Spotlight in Big Sur

I have the same problem.

Weirdly, initially I could only see Spotlight and Siri on the Menu Bar. After going through System Preferences to select the items I wanted to appear on the Menu Bar, nothing showed there.

With the Menu Bar right side blank, I found a post here about the Control Panel missing. When I disabled Fast User Switching (in System Preferences under Dock & Menu Bar, scroll down to Fast User Switching, then uncheck Show in Menu Bar) - the rest of the icons appeared (including Control Panel), but not Spotlight.

Now, I can't get Spotlight, and I can't remove Control Panel. Sigh...

I did make a Feedback Assistant report for this... Others might also want to do the same...

Go to System_Preference>Accessability>Display and check Reduce transparency. This made them visible for me. I then went back and unchecked. The issue recurred later and I want through the exercise again. So there is a bug there, and I have reported via Feedback Assistant. Hope this is helpful for you.

Thanks, I'm not the only one who can't find Spotlight. I needed it this morning and have been looking all over. (Developer beta 5)