Taylor Swift thanked her fans for making the Eras Tour “the most exciting, powerful, electrifying, intense, most challenging” experience of her life, as she played the closing show in Vancouver on Sunday.

Prior to playing All Too Well, Swift told the audience in Canada that she had been “touring since I was 15 years old”, but the experiences of the past 21 months had been “completely unrecognisable” from anything she’d ever done before.

“I never thought that writing one line about friendship bracelets would have you guys all making friendship bracelets, making friends and bringing joy to each other.

“That is the lasting legacy of this tour,” she added. “I couldn’t be more proud of you.”

The lyric about friendship bracelets, from the song You’re On Your Own Kid, spawned a cottage industry of hand-crafted accessories, which were swapped and traded by the millions of fans who attended the tour – including, at one London show, Sir Paul McCartney.

Swift said the community her fans had created would always be “what I think about when I think about this tour”.

They responded by serenading Swift with a chorus of Happy Birthday – ahead of her turning 35 next Friday.

“You guys even sang a happy early birthday to Taylor?” noted the tour’s official social media account. “We love you so much!”

The Eras Tour kicked off in Arizona in March 2023 with an epic, 44-song setlist that lasted more than three hours.

The appetite for tickets was so great that Ticketmaster’s systems broke down, prompting a hearing into the company in the US Senate.

Despite that, more than 10.1 million tickets were sold for the tour’s 149 shows, spanning five continents, over almost two years.

Last December, it became the first tour in history to surpass $1bn (£786m) in ticket sales. At its conclusion, that figure is expected to top $2bn (£1.5bn), according to Forbes.

Merchandise has also proven to be a lucrative source of revenue, with estimates that it has brought in an extra $400m (£314m).

The final stop was watched by more than 60,000 fans in Vancouver’s BC Place stadium. One fan-hosted live-stream from the venue was followed by another 389,000 people on YouTube.

Swift was in a nostalgic mood throughout, calling the show “one last grand adventure” with her fans.

As she played Cardigan, from her pandemic-era album Folklore, the reality of the situation started to sink in.

“It’s just crazy to think I’m going to sing the last song I ever sing in the Folklore cabin,” she said. “That’s wild. Oh my God!”

And she paid tribute to her band, dancers and crew, “who all left their families” behind and “performed when they were sick [or] anything was going on in their lives” to keep the show on the road.

For the acoustic set – which showcases songs missing from the standard setlist – the star said she had tried to choose tracks that “really encapsulate how I feel” about the final show.

On guitar, she played a mash-up of A Place In This World, from her debut album, and 1989’s New Romantics, with the apposite lyric: “Heartbreak is the national anthem / We sing it proudly.”

Moving to the piano, she played Long Live, tweaking the words from “It was the end of a decade” to “It was the end of an era” – prompting a huge cheer from the audience.

Continuing the theme, she added elements of New Year’s Day, a song about holding on to memories, and The Manuscript, whose story of heartbreak became a metaphor for the tour coming to an end.

“Now and then I re-read the manuscript / But the story isn’t mine anymore.“

Fans noted that the selection meant the acoustic sets had kicked off in 2023 with Tim McGraw, the first song in her discography, and ended with The Manuscript, the most recent.

Only six songs from her 11 studio albums were not performed on the tour: That’s When, Bye Bye Baby, Girl At Home, Ronan, Forever Winter and Soon You’ll Get Better.

Swift was watched from the audience by her mother Andrea – but her boyfriend, American football player Travis Kelce, had to miss the show to play (and win) a home game with his team, the Kansas City Chiefs.

Fans had predicted she would use the last concert to announce her next career move. Top of their wish-list was the reveal of Reputation (Taylor’s Version) – the latest in the star’s plan to re-record the first six albums in her discography.

In the end, there were no big surprises or special guests.

Instead, the Eras Tour got to bow out on its own terms – celebrating 18 years of music that has united people around the world.

As she cued up the set-closer, Karma, Swift thanked her fans one last time.

“I want to thank every single one of you for being a part of the most thrilling chapter of my entire life to date – my beloved Eras Tour.”

She dedicated the song to Kelce, changing the lyrics to “Karma is the guy on The Chiefs coming straight home to me“, as she has done several times since they started dating last year.

Over the dying notes of the song, Swift shared an emotional hug with her dancers and backing singers. And rather than making her traditional exit of being lowered beneath the stage, she opted to walk out with her team.

It was, quite literally, the end of an era.