Taylor Swift did not appear to accompany Travis Kelce and the Kansas City Chiefs on the team’s first road trip of the 2026 season.
Swift, 36, was seemingly absent at Miami’s Hard Rock Stadium on Sunday, September 27, where the Chiefs battled the Dolphins in Kansas City’s first road test.
The game came just days after the pop star released The Life of a Showgirl: The Encore on Friday, September 25, a deluxe edition of her latest studio album featuring four new songs.
Swift not showing up in Miami is certainly not a surprise, as she did not attend any Chiefs’ road games during the 2025 season.
Additionally, Swift is set to receive the inaugural MTV VMA Artist Director Honors at the 2026 MTV Video Music Awards on Sunday night at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles.
The new award recognizes “groundbreaking music artists whose work behind the camera has expanded the possibilities of music video and advanced the art of visual storytelling.”
Swift is nominated an additional 11 times at the ceremony, including nods for Artist of the Year, Video of the Year for “The Fate of Ophelia,” Album of the Year for The Life of a Showgirl and Song of the Summer for “I Knew It, I Knew You.”
The Life of a Showgirl: The Encore featured four new songs — “Cleveland!,” “Pink Clouding,” “Babylon” and “Patient Zero” — the latter of which also received a music video starring Dakota Johnson and Colin Farrell, which will debut in full at the VMAs on Sunday night.
Swift revealed the inspiration behind “Patient Zero” during an interview with the U.K.’s Capital FM on Friday.
“The story behind me writing the song ‘Patient Zero’ is that I was hanging out with a bunch of friends, and one of my friends told us that she had been reached out to by the new girlfriend of an ex of hers, asking for guidance on if she had had the same experiences with this guy,” the singer explained.
Swift said “everyone” in her friend group “immediately started saying, like, ‘Oh, I’ve been through that too,’ and telling the stories of when this kind of reach out had happened for them.”
She added, “I thought to myself, ‘If this has happened to all of us, it’s such an interesting kind of angle on humanity and on relationships, and I wonder if I could write something from the perspective of getting this phone call, and really only from the perspective and the side of the phone call of the ex who’s been through it before.’”
The Chiefs also hit the road for their next game, traveling to Las Vegas to play the Raiders on Sunday, October 4.
