Everything You Need To Know About Taylor Swift's Upcoming Single 'Patient Zero'

As usual, Taylor Swift is keeping fans clowning—but as it turns out, we don't have to wait until the 2026 MTV VMAs to find out what she's up to this time.

For weeks now, Swifties have been trying to make sense of her cryptic Emmys code, "Saccharide, Ares, From the Vineyard, North or South," and after she swapped three of the o's for zeros in her Instagram bio, a few fans thought to take a closer look at the third letter from the first six words of her code.

The result: an anagram for ENCORE.

This isn't the first time Tay has shown fans a series of zeros—she also featured the number on four scorecards in her "Opalite" music video (skip to 4:37 to see the moment).

You also might recall that sign from the "Opalite" video that read, "Patient for the encore." And at long last, it seems the encore in question is finally (almost) here.

Once Taylor's September 22 website countdown ended at 2 p.m. ET, it was revealed that the Grammy winner would be releasing a new single on September 25…but instead of being called "Encore," as fans thought, it's actually called "Patient Zero."

"I've been impatiently waiting to tell you that my brand new single 'Patient Zero' will be out on September 25 (!!!!!!!!!!!!)," she captioned her post, "and it's available to pre-order now on my website for 24 hours. 0️⃣0️⃣0️⃣0️⃣"

She also has the single available to purchase on three different collector's edition CDs on her website.

If you click on any one of the CDs, then you'll see that it's associated with her The Life of a Showgirl album and shipping on October 13, 2026, so…does that mean a deluxe edition of TS12 is coming as well? (She did include 12 exclamation marks in her caption announcing the release, and—as a reminder—TLOAS album orders were shipped on October 13, 2025.)

Another question I still have: Why did she include three zeros in her bio with "And, baby, that's sh0w business f0r y0u" but FOUR zero emojis in her above caption? Hmm...

More to come!!

This article originally appeared on Cosmopolitan.com. Minor edits have been made by the Cosmo.ph editors.