Donald Trump Announces George Strait, KISS & Michael Crawford Among 2025 Kennedy Center Honorees

This is the first class of honorees since the president took over the Kennedy Center in February.

George Strait performs onstage for George Strait and Vaqueros del Mar’s “Strait To The Heart”: A benefit for Hill Country Flood Victims at Estancia at Thunder Valley on July 27, 2025 in Boerne, Texas.Erika Goldberg

Country icon George Strait, 1970s rock veterans KISS, Broadway star Michael Crawford, disco queen Gloria Gaynor and actor Sylvester Stallone are the 2025 Kennedy Center Honorees – the first class of honorees since President Donald Trump took over the Kennedy Center in February, firing trustees who had been appointed by President Joe Biden and replaced them with his own picks.

In his first term, Trump never once attended the annual Kennedy Center Honors gala, making him the first president to never attend the event during his term. In announcing this year’s inductees at the Kennedy Center on Wednesday (Aug. 13), Trump also revealed that he will host this year’s show. The show will air on CBS in December. It will mark the first time a president has hosted the show.

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Last year’s honorees, the last class to receive the honors under President Biden, were filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola, iconic rock band Grateful Dead, singer-songwriter-guitarist Bonnie Raitt, jazz trumpeter Arturo Sandoval and The Apollo Theater in Harlem, the first venue to receive the honor.

The Kennedy Center Honors were first presented in 1978. The inaugural class consisted of contralto Marian Anderson, dancer-actor-singer Fred Astaire, choreographer George Balanchine, composer Richard Rodgers and pianist Arthur Rubinstein.

While the focus in the early years was on fine arts – heavy on classical and opera – over the decades, it has broadened to also include more popular forms of music. In 1987, B.B. King became the first blues artist to be inducted. Other performers who were the first in their genres to be honored were Roy Acuff for country in 1991, Aretha Franklin for R&B in 1994, Pete Seeger for folk in 1994, Bob Dylan for rock in 1997, Gloria Estefan for Latin music in 2017 and LL Cool J for rap in 2017.

Strait, 73, is the first country artist to receive the Kennedy Center Honors since Garth Brooks in 2020. Other country artists to be honored are Roy Acuff (1991), Johnny Cash (1996), Willie Nelson (1998), Loretta Lynn (2003), Dolly Parton (2006), George Jones (2008), Merle Haggard (2010) and Reba McEntire (2018).

Strait was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2006. He won his only Grammy to date in 2009, when Troubadour was voted best country album.

Strait has had five No. 1 albums on the all-genre Billboard 200: Carrying Your Love With Me (1997), 50 Number Ones (2004), Somewhere Down in Texas (2005), Troubadour (2008) and Twang (2009).

KISS

KISS – Peter Criss, Ace Frehley, Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley – are the sixth rock band to receive the Kennedy Center Honors as a group. In 2008, The Who became the first rock band to be honored. They were followed by Led Zeppelin (2012) Eagles, (2016), U2 (2022) and Grateful Dead (2024).

KISS was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2014. Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello did the honors.

KISS has had nine top 10 albums on the Billboard 200, topped by Sonic Boom, which reached No. 2 in 2009. The band has two top 10 hits on the Hot 100 – “Beth” in 1976 and “Forever” in 1990.

Michael Crawford

Crawford, 83, won a Tony for best lead actor in a musical in 1988 for The Phantom of the Opera. He received two Grammy nominations in 1994 – best traditional pop vocal performance for his album A Touch of Music in the Night and best pop performance by a duo or group with vocal for “The Music of the Night,” a collab with Barbra Streisand (a 2008 Kennedy Center Honoree).

Crawford’s highest charting album on the Billboard 200 was A Touch of Music in the Night (No. 39 in 1993).

Gloria Gaynor

Gaynor, 81, is a two-time Grammy winner. She won her Grammys 40 years apart in very different categories – best disco recording in 1980 for “I Will Survive” and best roots gospel album in 2020 for Testimony. “I Will Survive” was voted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2012 and the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress in 2015.

Gaynor’s highest charting album on the Billboard 200 was Love Tracks (No. 4 in 1979). She has had two top 10 hits on the Billboard Hot 100 – a disco remake of the Jackson 5’s “Never Can Say Goodbye” (No. 9 in 1975) and the immortal “I Will Survive” (No. 1 in 1979).

Sylvester Stallone

Stallone, 79, received Oscar nominations for playing Rocky Balboa in two films, released 39 years apart – Rocky and Creed. He was also Oscar-nominated for best original screenplay for the original Rocky. The film also won best picture, but Stallone wasn’t a producer of the film, and thus, didn’t win.

Two Rocky films yielded No. 1 hits on the Hot 100. Bill Conti’s “Gonna Fly Now” from the original Rocky topped the chart in 1977. Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger” from Rocky III logged six weeks at No. 1 in 1982.