Jude Bellingham is only 23 years old and he’s already considered one of the best midfielders in the world. The English athlete joined Real Madrid in 2023 at age 19 and scored in each of his first four competitive appearances for the club. He won Spain’s La Liga and the Champions League in his debut season and was named the league’s player of the year.
Bellingham has since become one of the most recognizable footballers in the world, appearing in campaigns for Louis Vuitton, Adidas, and EA Sports, and landing on the cover of the FIFA video game series twice. Off the pitch, the England midfielder has kept his personal life largely private. But since early 2025, he has increasingly been photographed with his girlfriend, Ashlyn Castro. Below, get to know more about her:
She’s from the United States.
Castro was born in California in 1997, making her six years older than Jude. She’s also 5-foot-8, based on a glimpse of her California driver’s license she shared to an Instagram reel.
Castro is a content creator.
Castro has built a strong following online through fashion, beauty, travel, and brand collaborations, with more than 727,000 Instagram followers and counting. She has also appeared in front of the camera in other contexts. In 2021, she appeared during a party scene in a music video for DJ Khaled and Drake’s song “Popstar.”
The couple went public with their relationship in 2025.
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The couple at the Madrid Open in April.
Bellingham is known to be very private, and neither of them have not spoken publicly about their relationship. But they have been photographed together more often since the start of 2025. It has also been reported that the couple met through the celebrity dating app Raya in 2024, though it has not been confirmed.
The first photos emerged in January 2025, when they were spotted having lunch together in Madrid following Real Madrid’s Champions League match against RB Salzburg. Shortly after, Castro was seen in a private box alongside members of Bellingham’s family during a Real Madrid match against Girona. They continued to appear together in public over the following months, including at the Madrid Open in April. Last summer, the pair vacationed together on a $1.3 million superyacht off the coast of Sardinia while Bellingham recovered from shoulder surgery.
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Castro and Bellingham share a kiss after the England/Croatia match at the World Cup.
Castro has been photographed more frequently at the 2026 World Cup, starting at England’s opening World Cup match against Croatia in Dallas. She has since been spotted in the stands at several of the Three Lions’s subsequent matches throughout the tournament, including their July 1 victory over the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Castro was previously linked to Michael B. Jordan.
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Castro, wearing Bellingham’s England kit, at the World Cup in Dallas.
Before her relationship with Bellingham, Castro was linked to actor Michael B. Jordan back in 2018. The two were photographed together at a private event in Los Angeles, and reports also suggested they had spent New Year’s Eve together. They were said to have gone their separate ways by late 2018.
Castro subsequently dated Atlanta Hawks basketball player Terance Mann. Some fans questioned the timeline between Mann and Bellingham, but Mann set the record straight and defended Castro. “Ashlyn is cool, people. I don’t know why everybody is on her head about anything. She’s cool. Me and Ash are cool. We haven’t been together for a long, long, long time,” Mann said in a TikTok live session, per Goal.com. “Y’all just on her back, on her body about nothing. Y’all mad that she what??? Like c’mon. She ain’t do nothing; she’s cool. She ain’t no gold digger. Y’all just doing too damn much. No! She did not cheat. We haven’t been together in…..I don’t know how long. So calm that narrative down.”
Rachel King (she/her) is a news writer at Town & Country. Before joining T&C, she spent nearly a decade as an editor at Fortune. Her work covering travel and lifestyle has appeared in Forbes, Observer, Robb Report, Cruise Critic, and Cool Hunting, among others. Originally from San Francisco, she lives in New York with her wife, their daughter, and a precocious labradoodle. Follow her on Instagram at @rk.passport.
