Miranda Lambert, Lainey Wilson, Luke Combs, Cody Johnson and many others delivered unforgettable performances on the Nissan Stadium stage in Downtown Nashville, Tennessee, marking the 50th anniversary of CMA Fest. The long-awaited TV special aired on ABC on Wednesday night (July 19), and is now available on Hulu to relive some of the biggest highlights from the June 8-11 festival.
Every year, CMA Fest celebrates country music with some of the genres biggest stars, and many of them surprise the crowd with epic — and sometimes unexpected and genre-spanning — collaborations. Previous CMA Fest collaborations include Reba McEntire and Kelly Clarkson, Blake Shelton and Trace Adkins, Brad Paisley and Hank Williams Jr., Carrie Underwood and Joan Jett, and tons of others throughout CMA Fest’s decades-long run (It started in 1972, originally called Fan Fair).
This year, the Nissan Stadium audiences got epic surprises to keep that tradition alive. Country legends like Tanya Tucker and Vince Gill joined other iconic artists in the lineup, and others crossed genre boundaries to bring more “bada**” women to the stage, as Lambert said. Watch the collaborations from 2023 CMA Fest here: