Taylor Swift is going back on the CMA Awards stage. The Country Music Association and ABC have added her to the performer list for the 60th edition of the show, which airs live from Bridgestone Arena in Nashville on Wednesday, November 18. It will be her first performance at the ceremony in 13 years and, by the organizers’ count reported this week, her first time in the room in a decade.
The booking arrives on the back of one of the biggest country radio runs of her career. Swift is nominated for Single of the Year with “I Knew It, I Knew You,” her original song for Disney and Pixar’s Toy Story 5. The nod is the 26th CMA nomination of her career, according to a report on the announcement.
A Toy Story song that took over country radio
Swift wrote and produced “I Knew It, I Knew You” with Jack Antonoff after an early screening of the film in February 2026. The song is told from the point of view of Jessie, the cowgirl doll, and the pair wrote, produced and recorded it in about eight hours. Walt Disney Records released it on June 5, and the label worked with MCA Nashville and Republic Records to send it to both country and pop stations on the same day.
The chart run was huge. The track opened at No. 1 on the US Hot 100 singles chart, her 15th chart-topper there and Pixar’s first. On the US country airplay chart it debuted at No. 8, her first top-10 hit on that list since “Red” in December 2013. It also became her 10th No. 1 on the country songs chart.
She has already sung it live three times this year: at the Toy Story 5 world premiere at the Dolby Theatre on June 9, in a piano medley at the Grammy Museum on August 18, and in a closing set at the Academy Museum Gala on October 17, the same night covered in our story on Charlize Theron’s Icon Award at the Los Angeles film museum gala. Neither the CMA nor ABC has said what she will sing on November 18.
Why 2013 matters
Swift’s CMA story runs two decades. She first appeared at the show in 2006, won the Horizon Award in 2007 and in 2009 became the youngest artist ever named Entertainer of the Year, a record she still holds. Her last CMA performance came in 2013, when she sang “Red” with Vince Gill and Alison Krauss on the same night she received the Pinnacle Award.
That gives this year’s bill a neat echo. Gill, a Country Music Hall of Fame member who has hosted the CMA Awards 12 times, is also confirmed for a special appearance on November 18, so two of the three voices from that 2013 “Red” performance will be back in the same building 13 years later.
Nashville has been a recurring stop for Swift this fall. Last month she joined the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, as we reported in our piece on Taylor Swift’s Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame speech, and she is also set to be honored at a Los Angeles gala, covered in our report on her Sherry Lansing Leadership Award.
Who else is on the bill
Lainey Wilson returns as host for a third straight year and goes in with three nominations, including Entertainer of the Year. The CMA’s latest lineup announcement, dated November 10, added:
- Luke Combs, Megan Moroney, Chris Stapleton and Stephen Wilson Jr., with Stapleton and Wilson Jr. teaming up
- Mumford & Sons, making their CMA Awards debut
- Brothers Osborne, Luke Bryan, Halestorm, HARDY and Marcus King, saluting lifetime achievement honorees Brooks & Dunn
An earlier round had already booked Tim McGraw, Kacey Musgraves, Miranda Lambert, Cody Johnson, Zach Top, Ella Langley, Tucker Wetmore and The Red Clay Strays.
The 60th Annual CMA Awards air from 8 to 11 p.m. Eastern on Wednesday, November 18, on ABC and Disney+, with next-day streaming on Hulu. Presenters are due to be announced in the coming days.
Further reading
Image: Paolo V, CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
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