Nearly a Decade After Growing Apart, Selena Gomez and Demi Lovato Reunite
For anyone who came of age watching Disney Channel in the early 2000s, the sight of Selena Gomez backstage at Madison Square Garden wrapping her arms around Demi Lovato was a delight. The photograph, shared to Gomez's Instagram Story with nothing but a red heart, captured something fans had been quietly hoping for across nearly a decade of distance.
Lovato headlined the Garden on April 24 as part of her It's Not That Deep Tour, her first MSG headline show. Gomez was in the crowd, and after the set, the two connected backstage. According to reporting from THR and confirmed by Lovato's own social media, it was their second in-person reunion in two weeks: Gomez had also attended Lovato's tour opener in Orlando on April 13, arriving with a bouquet of flowers and later appearing in a backstage photo that first rocked the internet.
The friendship between the two goes back further than most fans realize. Lovato and Gomez first met as young children on the set of Barney & Friends, Lovato as Angela and Gomez as Gianna, before either had set foot on a Disney soundstage. Lovato has spoken about that pre-Disney bond, telling a podcast in March that having a built-in friendship when she arrived at the network made everything feel safer. The two became fixtures of the late-2000s Disney Channel golden era, Gomez on Wizards of Waverly Place, Lovato on Camp Rock and Sonny with a Chance, and were photographed together constantly during that period. They were, for a time, the internet's favorite friendship.
By 2014, they had drifted. They unfollowed each other on social media. Lovato later addressed the split with characteristic directness, that people change, people grow apart. For years, questions about their friendship lingered in fan comment sections, but neither seemed to be forcing anything.
What may have made Lovato's It's Not That Deep era feel like the right moment for a reunion is the album itself. Released in October 2025, the record marked a full return to pop after Lovato spent years deliberately distancing herself from that chapter of her career. A deluxe edition dropped April 25, the day after the MSG show, adding eight new songs including 'Low Rise Jeans,' which Lovato debuted live at the Orlando opener. The whole arc (returning to something you once ran from, then finding it waiting for you) seems appropriate.
Lovato told Billboard backstage at MSG that the nostalgia fans are feeling right now is something the Disney generation is feeling from the inside too. 'I think the age that we're at is really loving nostalgia right now,' she said. 'For all the people who are in their 30s and have lived through the Disney era with me, Selena, the Jonas Brothers and Miley, they're craving it, and it's fun to go back and relive those moments.' That energy has produced a wave of reunions across the past several months. Miley Cyrus and a Hannah Montana anniversary, the Jonas Brothers pulling Lovato onstage during their own tour run, and now this. For fans who watched these friendships form in real time and then watched them dissolve, its quite a treat.
Copyright 2026 The Arena Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved
This story was originally published May 5, 2026 at 2:36 AM.