Taylor Swift announces new single and deluxe album- all the Easter eggs she left for fans to find

New Taylor Swift music incoming!

The singer announced her new single 'Patient Zero' will be released this Friday (September 25), and that's not all as Swift also confirmed The Life of a Showgirl: The Encore, a deluxe edition of her 2025 album with four new songs are coming out on the same day too.

Taking to social media, Swift posted, "I’ve been impatiently waiting to tell you that my brand new single 'Patient Zero' will be out on September 25 (!!!!!!!!!!!!) and it’s available to pre-order now on my website for 24 hours. 0️⃣0️⃣0️⃣0️⃣.”

In a follow-up post, Swift shared news of her deluxe album with a new album cover, "About a year ago, you guys did a truly unfathomable thing. Something that completely blew my mind… You gave The Life of a Showgirl the biggest first week for an album in history."

"I took a trip to Sweden to celebrate with Max and Shellback, my two collaborators on this album. Really we just wanted to reflect and take in how grateful we were for the moment we were in, but there was a studio there and we did what we do when we feel anything at all: We wrote more songs.

She added, "I hope you love them, because they were born out of pure gratitude for your exuberance for and celebration of the album we made. The Life of a Showgirl: The Encore including four new songs is out on Friday and available to pre-order and save now."

There had been some theories that Swift would be releasing her re-recorded version of her self-titled debut album, given that this year marks it's 20th anniversary.

But alas, it appears this isn't the case and as fans noted the website branding for her new single has the Showgirl’s album logo and there are 12 exclamation points in the announcement post - Showgirl being Swift's 12th album.

There were plenty of hints in the run-up to the new song announcement, here are some of them:

The cryptic countdown appeared on Swift's website

Changing every “o” to "0"

In Swift's Instagram bio, she changed every "o" to a zero, along with of her songs on Apple Music and Spotify also replaced random “o” letters in songs to zeroes.

The 'Opalite' music video

YouTube/Taylor Swift

In the music video for 'Opalite', featuring Domhnall Gleeson, Cillian Murphy, Greta Lee, and Jodie Turner-Smith, fans remembered seeing a poster in the background that read: "Patient for the encore".

There was also a scene where Swift and Gleeson dance together in a competition, and all the judges scorecard displayed zeroes -coincidence?

The Emmys Law & Order: SVU Sketch

NBC

Even in her cameo in the Law & Order: SVU Sketch for the 2026 Emmys there were hints...

“I think what we’re going to be looking for is hiding in plain sight,” before delivering a string of seemingly random words. Looking directly into the camera she says, “Saccharide. Aries. From the vineyard. North or south.”

Some fans theorised it was an anagram announcing the release of Debut TV, but given Swift has changed every "o" to a zero on her socials, they took another look at the puzzle.

They found that if you take the third letter from each of the first six words, it produces the letters needed to form an anagram of “ENCORE.”

Plus eagled-eyed viewers will have noticed the clock was also set to 10:13, appearing to tease an October date, and the shipping date for her new single is October 13.

Why not read...

• Taylor Swift fans are convinced these Easter eggs prove she's teasing ‘Debut TV’ release
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