Sabrina Carpenter and Barry Keoghan Breakup: Why They Split

Sabrina Carpenter and Barry Keoghan were one of Hollywood’s most unexpected couples — a pop music powerhouse and an Oscar-nominated Irish actor whose whirlwind romance captivated fans from Paris Fashion Week to the Met Gala. But by December 2024, Sabrina Carpenter and Barry Keoghan had gone their separate ways, leaving millions of fans asking: what happened? In this deep dive, we break down the full timeline of their relationship, explore the cheating rumors that surfaced, examine Barry’s 2026 podcast denial, and answer whether Sabrina Carpenter is dating anyone new in 2026.

How Sabrina Carpenter and Barry Keoghan First Met

The romance between Sabrina Carpenter and Barry Keoghan began during Paris Fashion Week in September 2023. Both were seated front row at the Givenchy show, and multiple eyewitnesses spotted the pair deep in conversation during the after-party at the iconic Le Costes hotel. At the time, Sabrina was riding high off her “Nonsense” era and a string of sold-out tour dates, while Barry was the toast of awards season following his devastating performance in “Saltburn.”

Industry insiders told People magazine that the attraction was instant. “They were both in this creative headspace and just clicked,” a source close to the couple revealed. Within weeks of that first meeting, paparazzi captured them walking hand-in-hand through the streets of London’s Notting Hill neighborhood, and the celebrity rumor mill shifted into overdrive.

What made their pairing so compelling to fans was the contrast. Sabrina, then 24, was America’s pop princess — bubbly, blonde, and Instagram-perfect. Barry, 31, was the intense, brooding character actor who’d just played one of the most unhinged roles in recent cinema. Somehow, the yin-and-yang energy worked, and by October 2023, multiple sources confirmed they were officially an item.

The Met Gala Debut That Broke the Internet

If Paris Fashion Week was where the spark ignited, the 2024 Met Gala was where Sabrina and Barry announced themselves to the world as a power couple. On the first Monday in May, they walked the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s famous staircase together — Sabrina in a custom Oscar de la Renta gown dripping with crystal fringe, and Barry in a classic black Burberry tuxedo with a modern collarless jacket.

The photos instantly went viral. Fashion critics praised the pairing as one of the best-dressed couples of the night, and fans flooded social media with edits, ship names, and timeline analyses. “Sabrina and Barry at the Met Gala” trended worldwide on X (formerly Twitter) for over 12 hours. At that point, the relationship felt like it had transformed from a fun fling into something genuinely serious.

Behind the scenes, sources said the pair were “inseparable” during the event’s after-party at The Mark Hotel. They left together around 2 a.m. and were photographed sharing a private moment in the back of an SUV — a moment that made every tabloid cover the following morning.

Sabrina Carpenter Cast Barry Keoghan in “Please Please Please”

Perhaps the boldest declaration of their love came in June 2024 when Sabrina released the music video for “Please Please Please,” and fans discovered that her leading man was none other than Barry Keoghan himself. The video, directed by Bardia Zeinali, featured Barry as a charismatic criminal love interest — a role that leaned heavily into his on-screen intensity.

The music video racked up over 100 million YouTube views within its first week and became a cultural moment. Critics and fans alike praised the couple’s on-screen chemistry, noting that it felt raw and authentic rather than manufactured. Sabrina told Variety, “I wanted someone who could match the energy of the song, and Barry just gets it. He doesn’t perform — he inhabits.”

For Barry’s part, he appeared on “The Graham Norton Show” shortly after and called the experience “terrifying and brilliant.” He joked, “She’s much more famous than me now. I’m just the lad in the video.” The video cemented their status as Gen Z’s it-couple and pushed “Please Please Please” to number one on the Billboard Hot 100.

Sabrina Carpenter Barry Keoghan Breakup: What Went Wrong

Despite the fairy-tale optics, cracks began appearing by late 2024. Multiple sources told TMZ and Entertainment Tonight that the couple’s demanding schedules had created an unsustainable distance. Sabrina was deep into her “Short n’ Sweet” world tour, performing four to five shows per week across North America, while Barry was filming back-to-back projects in London and Dublin — including a highly anticipated A24 thriller.

By November 2024, eagle-eyed fans noticed the pair had stopped appearing in each other’s Instagram Stories. Sabrina unfollowed several accounts linked to Barry’s friend group, and Barry was photographed attending events solo. On December 3, 2024, People magazine confirmed what everyone feared: Sabrina Carpenter and Barry Keoghan had broken up.

“It was amicable but painful,” a source close to Sabrina told People. “They genuinely loved each other, but the logistics just didn’t work. She’s on a different continent every week, and he’s locked into 14-hour shoot days. Something had to give.”

The breakup hit fans hard. The hashtag #SabrinaBarryBreakup trended for three days, and Sabrina’s streaming numbers for “Please Please Please” actually spiked 40% in the week following the announcement — a bittersweet testament to how deeply fans had invested in the relationship.

The Cheating Rumors: What Was Alleged and What We Know

Within hours of the breakup news, unverified allegations of cheating surfaced on social media. An anonymous account on X posted screenshots of alleged DMs between Barry and a woman described as an “influencer based in London.” The posts claimed Barry had been unfaithful during the final months of the relationship.

Neither Sabrina nor Barry addressed the allegations at the time, and multiple entertainment journalists — including those at Variety and The Hollywood Reporter — noted that the screenshots could not be independently verified. Sabrina’s publicist issued a terse “no comment,” while Barry’s team did not respond to media inquiries.

Fan communities were split. Some rallied behind Sabrina, flooding Barry’s social media with angry comments. Others cautioned against believing unverified claims from anonymous accounts. The situation grew toxic enough that Sabrina briefly limited comments on her Instagram posts — a move she’d never made before.

What we can confirm is this: no credible outlet ever verified the cheating allegations with named sources. The screenshots remained unattributed, and no “London influencer” ever came forward publicly. Still, the rumors cast a shadow over the breakup narrative that persisted well into 2025.

Barry Keoghan’s April 2026 Podcast Response

For over a year, Barry Keoghan maintained complete silence on the breakup. That changed in April 2026, when he appeared on the “Armchair Expert” podcast with Dax Shepard and was asked directly about the relationship and the rumors.

“I’m not going to sit here and trash anyone or get into specifics,” Barry said in the widely reported interview. “But I will say this — the cheating stuff? That didn’t happen. Full stop. I know what kind of person I am, and the people who know me know the truth.”

He went on to acknowledge the difficulty of conducting a relationship under intense public scrutiny. “When you’re with someone that famous, and you’re also in this world, everything gets magnified. A normal argument becomes a breakup rumor. A text message gets screenshot and twisted. It’s exhausting, and I think that pressure contributed more to things ending than people realize.”

The podcast episode was downloaded over 3 million times in its first week and became the most-discussed celebrity interview of April 2026. Fans generally praised Barry for addressing the situation with maturity while noting that he never badmouthed Sabrina — a detail that seemed to ease tensions between the couple’s respective fan bases.

Who Is Sabrina Carpenter Dating in 2026?

As of May 2026, Sabrina Carpenter appears to be single. She has not been publicly linked to any romantic partner since the Barry Keoghan split, and in a March 2026 interview with Elle, she spoke candidly about her current approach to love.

“I’m genuinely enjoying being on my own right now,” Sabrina told the magazine. “The last two years have been the most professionally fulfilling of my life, and I want to give that my full attention. When the right person shows up, I’ll know. But I’m not searching.”

That said, tabloid speculation is never far away. In February 2026, Page Six ran a story linking Sabrina to a mystery man spotted leaving the same Los Angeles restaurant on the same night. Her team quickly shut the story down, calling it “completely fabricated” and noting the two weren’t even at the venue at the same time.

For now, who is Sabrina Carpenter dating remains one of pop culture’s open questions. Her focus appears firmly on her music — she announced a 2026 world tour in January and is reportedly working on her seventh studio album, tentatively scheduled for a fall release. If her post-breakup creative output is any indication, sometimes the best art comes from heartbreak.