Tyra Banks Age 2026: How Old Is the Supermodel Today?

Last updated: November 11, 2026  ·  By Nathan Cole

Tyra Banks is 52 years old in 2026. She was born Tyra Lynne Banks on December 4, 1973, in Inglewood, California, which means she turns 53 on December 4, 2026 — 23 days from the date this article was last updated. If a page you read this year still says 51, it was written before her last birthday. If it says 53 already, it jumped the gun.

Fifty-two is a useful number for understanding where she stands. She has spent 37 of those years in public — a runway model at 15, a history-making cover star at 23, a television creator at 29, a daytime talk-show host at 31, a mother at 42, and, in 2026, a 52-year-old suing Netflix over a documentary about the show she built, judging on Project Runway, and running an ice-cream business from Sydney, Australia. Her net worth is estimated at $90 million, per Celebrity Net Worth, and she stands 5 feet 10 inches tall. This is the full picture, kept current to November 11, 2026: the birth date and the math, the Inglewood childhood, the Paris runways, the 1997 cover triple, the America’s Next Top Model empire, the money, the family, and the lawsuit that has put her back in the headlines.

How Old Is Tyra Banks in 2026?

Tyra Banks is 52 years old as of November 11, 2026. The math is simple and worth doing out loud, because so many pages get it wrong: born December 4, 1973, she turned 52 on December 4, 2025. She turns 53 on December 4, 2026 — 23 days from the date this article was last updated.

That makes her one of the rare supermodels whose career can be measured in clean decades. She was 15 when she started modelling, 23 when she made cover history three times in a single year, 29 when she created America’s Next Top Model, 31 when her daytime talk show premiered, 42 when her son was born, and 52 when she sued Netflix and returned to fashion-competition television as a judge. FemaleFirst, reporting on October 14, 2026, calls her “the 52-year-old supermodel” — the same number Wikipedia’s biography, TV Insider and every 2026 age page gives. The birth date itself has never been in dispute: December 4, 1973, Inglewood, California.

The confusion online has a clear cause. Age pages are usually written once and left alone, and a page written in 2024 says 51 forever. A page written in early 2025 says 52 forever — and happens to be right until December 4, 2026, when it goes stale. Search results from November 2026 still surface 51, 52 and 53 side by side. The fix is to check the page for a 2026 fact. If it mentions the Netflix lawsuit, Project Runway season 22 or the Life-Size 3 pitch, it was written after June 2026 and its age is current. If its newest fact is the 2018 ANTM finale or the 2022 Dancing with the Stars exit, it predates her 52nd birthday and its number is stale.

Early Life: The Tall, Awkward Kid from Inglewood

Tyra Lynne Banks was born on December 4, 1973, in Inglewood, California, to Carolyn London, a photographer, and Donald Banks, a computer programmer. She grew up in a middle-class household with her older brother Devin, and by her own account she was a tall, gangly kid who got teased for her height and her forehead — the same features that would later make her one of the most photographed women in the world. Her parents split when she was six, and her mother raised the two children while working as a medical photographer.

School was not kind to her. She has spoken for years about being bullied for her looks as a teenager, and about the “ugly duckling” stretch of her early teens when her height made her stand out in every classroom. The turn came at 15, when a scout spotted her and she signed with Elite Model Management. Within a year she was in Paris, and the girl who had been teased for standing out was suddenly being paid to do exactly that.

Nothing about that childhood pointed to a media empire. She was a kid from Inglewood with a photographer mother and a lanky frame, and the modelling world of the late 1980s had almost no room for Black women at the top of it. She walked into that room at 15 and spent the next decade widening it.

Modelling Breakthrough: 15 Years Old, 25 Shows in One Paris Season

Banks began modelling at 15, and her first Paris season is the stuff of industry legend: she reportedly booked 25 runway shows, walking for Chanel, Yves Saint Laurent, Christian Dior, Dolce & Gabbana and other houses in a single season. For a teenager from Inglewood, in a Paris fashion week that had barely begun to book Black models, that number was a statement. She was 16 and 17 and already working the runways that defined the supermodel era.

The bookings kept coming through the early 1990s. She walked for the biggest names in fashion, appeared in campaigns for CoverGirl — a contract that would run for years and become one of her most lucrative deals — and built the kind of editorial record that turns a working model into a name. By 1996 she had done something no Black woman had done before, and 1997 would do it three times over.

What set her apart was the bookings plus a business sense. She understood the business side of the runway while she was still walking it — the contracts, the exclusivity clauses, the way a cover could be worth more than a season of shows. That instinct would shape everything that came after, from the Victoria’s Secret deal to the television empire she built in her thirties.

1997: The Year She Made Cover History Three Times

In 1996, Banks became the first Black woman on the cover of GQ — the first model of any kind to do it, per contemporary reporting. Then came 1997, the year that made her a household name. On February 21, 1997, she appeared solo on the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue, photographed by Russell James in the Bahamas — the first Black woman to grace that cover alone. She had shared the 1996 cover with Valeria Mazza; the 1997 solo cover was the one that broke the barrier outright. The issue sold in 32 countries, a first for the magazine.

The same year, she became the first Black woman chosen for the cover of the Victoria’s Secret catalog, and she was named a Victoria’s Secret Angel — a contract she would hold from 1997 to 2005. She wore the Fantasy Bra twice, in 1997 (the Diamond Dream bra, worth about $3 million) and again in 2004. VH1 named her Supermodel of the Year in 1997. Three firsts, one year, at the age of 23.

The covers mattered beyond her own career. Fashion magazines had treated Black models as a risk for decades, and a solo Sports Illustrated Swimsuit cover was the most commercial cover in American publishing. Banks appeared on it — and sold it. The generation of Black models who followed, from the Hadid-era diversity push to the current runways, walked through a door she opened in 1997. For the ages of the supermodels who came after her, see how old Naomi Campbell is in 2026 and how old Cindy Crawford is in 2026.

How Tall Is Tyra Banks?

Tyra Banks is 5 feet 10 inches tall (178 cm). The figure is consistent across biography sources, and it is worth stating plainly because it was the feature she was teased for as a teenager — the height that made her stand out in an Inglewood classroom became the height that carried her down the Paris runways. At 5’10” she was tall even by supermodel standards of the 1990s, and it gave her a stride that photographers and casting directors remembered.

For scale: she is an inch taller than fellow 1990s cover star Cindy Crawford, who is listed at 5 feet 9 inches, and two inches taller than Naomi Campbell’s listed 5 feet 9 inches. Her son York, photographed beside her in 2024 and 2025, is already catching up — Hello! magazine noted in February 2026 that the ten-year-old is “towering” beside his mother. For a full breakdown of her height, measurements and how she compares with other models, see Tyra Banks’s height in detail on our sister site CelebAmerica.

America’s Next Top Model: The Empire She Built at 29

Banks created America’s Next Top Model in 2003, when she was 29, and it became the defining project of her career. The show premiered on UPN on May 20, 2003, and ran for 24 cycles through 2018, moving from UPN to The CW and finally to VH1. She hosted and executive-produced every cycle except Cycle 23, when Rita Ora took the hosting chair; Banks returned for Cycle 24, the last, in 2018. The format — aspiring models competing in photo shoots, runway challenges and eliminations, judged by Banks and a panel that included Nigel Barker, J. Alexander and Jay Manuel — became one of the most imitated reality formats on television.

The money matched the reach. Parade, citing Forbes, reports that Banks earned $30 million in a single 2009 cycle of the show, as host and executive producer. The series aired in more than 100 countries, launched the careers of winners including Eva Marcille, Adrianne Curry and Whitney Thompson, and gave Banks a catchphrase — “smize,” smiling with your eyes — that entered the language. She also wrote the bestselling novel Modelland in 2011, set in a fictional modelling school, and kept the book in print with a re-release push in 2026.

The show’s legacy is complicated, and Banks has said so herself. The Netflix docuseries Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model, released February 16, 2026, revisits the show’s most controversial moments — the makeovers contestants hated, the weight and body-image pressures, the challenges that look different through a 2026 lens. Banks participated in the documentary, giving a three-and-a-half-hour interview, and closed it with a tease: “I feel like my work is not done. You have no idea what we have planned for cycle 25.” No network, premiere date or casting has been announced as of November 2026, and she told E! News in 2024 that earlier revival attempts were blocked by “the powers that be” — so the tease is a promise, not a premiere.

The Tyra Banks Show, America’s Got Talent, and Dancing with the Stars

Television hosting became Banks’s second career. The Tyra Banks Show, her daytime talk show, ran from 2005 to 2010, and won a Daytime Emmy in 2008. The show mixed celebrity interviews with the frank, personal segments that became her signature — including the 2006 episode in which she addressed tabloid claims about her weight on air, a moment that still circulates today.

She hosted America’s Got Talent for seasons 12 and 13 (2017–2018), then took over as host of Dancing with the Stars for seasons 29, 30 and 31 (2020–2022), where she also served as an executive producer. The DWTS run put her in front of a live weekly audience of millions at the age of 46 to 48, and it ended in 2023 when she stepped away to focus on her ice-cream business — a decision that surprised viewers at the time and made more sense once the Sydney flagship opened.

Acting filled the gaps between hosting jobs. She played Eve, a doll brought to life, in Disney’s Life-Size (2000) opposite Lindsay Lohan, and returned for Life-Size 2 in 2018. In October 2026 she told reporters she is pitching Disney a “bananas” idea for Life-Size 3. Earlier film roles included Higher Learning (1995) and a recurring turn as Jackie Ames on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air in 1993 — her first television work, at 19.

Project Runway 2026: Five Episodes and a Clash with Law Roach

Banks returned to fashion-competition television in 2026 as a recurring judge on season 22 of Project Runway, which premiered July 9, 2026, on Freeform and streamed on Hulu and Disney+. She joined host and head judge Heidi Klum, Nina García and Law Roach, with Christian Siriano as mentor, for the show’s biggest season ever — 22 designers competing for a $100,000 prize.

Her run lasted five episodes. The fifth, which aired August 6, 2026, ended with a heated on-air exchange between Banks and Roach during judging, and she did not appear again that season. Viewers speculated about a falling-out; Banks told Entertainment Weekly in October 2026 that her contract covered five episodes and the exit was planned. “Y’all don’t know what my contract stated,” she said, dismissing the idea that she was expected to stay for ten. Guest judges including Winnie Harlow — a former ANTM contestant — and Nina Dobrev filled the panel from episode six onward. The season wrapped September 10, 2026.

The stint mattered for another reason: it put the two most famous supermodels of the 1990s, Banks and Klum, on the same judging panel for the first time. Klum, born June 1, 1973, is six months older than Banks — 53 in 2026 — and the two had spent three decades as parallel figures in fashion, never quite sharing a stage until Freeform put them there.

Tyra Banks’s Net Worth in 2026: Million

Tyra Banks’s net worth in 2026 is estimated at $90 million, according to Celebrity Net Worth. Parade, Hollywood Life and OK Magazine all report the same $90 million in 2026, attributing it to Celebrity Net Worth. That is the headline number, and this article uses it as the anchor because it is the figure the reporting converges on — but readers should know what kind of number it is. Forbes publishes no current net-worth figure for her, and the $90 million is an outside estimate rather than a confirmed accounting of her finances. One lower-authority roundup gives a $90–$120 million range; the major outlets all sit at $90 million, so the anchor stays there.

The money comes from five streams that have been compounding since she was a teenager: modelling contracts, including the CoverGirl deal and a reported $10 million Victoria’s Secret deal; television, above all America’s Next Top Model, where Forbes reported $30 million in a single 2009 cycle; hosting fees from The Tyra Banks Show, America’s Got Talent and Dancing with the Stars; books and cosmetics, including the Tyra Beauty line; and the SMiZE & Dream ice-cream brand. More profiles from the same fortune beat are in our Celebrity Net Worth archive.

One thing the number does not show is how early it started. She was earning before she could vote, and she has been earning ever since — which is why a 52-year-old can carry a nine-figure estimate while peers who started as adults are still building theirs. The $90 million is not a lottery win. It is 37 years of paychecks, catalogued.

SMiZE & Dream: Ice Cream, Sydney, and Two Legal Headaches

Banks founded SMiZE & Dream — named for “smize,” her signature phrase — during the pandemic, building it around “hot ice cream,” a warm dessert she describes as a new invention rather than melted ice cream or custard. The first pop-up opened in Washington, D.C., in the summer of 2024, and a permanent flagship followed in Sydney, Australia, where she now lives. The Sydney shop sits on Darling Harbour, and Banks has talked openly about the freezer breakdowns, the flavour development and the plan for a New York debut with top chefs.

2026 brought the brand two legal headaches. In Washington, D.C., landlord Christopher Powell sued Banks and her business partner Louis Bélanger-Martin in October 2025 for $2.8 million, claiming they signed a 10-year lease in April 2024 for an Eastern Market flagship and abandoned it two months later. Powell voluntarily dismissed the case in December 2025, and Banks is now seeking more than $50,000 in sanctions against him, calling the suit a “celebrity shakedown.” In Australia, the New South Wales Food Authority ruled that the warm dessert could not legally be called “ice cream” under Australian food standards, and the product was renamed “Hot SMiZE Cream.” In June 2026 the brand drew a separate round of criticism for using AI-generated models in Instagram promotional images; at least four images were removed after the story broke.

The business is still small next to the television fortune, and it is the part of her empire that loses money in public. That is the point of it, in a way — she left Dancing with the Stars to build it, moved to Sydney for it, and has spent 2026 defending it in court and in the press. Whether it becomes a second fortune or an expensive hobby is the open question of her fifties.

Personal Life at 52: York, Louis Bélanger-Martin, and Sydney

Banks became a mother at 42. Her son, York Banks Asla, was born on January 27, 2016, via gestational surrogate, after years of IVF attempts that Banks has spoken about openly — she has said the process came down to her last eggs. His father is Norwegian photographer Erik Asla, her partner from 2013 to 2017; the two split in October 2017 and have co-parented since. York turned 10 in January 2026, and Banks keeps him largely out of the spotlight, sharing only occasional photos.

She has never been married. Her current long-term partner is Canadian businessman Louis Bélanger-Martin, who is also her business partner in SMiZE & Dream. The two live in Sydney with York, a move Banks has described as a deliberate reset — “I live in Australia now,” she said in the Netflix docuseries, “I’m obsessed with pivoting.” Her mother Carolyn, who managed her early career, remains close.

Family is the frame she puts around the work now. The woman who spent her twenties on runways and her thirties building a television empire spends her fifties running a small ice-cream business from a city on the other side of the world, raising a ten-year-old, and picking her television jobs one five-episode contract at a time.

The Netflix Lawsuit: Why Tyra Banks Sued Over Reality Check

On June 13, 2026, Banks sued Netflix, production company EverWonder Studio and directors Mor Loushy and Daniel Sivan in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California — case 2:26-cv-06467. The 65-page complaint alleges false light, defamation by implication, breach of contract and false endorsement under the Lanham Act, and demands a jury trial. The core claim: she gave a three-and-a-half-hour interview for the docuseries Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model, and the producers used about 16 minutes of it, cut in a way she says created a false story about her role in the show’s controversies.

The most serious dispute concerns former Cycle 2 contestant Shandi Sullivan and a night of drinking in Milan, which Sullivan characterized as an assault. Banks’s complaint says the documentary falsely suggested she knew about the assault and failed to act, and that she was never told during her interview that Sullivan would describe the encounter that way — so she had no chance to respond. The complaint also says the producers rearranged footage to suggest she pushed Sullivan into a confession, and used her likeness to promote the docuseries’ soundtrack without consent. Netflix has denied the claims and, in August 2026, filed a motion to dismiss plus an anti-SLAPP motion seeking to strike her claims, arguing the filmmakers fairly represented her views and that she signed an agreement giving producers broad editorial rights.

As of November 2026 the case is still moving. On November 8–9, 2026, Banks sought additional discovery, asking the court to compel production of unedited interview footage from former show figures J. Alexander, Jay Manuel and Nigel Barker — footage she believes will show the context the documentary left out. No ruling on the dismissal motion has been reported. The lawsuit is the biggest legal fight of her career, and it is also a story about editing: a woman who built her fortune by controlling the camera is arguing, in federal court, that the camera was turned against her.

Tyra Banks’s Age Compared to Her Supermodel Peers

Age only means something in context, and Banks’s context is the supermodel generation that defined the 1990s — plus the one that followed it. The table below lines her up against the peers she is most often compared with, using birth dates reported by Wikipedia and the outlets named.

The comparison cuts two ways. Crawford, eight years older, is the richest of the group on the strength of her Meaningful Beauty business. Klum, six months older, sits at $160 million. Banks sits in the middle on money and in the middle on age — and ahead of all of them on one measure: she is the only one who turned modelling fame into a television production empire she owned. The next generation — Kendall Jenner, 31 in 2026, Gigi Hadid, 31, Bella Hadid, 30, and Emily Ratajkowski — earns its money from runways and Instagram; Banks earned hers from owning the show.

Why So Many Sites Still Say Tyra Banks Is 51 or 53

Search “Tyra Banks age” and the first page of results will show you 51, 52 and 53 side by side. All three were right once, or will be soon. A page written in 2024 that says 51 was right until December 4, 2025. A page written in early 2025 that says 52 is right until December 4, 2026. A page that says 53 is either counting ahead or was written after this article’s last update. The problem is that age pages are rarely updated, and the search results do not carry a visible “written on” date next to the number.

The fix is to check the page for a 2026 fact. If it mentions the Netflix lawsuit, Project Runway season 22, the Life-Size 3 pitch or the SMiZE & Dream AI-model story, it was written after June 2026 and its age is current. If its newest fact is the 2018 ANTM finale, it predates her 52nd birthday and its number is stale. And if it says 51, it was written before December 2025 — a full year ago. The correct answer, as of November 11, 2026, is 52, turning 53 on December 4, 2026.

Frequently Asked Questions

Sources & Reporting

This article was researched on 11 November 2026 from live reporting: Wikipedia and TV Insider for the December 4, 1973 birth date, the Inglewood birthplace, the Victoria’s Secret Angel years 1997–2005, and the first-Black-woman GQ (1996) and Sports Illustrated Swimsuit covers; Andscape (December 27, 2016) for the February 21, 1997 solo Swimsuit cover photographed by Russell James in the Bahamas and the shared 1996 cover with Valeria Mazza; Celebrity Net Worth (profile updated 2026) for the $90 million estimate, the $30 million June 2008–June 2009 earnings, the $18 million-plus 2006 figure, the $30 million-a-year peak, and the Project Runway season 22 and lawsuit updates; Parade for the same $90 million figure, the $30 million single-2009-cycle ANTM earnings per Forbes, and the $10 million Victoria’s Secret deal; Hollywood Life (via Pagegoo, June 13, 2026) and OK Magazine (July 10, 2026) for the $90 million figure; CourtListener (complaint filed June 13, 2026, case 2:26-cv-06467) for the lawsuit’s claims, parties and the 16-minutes-of-three-and-a-half-hours allegation; FemaleFirst (June 14, 2026) and The Mary Sue (June 16, 2026) for the filing and the Shandi Sullivan dispute; Oliver Willis for the August 2026 Netflix motion to dismiss and anti-SLAPP motion; Urban Mag (November 8–9, 2026) and ProfileAge (November 9, 2026) for the November 2026 discovery request covering J. Alexander, Jay Manuel and Nigel Barker; Entertainment Weekly via Parade (February 12, 2026), Scary Mommy (February 19, 2026) and Radio Times (February 17, 2026) for the Cycle 25 tease and the absence of any official confirmation; Wikipedia’s Project Runway season 22 page, FilmiFeed (August 14, 2026) and Gossip Herald (October 2026) for the July 9, 2026 premiere, the five-episode run, the August 6, 2026 exit and the Law Roach clash; Law Highlights and All About Lawyer for the $2.8 million D.C. lease lawsuit, its December 2025 voluntary dismissal and the sanctions request; FemaleFirst (June 25, 2026) for the SMiZE & Dream AI-model image removal; FemaleFirst and BANG Premier (October 14, 2026) for the Life-Size 3 pitch; The CEO Magazine (February 22, 2026) and Tasty (February 10–19, 2026) for the Sydney flagship, the Darling Harbour location and the New York plans; NBC (April 2025), Hello! (updated February 24, 2026) and Romper (February 14, 2016) for York Banks Asla’s January 27, 2016 birth via surrogate and the Erik Asla relationship; and topwhatis.com (February 21, 2026) for the outlier $90–$120 million range. Where sources disagreed — the Sydney flagship’s opening month, the stale 51- and 53-year-old listings — the article names the disagreement instead of picking a number silently. Corrections are welcome via the About page.