 <pre><code>$string = "&lt;strong&gt;Blabla1&lt;/strong&gt; Blaabla2&lt;br /&gt; Blaabla3 &lt;strong&gt;Blaabla4&lt;/strong&gt; Blaabla5 Blaabla6&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt; Blaabla7 &lt;span style='color:#B22222;'&gt;Blaabla8&lt;/span&gt; Blaabla9"; $matches = preg_split('/(&lt;br.*?&gt;|&lt;span.*&gt;)+\K|\s/sim', $string, null, PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY ); var_dump($matches); /* array(9) { [0]=&gt; string(24) "&lt;strong&gt;Blabla1&lt;/strong&gt;" [1]=&gt; string(14) "Blaabla2&lt;br /&gt;" [2]=&gt; string(8) "Blaabla3" [3]=&gt; string(25) "&lt;strong&gt;Blaabla4&lt;/strong&gt;" [4]=&gt; string(8) "Blaabla5" [5]=&gt; string(20) "Blaabla6&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;" [6]=&gt; string(8) "Blaabla7" [7]=&gt; string(44) "&lt;span style='color:#B22222;'&gt;Blaabla8&lt;/span&gt;" [8]=&gt; string(8) "Blaabla9" } */ </code></pre> <p><a href="http://ideone.com/q8xrvd" rel="nofollow">DEMO</a></p>