Omar Rudberg: Oh My, Omar The Swedish talent who’s going from Young Royal to Pop Prince

Wherever in Europe you’re picking up the February issue of this magazine, Omar Rudberg could well be in a city near you right now. Throughout the whole month, the Swedish artist is embarking upon an 18-city, 11-country tour of the continent. Ahead of it, he speaks to Scan Magazine about the wild journey he’s been on to get here.

For a singer who, as a member of a boyband, signed his first recording contract at the age of 13 (he’s now 26), this solo tour has been a long time coming for Omar Rudberg. And while Sweden is, of course, renowned for exporting pop music on a global scale, to radio stations and charts everywhere, the feat of booking and going on a tour of this scale outside of Sweden isn’t something that’s been achieved by all too many of his peers; many of whom have been around for much longer and with far more hits to their name.

“I do appreciate the magnitude of this tour. For me, it’s so hard to actually comprehend that it’s happening. Because it’s just numbers you hear. When I ask my team how it’s going and what’s happening, they just tell me numbers and I’m like: ‘ok, cool’. I don’t really take it in, and I won’t until I see it. But now I know we’ve sold out over half the tour, I know it’s a huge deal.”

On top of being a singer and actor, Omar runs the beauty brand OMR Beauty. Photo: Felix Swensson

Young Royalty

For anyone who’s been following Omar Rudberg’s career trajectory in recent years, the sell-out shows will come as no surprise. Following the release of the Netflix series Young Royals in 2021 (in which Omar, in his first-ever acting role, plays one of the two leads, Simon), the young singer’s profile skyrocketed on an unprecedented scale. “The whole Young Royals hype just came out of nowhere. Literally, it was just from one day to the next.” And pretty much the next day, Omar found himself with over two million followers on Instagram alone.

The US, in particular, has been quick to pay attention to the latest talent to come shining across the Atlantic all the way from Sweden. Variety included Omar in their Young Hollywood list of 2024, and after an appearance on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon cemented his Stateside fame, Omar got to walk the red carpet at last year’s 96th Academy Awards ceremony.

But while that first acting job has taken Omar to some very cool places in an extraordinarily short space of time, it’s his music that remains his primary focus. And he’s slowly been turning that TV fan base into followers of his tunes, too: “It took people a while after seeing me in Young Royals, to then realise that I also do music and I also do shows. But the music is always number one to me.”

Omar was named Sweden’s Best Dressed Man by two different magazines in 2023, ELLE and Café. Photo: Felix Swensson

Bi-Coastal Billboard star

Thankfully for Omar, it’s not just his fan base that is becoming wise to his songs; they’ve been turning the heads of some heavy hitters in the music business, too. After Variety’s feature, his latest EP Every Night Fantasy also got praised in Billboard, Rolling Stone and Teen Vogue. And at the end of 2024, he got to perform two sold-out shows on both sides of the US, in New York and LA.

February’s outing across Europe is the performer’s first big solo tour, following a ‘warm-up’ tour last autumn; a warm-up that incorporated those two US dates as well as Paris, London, Amsterdam, and Cologne. And while the concept of a warm-up tour might seem alien to us mere concert-goers, Omar can’t stress enough its value in lesson learning!

“I’ve realised what I want to prioritise and not prioritise; what’s important to me while being on tour. For example, having a gym… That’s something that’s going to be so important to me, which I didn’t even know about before. Now I know I have to be able to work out and take care of my body. Your health is everything.”

The tour bus life

Excitement levels are understandably high this close to getting out on the road again. Though it may surprise you to discover the bit he seems most excited about: “I’ve been dreaming about this for so many years. And now I can say I’m going on tour. And I’m going on tour with a tour bus!”

An underwhelming mode of transport to you and I perhaps, but to Omar, the bus brings back an avalanche of teenage memories: “I did a tour with my band when I was younger. And we had a tour bus, and it was the most fun experience I’ve ever had. So to get to do that again… I’m just so excited. We’re gonna have so much fun.” For those aforementioned health reasons and to make the gym visits more bearable, he’s even promised to keep pizza nights on the tour bus to a maximum of twice per week.

Lightning does strike twice

The band that Omar refers to is FO&O, a Swedish boyband that started out in 2013 doing street performances around Stockholm, and then uploading the footage to YouTube. Not signed to a major label, the band’s growth in popularity was organic, but incredibly swift! The following year they enjoyed a number one album, won a Swedish Grammy (for Innovator of the Year) and opened for Justin Bieber at Globen Arena. And all of this arrived with what seemed like wall-to-wall media coverage in Sweden at the time.

“The band still is, and will forever in my life be, one of the craziest experiences ever. People don’t get to experience what we did. That is something so unique and so hard to achieve. I don’t even think you can buy yourself that kind of fandom and that kind of hype. You can work hard enough to become the biggest artist, but how people react to it… you can not achieve that in any way. That is just something that happens if you’re lucky enough for it to happen.”

He didn’t know it at the time, but that stratospheric rise to fame for the young Omar Rudberg was to serve as the ideal training ground for what would happen to him on an even broader scale years later, with the explosion of Young Royals. But the experience of the latter hasn’t made him forget the former. “That, for me, being 14, was just insanity. I’ve always dreamed of becoming an artist and having such a strong bond with an audience. That feels so special. And I’m just the luckiest guy in the world because I’ve experienced that twice now.”

Omar Rudberg’s latest single, I’m Not A Boy, was released January 31 2025.

Omar’s European tour starts in the UK on 2 February and ends in Denmark on 28 February, encompassing 19 cities in total. Photo: Adam Falk