Every few months the internet decides Olivia Rodrigo has a new boyfriend, a new heartbreak and a new album about both, usually in that order. The album part keeps coming true. The rest she has finally answered herself. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter published on October 7, 2026, the 23-year-old said it plainly: “I’m single, I don’t have a boyfriend.” So this is not a guide to who she is dating. It is a guide to who she has been linked to, what she has actually confirmed, and why the songs end up doing most of the talking.
The Disney chapter and the song that started the guessing game
Before the arenas, Rodrigo was a Disney actor from Temecula, California, and on the set of High School Musical: The Musical: The Series she worked alongside Joshua Bassett. Fans have long believed the two dated around 2020. Neither of them ever confirmed it, which did not slow anybody down.
Then, in January 2021, came “drivers license”, a ballad about a brand-new driver’s license, an empty passenger seat and a blonde girl who is “so much older than me”. It went straight to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, and half the internet appointed itself a detective. Bassett had been spotted with Sabrina Carpenter, Carpenter is a few years older, and the theory wrote itself.
Here is my read: the song worked because it never needed the gossip. A 17-year-old crying in a car in the suburbs is a story everyone has lived in some version, with or without a love triangle. The guessing game just gave people something to do between replays. Rodrigo herself, looking back this June, told Dazed that “heartbreak will never be as bad as it was when you were 17 years old.”
The producer and the DJ: two romances nobody announced
In 2021 she was linked to producer Adam Faze after the two were photographed together in Los Angeles. Reports of a split followed in early 2022. Neither of them ever confirmed they were a couple, so I will not pretend to know why it ended. The old version of this story said they “turned out to be very different people”, and that line came from an anonymous source, which is to say from nowhere in particular.
Next came Zack Bia, the DJ and record executive, linked to her through the first half of 2022. By August 2022 the reports said it was over, with an unnamed insider describing a relationship that had “sort of fizzled”. That is the most honest breakup explanation in celebrity journalism, mostly because it explains nothing. Busy schedules, different circles, two people in their early twenties: the dull answer is usually the right one.
Louis Partridge, the first “adult relationship”
The relationship that lasted was with British actor Louis Partridge, the Viscount Tewkesbury of the Enola Holmes films. They were first photographed together in London in October 2023, and over the next two years they let the public see a little more at a time, including her Instagram message for his 21st birthday in June 2024: “welcome to the 21 club angel boy!!!!”
In December 2025 The Sun reported that they had split after about two years. Neither has confirmed the breakup to this day. What we have instead is a record. Her third album, “you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love”, came out on June 12, 2026, led by the single “drop dead” in April, which became her fourth Hot 100 No. 1. In her Dazed cover story she described the album as “me discovering what romantic love looks like in real time” and added that “a breakup can be a really awesome opportunity to redirect your life.”
What strikes me is how carefully she draws the line. “I never talk about my personal life in interviews or on any public forum,” she told Dazed, “so I guess the music is where people would go to deduce things.” Then, the gentlest possible eye-roll: “it’s just a song at the end of the day.” Partridge, for his part, has kept working, with Enola Holmes 3 on his 2026 slate. Nobody has posted a statement, and honestly, good for them.
The banker rumor and the word “single”
This summer the photographers found a new name. E! News reported that Rodrigo was seen with finance associate Julian Croonenberghs on several low-key outings in June and on a date in a Brooklyn park in July. Within a week the internet had him promoted from “guy at dinner” to “inspiration for album four”.
Rodrigo’s answer to The Hollywood Reporter was not coy. “It feels like you’re being stalked and then judged for pictures,” she said, adding, “I wish that I could be 23 years old and experience life normally.” She also said, “I know who I am, and I know what my values are.” Back in April she had told Cosmopolitan she was in “the most important phase, the friendship love”, and that “dating is just the cherry on top.” Meanwhile the Unraveled Tour opened on September 25 in Hartford, Connecticut, so for the next several months her schedule belongs mostly to arenas.
My take
Five years ago this page asked why Olivia Rodrigo keeps breaking up, as if there had to be a single obvious reason. There isn’t one, and there never was: she was a teenager, then a young woman, dating in public against her will and writing about it on purpose. The girl who cried in the car on “drivers license” now says she is single and fine with it, and I believe her. The songs will tell us the rest when she is ready, and not a minute before.
Sources
- Olivia Rodrigo on Instagram, October 2026
- Dazed: Olivia Rodrigo cover interview, June 4, 2026
- E! News: Olivia Rodrigo says she’s single (quotes from The Hollywood Reporter, Oct. 7, 2026, and Cosmopolitan, April 2026)
- Olivia Rodrigo, “drivers license” (Official Video), OliviaRodrigoVEVO
- Live Nation: The Unraveled Tour announcement
- Rolling Stone: Olivia Rodrigo details the Unraveled Tour
- Billboard: Olivia Rodrigo and Louis Partridge relationship timeline
- Grazia: Olivia Rodrigo’s relationship history (Adam Faze, Zack Bia)
