Drake turns 40 on October 24, 2026, after a birthday week split between Toronto and New York. The milestone lands at the end of the biggest chart year of his career, one in which he held the top three spots on the Billboard 200 at the same time.
The Drake 40th birthday story is not a single party. Reports from XXL, Billboard and TMZ trace several days of celebrations, starting at home in Toronto and closing in New York the night before the date itself. Each stop says something about how Drake is marking the turn: privately with old friends first, then on a stage he first shared with a boy band in Toronto four years ago.
Drake 40th birthday begins in Toronto
The week opened in Toronto on October 21, where Drake gathered privately with friends at the CN Tower. According to the XXL report published on October 23, Popcaan was among those present, and friends surprised the rapper with a collage of shared memories. It was a hometown start, in a landmark that sits over the city where his career began, and it kept the first night small before the week grew louder.
From Toronto, the celebrations moved across the border. Drake, his mother and members of his entourage travelled to New York aboard Air Drake, and on October 22 he was spotted dining at the Italian restaurant Mamo. The two city itinerary meant the public glimpses of the birthday began days before October 24, rather than documenting one party on the night itself. For an artist who has long split his public life between Toronto and the road, the route fit the record.
Backstreet Boys close the New York party
The New York party took place on Friday, October 23, at Casa Cipriani, hours before the official birthday date. Billboard reported more than 400 guests and a surprise performance by the Backstreet Boys, and footage from the event shows Drake joining the group onstage for their 1999 single I Want It That Way. TMZ reported that the night also included a game show segment with cash prizes of up to $1 million, along with designer giveaways that included Chanel and Hermes handbags.
The Backstreet Boys booking carries a Toronto history of its own. In July 2022, during the group’s DNA World Tour stop at Budweiser Stage in Toronto, Drake joined them onstage and the group introduced him as their sixth member. He has said the song connects to one of his earliest memories of feeling accepted, hearing it around the time of his bar mitzvah. Bringing the same group back for his 40th, in a different city and a different decade of his career, turns a birthday performance into a bookend.
Three albums at the top at once
The birthday arrives after a release run with few precedents. On May 15, Drake released three albums at once: Iceman, Habibti and Maid of Honour. Billboard reported that the three projects debuted at Nos. 1, 2 and 3 on the Billboard 200 dated May 30, making him the first artist to occupy all three positions at the same time in the chart’s 70 year history. Iceman led the group with 463,000 equivalent album units in the United States, according to Luminate figures cited by Billboard, becoming his 15th Billboard 200 No. 1. Habibti opened with 114,000 units and Maid of Honour with 110,000.
The singles chart told the same story in the same week. Drake placed 42 songs on the Hot 100, 40 of them new entries, which pushed his career total to 402 and made him the first artist to pass 400 entries on the chart. The week before the birthday brought one more line for the record book, as a new round of RIAA certifications pushed his certified units in the United States past 350 million, a milestone covered in full in our report on Drake passing 350 million RIAA units.
What comes after 40
XXL reports that Drake has promised a 2027 tour supporting the three May albums, which would give the next phase of his career a live focus to match the release strategy. He has already started testing the material in public, performing Iceman songs live for the first time at a Don Toliver show in Toronto earlier this fall. Whether Popcaan, a guest at the CN Tower gathering, appears anywhere in that next chapter is an open question for now.
What is settled is the shape of the year he is closing. A Toronto artist who turns 40 this week spent 2026 holding the top of the album chart three places deep, passing 400 Hot 100 entries and passing 350 million certified units, then celebrated in the two cities that frame his story. The Drake 40th birthday is a personal date, but the numbers around it are the reason it reads as music news.
