2021 ACM Awards Officially Announced for April

The 2021 ACM Awards will take place on April 18, 2021 at an as-yet-unannounced location, CBS, the Academy of Country Music and dick clark productions announced on Thursday. The show will be broadcast from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. ET on CBS and will stream live and on demand on CBS All Access. According to a press release, the 2021 ceremony will feature “exciting performances, unprecedented collaborations, surprising moments and more to be announced.”

The 2020 show was postponed from April 5 in Las Vegas to Sept. 16 in Nashville due to the coronavirus pandemic, and the new event will be held at three different venues in Music City including the Grand Ole Opry House, the Ryman Auditorium and The Bluebird Cafe, marking the first time the annual event has broadcast from Nashville. The show will be hosted by Keith Urban, who is the reigning ACM Entertainer of the Year.

“While we were disappointed to postpone our April show in Las Vegas, we couldn’t be more thrilled to host the rescheduled 55th ACM Awards in the home of Country Music for the first time in the Academy’s history,” Damon Whiteside, CEO of the Academy of Country Music, said in a statement. “First and foremost, we want to ensure the safety of our artists and industry, and to ease the burdens of traveling large teams; therefore, we decided to bring the ACM Awards to them this September in Nashville. Now, more than ever is the time to bring our community together to honor the best in our genre, and there is no more special place to do that than three of the most revered venues in Country Music — The Grand Ole Opry House, The Ryman Auditorium and The Bluebird Cafe. A huge thank you to these historic venues and to the state of Tennessee and the city of Nashville for all of the support in making this a reality!”

In place of this year’s April 5 date, the Academy aired the television special ACM Presents: Our Country, which featured a number of artists including Kelsea Ballerini, Dierks Bentley, Kane Brown & John Legend, Luke Bryan, Brandi Carlile, Eric Church, Luke Combs, Sheryl Crow, Florida Georgia Line, Lady Antebellum, Miranda Lambert, Little Big Town, Tim McGraw, Old Dominion, Brad Paisley & Darius Rucker, Thomas Rhett, Blake Shelton & Gwen Stefani, Shania Twain, Carrie Underwood and Urban sharing socially distant performances from their homes.