For nearly a year now, fans around the globe have been pondering: ‘Where has Adele been?’ The mystery of the 37-year-old singer’s disappearance from the spotlight has captivated many.

When a fan unexpectedly saw Adele last month with her friends in the dimly lit Pinky Ring Lounge in Las Vegas, he hurried over, thrilled, to capture a memorable photo.

The 16-time Grammy winner indulged the fan and pulled a thin smile as she posed next to him, wearing a wide-shouldered plunging black blazer.

Her massive fanbase will undoubtedly rejoice at seeing the artist behind “Someone Like You” engaging with fans for the first time since her final performance in November 2024.

Interestingly, the chic cocktail spot, located within the Bellagio Hotel and envisioned by the American pop sensation Bruno Mars, is just a stone’s throw away from the site of Adele’s last show, which marked the end of her residency, “Weekends With Adele,” at the Colosseum theater in Caesar’s Palace.

In August of the previous year, she dropped a surprising announcement, declaring her hiatus from the music scene and tearfully addressing her fans at a concert in Munich, saying: ‘I will not see you for quite some time. I just need a break. I have spent the past seven years crafting a new life for myself, and I wish to enjoy it now.’

Adele is no stranger to taking time off from her music career; she withdrew from the spotlight in 2015 following her third album, 25, and didn’t release new music for five years until her acclaimed album, 30. Nevertheless, between 2016 and 2017, she embarked on an 18-month global tour, maintaining public interest as she settled into a new Los Angeles home and ended her marriage with Simon Konecki in 2019 – an Eton-educated DJ and the father of her child.

During the pandemic in 2020, she hosted the US talk show, Saturday Night Live, and she definitely didn’t hide from the spotlight when dating her now-fiancé, the sports agent Rich Paul, as the pair were seen front row at a basketball match in 2021 just months after being introduced.

That same year she released 30, which she wrote for her son, Angelo, then eight, to explain her divorce from his father and her partner of seven years.

However, I can now reveal that the first ten months of this current break have been ‘very different’ for the songstress, as those close to her have informed me that she has ‘purposefully’ been keeping a ‘strict’ low profile for some time ‘more than ever’ – perhaps even to pursue a long-held ambition to teach.

A source said: ‘This is not new that she’s keeping her private life separate, she has a right to one, but it does have to be said that more than ever before she is going the extra mile to be strict about what she lets people see.

‘It’s very different from last time, she’s purposefully keeping the public at bay.’

Some showbusiness insiders are wondering if she may have let slip a clue as to why while on stage at Caesar’s Palace in May last year.

The Tottenham-born singer described to the audience how she wanted to have a second child – preferably a girl – once she had finished performing in the US and in Germany.

‘Once I’m done with all of my obligations and all of my shows, I want to have a baby,’ she told the delighted crowd.

‘And I want to have a girl because I’ve already got a boy. I feel like she might be the person I love the most in the world and I’ll probably hate the most in the world as well. She’s going to put me in my place all the time, isn’t she?’

Three months on, in August 2024, she announced that hiatus, prompting excited chatter that her dream just might have come true.

But before fans get carried away with the baby speculation, I am told the Hello singer is also studying for a degree in English Literature. The online course could help her fulfil her pre-fame ambition of becoming a teacher.

Adele has also dropped hints that, sadly, fame itself could be the reason behind her prolonged absence from the spotlight. After announcing her break, she told German magazine, ZDF, ‘I don’t have any plans for new music at all.

‘The fame side of it, I absolutely hate and I miss everything about before all of this had happened.

‘I miss everything about before I was famous, but I probably miss being anonymous the most.’

Her newfound anonymity has been tightly executed, save for two sightings in the front row of basketball matches – one in February, and the other in April. Both were in Los Angeles, where she and Paul – who counts basketball legend LeBron James as a client – share a £43million mansion in Beverly Hills.

One place that showbiz insiders expected to see the Brit School graduate was the 50th birthday party of her long-serving agent and close friend of 20 years, Lucy Dickins.

But despite some of the industry’s biggest stars and executives showing up to the July bash, Adele was nowhere to be seen.

Held in Dickins’s sprawling Wiltshire home, Oscar-nominated actress Keira Knightley was among the guests on the dance floor, alongside Rivals and EastEnders actor Danny Dyer.

Also mingling among the A-listers was Adele’s ex-husband Simon Konecki who had flown in from California. Were it not for their amicable relationship co-parenting their son, his presence might have been the reason for her absence. Instead, Adele’s no-show was said to be a ‘massive mystery’.

A month later, she did indeed appear. In August, a friend uploaded a video to social media of Adele partying in a black off-the-shoulder gown, laughing with Paul, 44, at a wedding. There, she was filmed singing Chappell Roan’s Pink Pony Club among a group of revellers.

And now it appears she is slowly re-emerging into the public eye after she was spotted having a quiet dinner with her husband and their friend American rapper Nas at Matsuhisa – a sushi restaurant in Beverly Hills – just days before she was seen at the Pinky Ring Lounge.

Whatever the reason for her sabbatical from the spotlight, she was never far from fans’ hearts, with one joking online: ‘I wish I could be like Adele, take an unquestioned nine-month break from work and still be as valued as ever.’