CMA Makes Smart Move to Give Dolly Parton Tribute Its Own TV Special

Dolly Parton’s passing on August 25th, 2026 was way too significant to ever try to attempt to do her legacy justice in some sort of passing segment on the 2026 CMA Awards coming up in November. The only right way to do it would ultimately hog half the show, and make everything else feel secondary. And frankly, with the way the CMAs have been forgoing any In Memoriam segment entirely over the last decade, you just can’t trust them to handle this stuff well during the annual awards show.

So on Wednesday, October 21st on ABC, the CMA will present “I Will Always Love You: A Celebration of Dolly Parton” at 9pm Eastern/8pm Central—a two-hour dedicate special centered around Dolly Parton’s legacy. It will also be available for streaming on Disney+, as well as available the next day on-demand on Hulu. The special will air live from Belmont University’s Fisher Center for the Performing Arts in Nashville.

Artists scheduled to perform include:

Ashley McBryde, Béla Fleck, Brad Paisley, Carly Pearce, Carrie Underwood, Darius Rucker, Ella Langley, Kelsea Ballerini, Kristin Chenoweth, Lady A, Lainey Wilson, Little Big Town, Lukas Nelson, Molly Tuttle, Reba McEntire, Ricky Skaggs, Sierra Hull, Vince Gill and Zac Brown, with special appearances by Amy Grant and Kimberly Williams-Paisley.

The CMA chose a good cross section of both recognizable names from the mainstream, along with some country legends, and a healthy segment of artists from the bluegrass world like Béla Fleck, Molly Tuttle, and Sierra Hull since bluegrass was so elemental to Dolly’s sound. Multiple artists scheduled to perform also have a very strong history with Dolly, including Reba McEntire, who now is one of country’s top living queens, as well as Carly Pearce who started her career performing at Dollywood.

You do wish some other names would have made it onto a special like this. A performer like 4-time Grammy winner Sierra Ferrell would have been a perfect selection for the special. And artists who might not yet be household names, but really embrace the Dolly Parton influence and can invoke the sound to spine-tingling effect such as Emily Ann Roberts, Carter Faith, Emily Zeck, Hannah Marie Kelley, and others feel like oversights.

But hey, this also could have come together as an 8-minute segment during the CMAs, and it would have never done justice to Dolly. Along with performances and most certainly some tear-filled recollections, the special will also include multiple retrospectives and archival footage of Dolly Parton throughout the years. Proceeds from the special will go to support Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library.

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