It was released on 12 July 2019 through Asylum and Atlantic Records, along with "Antisocial", as the sixth and seventh singles respectively from Sheeran's compilation album, No.6 Collaborations Project (2019).

[2] The song was written by the artists alongside Pardison Fontaine, Steve Mac, and Fred Again, with the latter two producing it with Sheeran.

In September 2019, Sheeran's manager, Stuart Camp, replied to a fan's tweet on Twitter, suggesting that it would be his next single.

[5] Musically, "South of the Border" is a three-minute and twenty-four-second long Latin pop song.

[1] In terms of music notation, "South of the Border" was composed using 44 common time in the key of D minor, with a tempo of 98 beats per minute.

[6] On 12 July 2019, the lyric video for "South of the Border" was released on Sheeran's YouTube channel.

The song also debuted in the top 15 on official charts in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Singapore, Slovakia and Sweden.