Rumors that Fleetwood Mac would reunite to perform at J.K. Rowling’s upcoming birthday party in November have been officially shut down. Despite the flurry of speculation online, representatives for the band confirmed this week that no such performance is on the horizon. “This is categorically false,” a spokesperson for Fleetwood Mac told Rolling Stone. “It’s not in the realm of true.”

The denial comes after unverified reports circulated suggesting that Stevie Nicks, Lindsey Buckingham, John McVie, and Mick Fleetwood were set to headline a private party for the Harry Potter author. For fans who have long hoped for another Fleetwood Mac reunion, the news was quickly debunked.

Fleetwood Mac last performed together on November 19, 2019, at a benefit concert for UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospitals at Oracle Park in San Francisco. Any chance of the band returning to the stage was further diminished following the death of singer and keyboardist Christine McVie in 2022.

Nicks has been especially candid about how her longtime friend and bandmate’s death marked the end of Fleetwood Mac. Speaking to Rolling Stone in 2024, she said: “There is no more Fleetwood Mac now, because when Christine died, Fleetwood Mac died. We cannot replace her.”

Fleetwood Mac’s legacy spans more than five decades, with its lineup changing numerous times since its formation in London in 1967. After achieving worldwide fame in the 1970s with the classic lineup of Nicks, Buckingham, McVie, John McVie, and Fleetwood, the group weathered decades of internal strife, solo ventures, and shifting dynamics.

Christine McVie briefly left the band in 1998 before returning in 2014. By then, tensions between Nicks and Buckingham had begun to boil over. In 2018, Buckingham was dismissed from the band following disputes over touring. The group continued to perform with Neil Finn of Crowded House and guitarist Mike Campbell of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers filling in.

Although Fleetwood later expressed optimism about reconciling with Buckingham, saying in 2021 that he hoped the guitarist could one day rejoin the group, Nicks has remained firm that a full reunion was never realistic. The two did, however, collaborate indirectly when their 1973 album Buckingham Nicks was reissued.

While Fleetwood Mac is unlikely to perform again, fans will still have a chance to see the group’s story told on screen. A feature-length documentary, announced in 2024, is currently in production with filmmaker Frank Marshall at the helm. The project, commissioned by Apple, will include interviews with the surviving members, Nicks, Buckingham, Fleetwood, and John McVie, as well as previously unseen archival footage and interviews with Christine McVie.

The documentary does not yet have a title or release date, but it promises to trace the band’s remarkable five-decade journey, from their blues-rock origins in the late Sixties to their superstardom in the Seventies and beyond.

The notion that a group as complicated and historically fraught as Fleetwood Mac would reunite at a birthday party, even one for a cultural figure as prominent as Rowling, was always unlikely. The band’s history makes clear that personal dynamics, losses, and creative fractures have left little room for casual reunions.