Taylor Swift will perform at the 60th CMA Awards on Wednesday, November 18, her first performance at the ceremony in 13 years. The Country Music Association and ABC announced the booking yesterday, Friday, November 13, and iimiTV’s full story on the announcement covers her CMA history, the 2013 “Red” performance and the Pinnacle Award night behind the return.
What has settled since that announcement is the shape of her night. Her slot is her own, not a tribute turn, and her Single of the Year race is now mapped in full: she faces two Ella Langley singles in a category she has never won, in a year Langley leads the entire ceremony.
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Taylor Swift CMA Awards Performance Is Her Own Slot
The CMA marked the booking on its official X account on Friday: “Man, it’s been a while! 13 years later, @taylorswift13 returns to perform on the #CMAawards stage Wednesday, Nov. 18 on @ABCNetwork and @DisneyPlus.” ABC’s official video for the performance announcement is the clip the network is running with the news:
Two tribute rumours around her name have now been closed by reporting that rests on the show itself. A CMA source told E! News that Swift will not be part of the night’s tribute to Dolly Parton, and Rolling Stone confirmed the same, a point the Geneva Times also reported on Friday. Rolling Stone separately confirmed she is not part of the Brooks & Dunn tribute showcase, which belongs to Brothers Osborne, Luke Bryan, HARDY, Marcus King and Halestorm. As the Hype Magazine put it in its Friday report, the announcement does not place her in either tribute, and her role in the night, as announced, is her own performance.
Single Of The Year: Langley Holds Two Of Five Cards
The full Single of the Year field, listed in Whiskey Riff’s full nominees report, is Swift’s “I Knew It, I Knew You” against Langley’s “Be Her” and “Choosin’ Texas,” Lainey Wilson’s “Somewhere Over Laredo” and Cody Johnson’s “The Fall.” Langley is nominated twice in the one category, and she leads the whole ceremony with nine nominations, ahead of Miranda Lambert on seven and Kacey Musgraves on five.
Inside that field sits the detail that only the fuller next-day accounts brought forward. Swift, a two-time CMA Entertainer of the Year and still the youngest winner of that prize, has never won Single of the Year. The States Journal’s November 14 account confirms she has never won the category, and that her only previous nomination in it came in 2013, for “Highway Don’t Care” with Tim McGraw and Keith Urban. Whiskey Riff called her a “longshot (which is rare for Taylor)” in this race, and Saving Country Music’s editor Trigger opened his nominations column with “Just give them all to Ella Langley now.”
The Chart Record Behind The Nomination
The nominated song’s own record is the other half of the next-day picture. According to her label MCA, in its announcement of the radio No. 1, “I Knew It, I Knew You” debuted at No. 1 on the Hot 100 and spent its first two weeks there, then became her 14th career No. 1 at country radio and her first in 13 years. It was, as Variety noted and the States Journal repeated on November 14, her first new song in more than a decade marketed as country to reach No. 1 at country radio. The song’s official video, from Swift’s own channel, is below.
Whiskey Riff’s chart account adds the rarer marks: the song was the first by a female artist in Mediabase history to be added by every country radio station in its first weekend, and only the second song in history to debut inside the Top 10 on country radio. It also spent two weeks atop Hot Country Songs before, in Whiskey Riff’s words, being “knocked off by Ella’s record-breaking single.” That single, “Choosin’ Texas,” holds Billboard’s all-time record for weeks at No. 1 on the Hot 100, a mark it extended this month. The Toy Story 5 director Andrew Stanton explained the song’s pull in Countrytown’s report: “Her connection to Jessie and the immediate way she understood what the character was going through was undeniable.”
What November 18 Still Has To Decide
What she will sing remains unannounced. The CMA and ABC named no song and no collaborators for the performance, and Variety called the nominated song “a good bet” to form part or all of the set, which is an educated guess, not a confirmation. Presenters for the show are still to be announced in the coming days, and a limited number of tickets remain, per the CMA’s own release.
The night carries a second campaign underneath it. Variety reports the song is being campaigned for an Oscar for Best Original Song and was submitted for Song of the Year at the Grammys, so a prime-time performance on the network that airs the show, streams it on Disney+ and shares a parent company with the film’s studio is exactly the exposure an awards run wants. None of that decides the trophy. On November 18, live from Bridgestone Arena from 8 to 11 p.m. ET on ABC and Disney+, Swift gets the stage she left in 2013, and Langley gets the scoreboard she has led all year. The performance is confirmed. The first Single of the Year win is not.
References
Country Music Association, “Taylor Swift To Perform At The 60th Annual CMA Awards,” cmaworld.com, November 13, 2026. Martin Cid Magazine, “Taylor Swift returns to the CMA Awards after 13 years, this time as the underdog,” November 13, 2026. Whiskey Riff, “Taylor Swift To Perform At The CMA Awards For The First Time Since 2013,” November 13, 2026. Countrytown, “Taylor Swift To Perform At CMA Awards For The First Time In 13 Years,” November 14, 2026. The States Journal, “Taylor Swift to Perform at CMA Awards for First Time Since 2013,” November 14, 2026. The Geneva Times, “Taylor Swift Returns to CMA Awards Stage After 13 Years,” November 13, 2026.
