Britney Spears Arrested in California

Britney Spears was arrested on Wednesday evening in Ventura, Calif., multiple outlets have confirmed.

Arrest records from the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office indicate that the pop star, 44, was placed under arrest by the California Highway Patrol on Wednesday evening and booked by the sheriff’s office around 3 a.m., only to be cited and released about three hours later.

TMZ reports that Spears was arrested on suspicion of DUI. Spears is scheduled to appear in court on May 4.

Following the arrest, it appears that Spears’ Instagram page has been deactivated. She has not commented on her arrest as of Thursday morning.

Spears’ arrest comes in the wake of an eventful few years. In 2021, the Grammy-winning artist was released from her 13-year conservatorship amid calls for her freedom widely referred to as the #FreeBritney movement.

In her 2023 memoir, The Woman in Me, Spears recalled being forced into rehab by her father in 2018 after attempting to push back against her conservatorship.

“They kept me locked up against my will for months,” Spears wrote of her time in the rehab facility, during which she was prescribed lithium. “I couldn’t go outside. I couldn’t drive a car. I had to give blood weekly. I couldn’t take a bath in private. I couldn’t shut the door to my room.”

At one point during her stay, the “Gimme More” artist was shown videos of her fans protesting her conservatorship by a nurse. “That was the most amazing thing I’d ever seen in my life,” Spears wrote. “I don’t think people knew how much the #FreeBritney movement meant to me, especially in the beginning.”

In late 2025, Spears sold ownership of her music catalog to Primary Wave for an undisclosed sum. The deal reportedly included some of the singer’s biggest hits, including “…Baby One More Time,” “Circus,” and “Womanizer.” Primary Wave also owns the catalogs of iconic artists like Prince, Bob Marley, Stevie Nicks and Whitney Houston.