CMA Presents I Will Always Love You: A Celebration of Dolly Parton airs live Oct. 21, 2026, from Belmont’s Fisher Center, with proceeds supporting the Imagination Library.
Dolly Parton’s television tribute is not being staged in a borrowed hall. It is happening in a building she already knew by heart. Last fall, her musical, DOLLY: A True Original Musical, had its only tryout before Broadway at Belmont University’s Fisher Center for the Performing Arts in Nashville, and she was right there, tinkering behind the scenes. On Wednesday, October 21, 2026, that same room becomes the set for “CMA Presents I Will Always Love You: A Celebration of Dolly Parton,” a two-hour live special on ABC and Disney+, available the next day on Hulu.
The Country Music Association announced the special in September. It airs from 9:00 to 11:00 p.m. ET, 8:00 to 10:00 p.m. CT, in front of a Nashville audience. Tickets sold out. What remains is the broadcast, and a lineup built to cover the ground Dolly covered: Hall of Fame members, today’s biggest country stars, and voices from bluegrass and Broadway.
A room that already had her fingerprints on it
The Fisher Center is not a neutral venue. In 2025 it hosted the world premiere of DOLLY, the only pre-Broadway production of the musical, and Belmont launched DOLLY U, an educational partnership that put students next to professional artists, producers, and industry people while they helped build her show. A Belmont student ensemble will perform on the tribute as well, which keeps that relationship in the room instead of treating the campus as a rental.
CMA chief executive Sarah Trahern put the debt in plain language: Dolly belonged to the whole world, but she was born of this industry, and the industry owes her more than words can repay. Filming the special where she had already spent real time on a new work makes that line less ceremonial. The building is part of the argument.
Who is singing, and who is running the show
The performer list runs from Reba McEntire, Vince Gill, and Ricky Skaggs to Lainey Wilson, Ella Langley, Kelsea Ballerini, Carrie Underwood, Carly Pearce, and Ashley McBryde. Brad Paisley, Darius Rucker, Zac Brown, Lady A, and Little Big Town are on it. So are Lukas Nelson, Béla Fleck, Molly Tuttle, and Sierra Hull, which pulls bluegrass into a night that could easily have stayed inside country radio. Broadway and screen voices are there too: Kristin Chenoweth and Kristen Bell. Amy Grant and Kimberly Williams-Paisley appear as special guests, and organizers have promised additional surprise tributes.
Robert Deaton, who has produced the CMA Awards for years, is executive producer. His note was personal rather than promotional. “Dolly gave Country Music its heart, and giving some of that heart back to her is an incredible honor,” he said. “My hope is simply that we do right by her story, her music and the people who love her.” For a live two-hour show, that is the whole job: songs, archival footage, and stories, without sanding her down into a montage.
The part that keeps sending books
Part of what the night raises will go to Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library. She started it in 1995 so children would get a free book in the mail every month. The program has now sent more than 340 million books. CMA and Belmont will donate from the special’s proceeds. Disney is also supporting the library. It is the cleanest through-line in the evening. A tribute that only replayed “Jolene” and “9 to 5” would still be a concert. A tribute that funds the thing she built for kids who did not grow up with a shelf of books is closer to how she spent the fame.
That is why the Fisher Center matters. She had already used that stage to tell her own story, in a musical she helped shape before it ever reached Broadway. On October 21 the same stage answers back, with a Hall of Fame producer, a cross-genre cast, and a check aimed at the Imagination Library. It is a tribute with her fingerprints all over it.
