Ella Langley has conquered not just the country world but the music world generally this year with her song “Choosin’ Texas.” But for the producers of the Academy of Country Music Awards, this year’s show is all about choosin’ Vegas. Certainly no fight is being picked with the Lone Star state, where the ACM Awards were held the previous three years. For the 61st annual telecast, though, the powers-that-be wanted the show to get back to its roots… and in this case, and maybe this case alone, country music rootsiness means the Las Vegas Strip.
The 2026 ACMs run exclusively on Prime Video, Amazon Music and Amazon’s Twitch channel from 8-10:30 ET and 5-7:30 PT, with live availability around the globe.
There’s a long story behind the ACM’s associations with the west coast, from the org’s founding in L.A. six decades ago to its history of being broadcast mostly out of Las Vegas since the turn of the century. But more than these historic factors, there are practical ones, like how a lot of the artists would rather get on a plane to Vegas than to Dallas, and how some of them already feel at home from having residencies there. The visual and aesthetic possibilities for tying the show in with Vegas are rich, and in a year when global superstar Shania Twain is hosting the ACMs for a first time, it makes some sense to embrace the sense of country/casino crossover that she has embodied longer and better than anyone else.
