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Dolly, Creed, and ZZ Top: 20 artists that should play RodeoHouston in 2026

It's time for George Strait to return to RodeoHouston.

Photo by D. Foster

Now that the horses are back in the barn, the cows are back on the pasture, and the carnival is heading down the highway, we can start making our picks for RodeoHouston performers in 2026.

The 2025 season was marked by amazing Houston weather from start to finish, the grand debuts of Zach Top and Post Malone, a short and fiery set by Journey, and, oddly enough, no record concert crowds to beat out last year’s Jonas Brothers attendance of more than 75,000. No one cracked 72,000 in 2025, even though a handful came very close.

On Saturday, total attendance on the grounds was 199,220, a new single-day attendance record dating back to 2003. That included the Brooks & Dunn concert, too. Overall, HLSR set a new attendance record in 2025, with more than 2.7 million people through the gates (this month’s excellent weather certainly helped).

The lineup will be released in January 2026, but for now, here are our picks for next season without regard to budget or artist availability. (Editor’s note: Even though Craig went 0 for 10 last year, we think it's fun to contemplate who might be performing next year.)

Dolly Parton
It’s absurd that Parton hasn’t played Houston proper since December 2016 and hasn’t graced the rodeo stage since March 5, 1978. Other big acts on the schedule that year? Johnny Cash with June Carter and Conway Twitty with Loretta Lynn. While Parton still continues to make new music with the likes of Sabrina Carpenter, she’s said she’s done touring aside from special shows. Well, RodeoHouston is pretty dang special, we think.

Lainey Wilson
Wilson wowed me in 2024 and turned in the best performance on the schedule. By late 2025 and early 2026, she should also have some new material on tap.

Creed
In 2024, Creed’s alt-rock contemporaries Nickelback attracted a crowd of just over 75,000. This is a no-brainer for the elderly millennials and the Generation Alpha kids who can’t remember how badly we hated Creed throughout most of the 2000s. Come back, Scott Stapp; all is forgiven.

Los Tigres Del Norte
“Go Tejano Day” legends, they pulled in record audiences in 2019 and 2024.

Bun B
The unofficial mayor of Houston’s Black Heritage Day show has become a RodeoHouston institution. Bun is quickly becoming a lock for the Star Trail of Fame. What would he pull out for his fifth straight performance? There’s always Kendrick…

Megan Moroney
I had Moroney on my list for 2025, but she didn’t make the cut. She’s had one of the biggest years of anyone in country music, and this would be another notch in her blue belt. Kenny Chesney can vouch for her, too.

Chris Stapleton
Stapleton’s RodeoHouston appearances are easily some of the most impeccable performances of any season. The only pity is that they are only slightly over an hour long. I could watch him for six hours.

Zach Bryan
Bryan sold out NRG Stadium just last summer, and he’s now a stadium act. With ZB in town, the dive bars in Montrose and Midtown would be on high alert. We could see him posted up at Two Headed Dog, easy.

Sierra Ferrell
I would love to hear “Fox Hunt” coming from that rodeo stage. If you know, you know. She’s guested on some of the biggest albums of the past few years, and she’s beyond ready to stake her claim at RodeoHouston.

Zach Top
Top made quite the impression in 2025 and had one of the year's biggest crowds. There’s nowhere for Top to go but…farther to the top.

Morgan Wallen
Wallen has never played RodeoHouston. He might be too massive for the rodeo at this point, but this would be an easy sellout.

ZZ Top
Billy and Frank haven’t played RodeoHouston since 2017. Sadly, Dusty Hill won’t be with the boys this time around, but his spirit will undoubtedly be dancing in the aisles.

Cody Johnson
Hometown boy Johnson has a sturdy sound made for RodeoHouston. This would be his fifth time on the revolving stage.

Shania Twain
Can RodeoHouston pry Twain away from the Las Vegas strip? She last played RodeoHouston in 1999. That seems prehistoric.

The Red Clay Strays
One of the biggest success stories of the past year would attract a crowd as big as Turnpike Troubadours did in 2023 when they pulled in 74,657 true believers.

Journey
We’ll probably need to make up for the 2025 electrical fire under the stage sometime.

Shaboozey
It was a surprise that RodeoHouston didn’t land Shaboozey in 2025. “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” has been the most ubiquitous song throughout the NRG complex this year. I swear I heard it on repeat at the carnival one Friday afternoon.

Teddy Swims
One of the best new voices in pop, a Friday night show from the Atlanta native would kill during spring break. He’d also nail a George Strait cover.

Nate Smith
With nearly 9 million listeners on Spotify — that’s good, right? — he could be an ideal weekday draw.

George Strait
King George’s influence was constant in 2025, with several artists, like Charley Crockett and Post Malone, putting their own spins on his classics. He’s not played NRG Stadium since 2022, so we’re due.

concert rodeohouston

welcome home, wes

Wes Anderson's Houston homecoming supports historic theater restoration

A fancy, eccentric-looking crowd showed up for the Wes Anderson Homecoming Soirée, held on Friday, July 17, at the Hobby Center for the Performing Arts’s Zilkha Hall.

Fans of the Houston-born, Oscar-winning auteur paid hundreds of dollars to attend this benefit event. Guys dressed up like characters from The Royal Tenenbaums. Others wore red skull caps and low-top Adidas, like the characters from The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. Some people working the event even wore “Lobby Boy” hats, looking like the bellboy character from The Grand Budapest Hotel.

The people gathered for two reasons: 1) to get a chance to see Anderson in person; and 2) to raise money to renovate and restore the Garden Oaks Theater, a project spearheaded by local nonprofit Arthouse Houston. Top-tier “Founders Experience” ticketholders got a chance to meet Anderson onstage for pics. The St. John's School alum also received a proclamation from Mayor John Whitmire declaring it “Wes Anderson Day.”

After that, he and actor/fellow SJS alum Michael Maggart (who has appeared in several Anderson films) held a half-hour discussion where they reminisced about making Rushmore here in Houston, Anderson’s days working at the Bookstop on W. Alabama (now a Trader Joe’s), and how he and frequent collaborator Owen Wilson used to sneak into the River Oaks Theatre. (It involved pretending to lose a pair of glasses.)

Of course, the conversation shifted to Anderson coming back home to support the Garden Oaks project. “I always say you can't build an old building,” Anderson said. “First of all, I mean, a beautiful old place has history, and has people's experiences tied into it, and it has stories involved in it. And I think an old cinema — these things are kind of endangered all over the world, and it's not just an architectural thing. It's not even just a community thing. It's a sort of delivery system for something that’s, to me, deeply important to our country.

“It’s one thing we can access these things on all these devices,” he continued. “It's a different thing when you go to a place that's designed to help you share the experience of a movie together. It's such a powerful art form. And, anyway, for me, it's worth making a bit of an effort to try to save a place like the Garden Oaks.”

After the convo, he introduced the quintet of films he curated for the event. (Unfortunately the DCP file for his 2007 short Hotel Chevalier had some technical difficulties and was cut short.) “We wanted to do a screening here, and I don't have a new movie to show,” he said. “I don't have something hot off the presses. So, I thought I'd put together a little something that just was different from what anybody else will see. So it's a sort of mixture… This is just for Texas, this little collection.”

He eventually left the stage, leaving Arthouse Houston co-founder/director Maureen McNamara and Houston Public Media host Ernie Manouse to auction off perks & gifts and encourage the audience in helping revive another legendary, local movie palace. Among other items, attendees bid for treasures such as a special John Waters backstage VIP experience at his upcoming Christmas Show, dinner with John Cameron Mitchell, and a rare set of photo portraits of a young Anderson and friends, circa Bottle Rocket. Others paid $5,000 for select seats in the future theater and $5,000 to restore one foot of the venue's neon sign.

Photo by Alan Nguyen

Mayor John Whitmire declared Friday as Wes Anderson day in the director's honor.

So far, the effort has raised approximately $1.3 million of the $4 million required to begin the renovation project. The organization needs to raise $4 million by July 30 for the project to move forward. Those interested in securing naming rights will find more information here.

“River Oaks has 245 seats,” McNamara informed the crowd. “The Garden has over 700, and that is a place that we don't have in Houston. We have a need for that, for premieres, for performances in your life, for music, for a dynamic learning & exhibition space… So, we're building new on the shoulders of our history. I hope you guys will join us, and we need people to join us in a big way today.”

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