Kennedy Center Honors 2026 Moving Forward — But Not at the Embattled Venue
Categoria: Musica
The Kennedy Center will announce the honorees and the program’s broadcast partner at a later date.
Por Billboard | 02/10/2026
The 49th annual Kennedy Center Honors will be held on Dec. 7 – the same date as last year’s event – but at a new and much larger venue. The honors have been held in the 2,347-capacity Opera House of the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts since 1978, when they were first presented, but will move to Capital One Arena in downtown Washington, D.C., for this year’s event. Related Donald Trump Announces George Strait, KISS & Michael Crawford Among 2025 Kennedy Center Honorees The 5 Most Outrageous Things Donald Trump Said in Announcing the 2025 Kennedy Center Honorees Donald Trump Announces George Strait, KISS & Michael Crawford Among 2025 Kennedy Center Honorees The awards will apparently continue to be called the Kennedy Center Honors, with President Donald Trump ’s name not appearing. The names of both the venue and the awards have been a source of considerable tension in the past year. The Kennedy Center will announce the 2026 honorees and the program’s broadcast partner at a later date, according to a Kennedy Center spokesperson. The Kennedy Center is already running late, compared to past years, in announcing the honorees. Last year’s five honorees, the first to be personally approved by President Trump, were announced on Aug. 13, 2025. The honorees were country icon George Strait , rock veterans KISS , Broadway star Michael Crawford, disco queen Gloria Gaynor and actor Sylvester Stallone . (Tom Cruise reportedly declined the honor that year, due to “scheduling conflicts.”) (By way of comparison, the 2024 honorees, the last class to receive the honors under President Joe Biden, were filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola, iconic rock band Grateful Dead, singer-songwriter-guitarist Bonnie Raitt, jazz trumpeter Arturo Sandoval and The Apollo Theater in Harlem, the first venue to receive the honor.) The report that the Kennedy Center Honors will announce a broadcast partner at a later date is surprising. CBS has broadcast the Kennedy Center Honors every year from 1978 through 2025. The network did not immediately respond to a request for clarification. Capital One Arena is a prime location for concerts and cultural events in the D.C. region. The venue was the setting for a Howard University graduation speech by President Biden, and a book tour event by former first lady Michelle Obama. The arena served as the venue for President Trump’s second inaugural parade on Jan. 20, 2025. The day before, Trump held a rally in the arena. Trump’s Fraught Relationship With the Kennedy Center In 2017, the first year of his first term, President Trump and first lady Melania Trump decided not to participate in events honoring recipients of the 2017 Kennedy Center Honors to “allow the honorees to celebrate without any political distraction.” The 2017 ceremony was held without them, marking the first time that neither the president nor the first lady attended. The Trumps also did not participate in the