Dua Lipa turns 30 with several Guinness records under her belt

Dua Lipa turns 30 on August 22. The success of her last three studio albums — Dua Lipa (2017), Future Nostalgia (2020) and Radical Optimism (2024) — together with five of her songs in the top 10 of Billboard Hot 10 and the sell-out Wembley Stadium concert for five consecutive nights in June legitimize her star status in the pop universe of generation Z.

But the British-Albanian singer doesn’t just reign in the music universe. Over the years, she has worked on other projects. Dua Lipa: At Your Service was named one of the best podcasts of 2022 by Spotify. That same year she started Service 95, a book club, and last year launched Radical 22, a company that has signed an agreement with Warner Chappell Music to manage her publishing rights and recordings.

Triple nationality

Dua Lipa moved into the spotlight in 2017. Now, as she turns 30, we take a look at what makes her unique. For one, she has triple nationality; she is the daughter of Kosovan Albanian parents, who left Pristina as refugees in the early 1990s to settle in London. In 2008, when Lipa turned 11, her family returned to Kosovo. She herself came back to London aged 15, but now has Albanian and Kosovan nationality as well as British.

She obtained Albanian citizenship on November 27, 2022, for promoting the nation through her music. Kosovan nationality was given this summer for being one of the nation’s most emblematic cultural figures. When she became a Kosovan citizen on July 31, 2025, she said in a statement quoted by the BBC, “It completes the duality I have always had within. I love this country and this means so much to me and my family.”

Rock daddy

A rock star in Kosovo in the 1990s, Dua Lipa’s father Dukagjin Lipa is now a businessman and music producer. He was the vocalist of Oda, a rock band that disbanded in 1998. Dua Lipa was influenced artistically by her father: she grew up listening to his favorite musicians — Oasis, David Bowie or Radiohead — and different styles, ranging from hip-hop to Britpop.

In 2018, father and daughter founded the Sunny Hill festival. It is held at the beginning of August in Pristina, to “change the rhetoric of what people think about Kosovo and it being war-torn,” the artist explained at the end of July 2024, according to the BBC.

School choir rejection

“The music teacher said, ‘Who wants to sing and try the choir?’ I said, ‘I’d like to.’ He started playing the piano and it was a high note and nothing came out of me, just air. At that moment the whole school laughed,” Lipa told drag queen Trixie Mattel referring to the moment she was rejected by her school’s choirmaster. After the incident, she opted for a different strategy: she went to singing lessons and eventually got in.

Love for the Balearic Islands

Lipa’s 88 million followers on Instagram will be aware of her love of Spain and the Balearic Islands as she posts photos of her luxurious holidays there on yachts, in swimming pools, and at parties. This year has been no exception. The singer chose Mallorca for July and Ibiza to celebrate her birthday in advance, surrounded by family, friends and her fiancé, Callum Turner.

In Ibiza, the birthday celebrations, which began more than a week ago, have gone viral. “So far — so good — sun, sea, the bestest of bestfriends, dancing til 6am, long long dinners, flamenco, BIG HUGS and a METEOR SHOWER!!!!!!! feeling v lucky n loved,” the artist said on Instagram.

Four Guinness World Records

Lipa has established herself as one of the most influential artists of her generation and, among her milestones are four Guinness World Records. In August 2021, she reached 65,632,036 monthly listeners on Spotify, becoming the female artist with the highest number of listeners.

On the same platform, her debut album reached almost 12 billion plays in February 2024, being the most listened to by an artist. Also on Spotify, the artist became the first in history to have five songs with more than two billion plays in June 2024 — thanks to Don’t Start Now, One Kiss, New Rules, Levitating, and Cold Heart. In November 2020, she also achieved the Guinness record for the most tickets sold for an online concert by a solo female artist. Called Studio 2054, 284,000 tickets were sold, and it is estimated that around five million people connected online to enjoy the event.

Five nominations at the Brit Awards

Throughout her career, Lipa has received 57 awards — including three Grammys. But one of the biggest milestones in terms of recognition was achieved on February 21, 2018, when she became the first female artist to receive five nominations at the Brit Awards. Of those five, she managed to win two: best British female artist and best British revelation artist.

The power of visualization

“Visualization is very important to me. I firmly believe in contributing certain things to the world. Subconsciously, you work to get them,” Lipa told Time magazine on April 15, 2024, regarding a trend that became popular on social media. Although there is no scientific proof to support the practice — based on internal dialogue, visualizing success, and acting as if you have already achieved it — it seems that it has worked for the artist.

While attending drama school in London as a teen, Lipa uploaded covers of songs to YouTube. In 2013, she got her first job as a singer performing Lost in Music for an X Factor commercial and signed a contract with TaP Music. It was at that time that she began releasing singles. And in the summer of 2017, with two songs from her debut album — New Rules and Blow Your Mind — she made a name for herself in the industry and began her rise to fame.

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