montana”. In late August her godmother Dolly Parton died at 80, and Miley wrote on Instagram that one of their last conversations was about music and metamorphosis. Days later she announced Bass Persuades, her tenth album and her first on Atlantic, released on September 18 under the name Miley. It debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, her first chart-topper since Bangerz in 2013, and then fell to No. 157 the next week, the biggest drop ever for a No. 1 debut. Two Hollywood Bowl shows follow on October 16 and 18, her first public concerts in four years.
That is the whole story of Miley in one autumn: a record-setting high and a record-setting fall in consecutive weeks, and she is still going on stage. The tattoos are the same, the surname is gone, and the loudest statement she makes now is a quiet engagement ring. I would not bet against the next renovation.
Sources
- Miley on Instagram: Hollywood Bowl, October 2026
- Miley on Instagram (@miley)
- Variety: Miley Cyrus writes Dolly Parton tribute after death of godmother
- Variety: Miley announces new album “Bass Persuades” and Hollywood Bowl shows
- Billboard: “Bass Persuades” debuts at No. 1 on the Billboard 200
- mxdwn: “Bass Persuades” drops to No. 157
- ABC7: Miley Cyrus honored with star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame
- Rolling Stone: Miley Cyrus and Maxx Morando engaged after four years together
- Hola!: Tish Cyrus sparks secret wedding rumors
- La Voce di New York: Miley drops her last name from social profiles
- Miley Cyrus, “Wrecking Ball” (official video)
