[70] Sheeran performed "The A Team" at the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II concert held on The Mall outside Buckingham Palace on 4 June 2012 and a cover of Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here" at the closing ceremony of the 2012 Summer Olympics in London on 12 August 2012.

Sheeran also contributed two songs to One Direction's second studio album, Take Me Home, released in November 2012; the single "Little Things" became the group's second number-one in the UK.

[84] On 24 March 2014, Sheeran performed at the Teenage Cancer Trust charity concert at the Royal Albert Hall in London where he unveiled "Take It Back", a track that would appear on the deluxe version of the second album.

[102][103] On 27 June, Sheeran performed as the opening act for The Rolling Stones in their Zip Code Tour date in Kansas City's Arrowhead Stadium.

[105] The concert was documented and aired on 16 August 2015 on NBC; the one-hour special Ed Sheeran – Live at Wembley Stadium also included behind-the-scenes footage.

[117] On 2 January, he posted a 10-second video on Twitter and other social media platforms, revealing the tracklist and cover art of his fourth studio album, ÷ ("Divide"), which was released on 3 March 2017.

[122] Following the release of these singles, Sheeran co-hosted the BBC Radio 1 Breakfast Show with Scott Mills where it was implied that he would possibly make an appearance at the Glastonbury Festival in 2017.

"[143] In December 2017, Sheeran appeared on BBC Radio 1's Live Lounge, performing his song "Perfect" and a duet of The Pogues' festive classic "Fairytale of New York" with Anne-Marie.

[150] Sheeran played to over 950,000 people in Australia and New Zealand in March and April, making it the biggest concert tour in Australasian music history, overtaking the previous record set by Dire Straits in 1986.

[187] He played warm-up shows at the Electric Ballroom in Camden Town, London before the main tour began with two concerts at Croke Park in Dublin.

[189] 2022 also saw Sheeran venture into heavier styles of music, releasing a new version of "Bad Habits" with the pop metal group Bring Me the Horizon in February.

[217] He was also inspired by "Cannonball" singer-songwriter Damien Rice in 2002, with Sheeran stating, "seeing him play this small club in Ireland, I was able to meet him, and he was unbelievably cool.

[233] On 15 November 2014, Sheeran joined the charity supergroup Band Aid 30 along with other British and Irish pop acts, recording the latest version of the track "Do They Know It's Christmas?"

[236] Sheeran teamed up with the cast of the BBC3 mockumentary sitcom People Just Do Nothing to perform a charity single for the BBC's biennial telethon Comic Relief which aired in March 2017.

The donations, which have been made over a two-year period via the Ed Sheeran Suffolk Music Foundation, helped the school to purchase items such as MacBooks, cameras and a photography darkroom.

Sheeran has donated some of his personal items including handwritten lyrics from his song "Perfect", lego bricks he played with as a kid, handmade You Need Me EP from 2009 and a £3 ticket to his first gig at the British Legion in Framlingham.

The auction was made to raise money for Suffolk charities such as GeeWizz and Zest who both support children and young adults in the county, including redeveloping a playground for kids with special educational needs and disabilities in Ipswich.

[243] Later that month, Sheeran backed footballer Marcus Rashford's free school meals campaign and opened his own breakfast club at his Notting Hill restaurant, Bertie Blossoms.

[245] Sheeran made his acting debut in 2014, a cameo role as himself on New Zealand soap opera Shortland Street, filmed while he was in the country for a one-off performance.

[248] After recording a cover version of Foy Vance's "Make It Rain" for Sons of Anarchy, Sheeran was cast by creator Kurt Sutter to play Sir Cormac in the medieval drama The Bastard Executioner on FX.

[255] A lifelong fan of the product—he has it with everything from fish and chips to his morning sausage "butty" to upmarket dinners, carries a bottle on tour, and has a Heinz Ketchup tattoo on his arm—he put forward an idea he had written for their next TV campaign, and the company responded.

Noting him as "one of the most influential" artists of his generation, as he spawned "endless imitators", Petridis remarked that the music charts were "packed with Sheeran-alikes" after ×, describing it as "the wave of earnest, dressed-down, boy-next-door troubadours" that reached critical mass.

[259] Similarly, The Guardian writer Laura Snapes cited him as "the godfather of the current crop of singer-songwriters" in 2019, stating that Sheeran inspired "troubadours" to enter the music charts, and marked "the calcification of the everyman male pop star", and the end of record labels marketing them "exclusively to teenage girls and their mums.

"[260] Billboard writer Jason Lipshutz noticed that his appeal and performance style had influenced up-and-coming soloists, impacting "a significant number of pop artists who crave his type of singular success.

[262] iHeartMedia senior executive Sharon Dastur declared that Sheeran's success has allowed newer artists to be given an opportunity in the mainstream scene with quieter material at the forefront, instead of dance music.

"[263] BBC Radio 1 executive George Ergatoudis has stated that his "lyrical candour" and his "professional hunger" resonated with younger listeners, giving him a "very clear edge" to breakthrough in a music industry that is "saturated with singer-songwriters", while Sheeran's "niche combination" has made him able to perform at hip-hop, grime and underground events and "convince the urban crowd that he was authentic".

[279] In addition to having the highest-grossing concert tour and being one of the world's best-selling music artists with more than 150 million records sold, Sheeran has received a number of awards.

[314] In 2018, legal action was brought against Sheeran, Sony/ATV Music Publishing and Atlantic Records by the estate and heirs of the late producer Ed Townsend, who co-wrote the song "Let's Get It On" with Marvin Gaye.

US District Judge Louis Stanton rejected Sheeran's call in 2019 for dismissal of a legal case accusing him of copying parts of the song in "Thinking Out Loud".

Following the June 2016 referendum result where the British public voted to leave, Sheeran was among a group of British musicians (which included Sting, Queen drummer Roger Taylor, Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason and Damon Albarn of Blur and Gorillaz) who signed a letter to then Prime Minister Theresa May, drafted by Bob Geldof in October 2018, calling for "a 2nd vote".