11 Country Stars Who Skipped the 2025 ACM Awards

A few artists on this list of singers who skipped the 2025 ACM Awards are making no-shows a habit.

There’s no requirement that says a country hitmaker needs to attend the major awards shows. In fact, given the expense of travel and glam, we totally understand why it’d be tempting to just stay home.

That’s exactly what most of the artists listed here seem to have done. Family commitments topped professional invitations for many of the stars listed below, but not all.

• Lainey Wilson was the big winner at the 2025 ACM Awards, taking Entertainer of the Year, Album of the Year and Female Artist of the Year.
• Highlight performances included the Keith Urban tribute and Alan Jackson‘s emotional performance of “Remember When.”
• The show streamed live from Frisco, Texas on Amazon Prime.

Related: Who Won at the 2025 ACM Awards? See the Full List

Still, it’s a great opportunity to promote an album, a new song or a tour, and several artists seen here have one, two or all three on the horizon.

Just one star explained her absence, while another alluded to having another commitment with a post on social media.

Two Entertainer of the Year nominees weren’t at the ACMs, and one nominee in the Female category wasn’t, either. Most of the rest are stars we’ve just come to expect to be there — but Luke Bryan hasn’t attended in at least three years. Same for Carrie Underwood.

Did the show miss these artists? A fair case could be made that the absence of one of the most energetic stars listed here hurt the ACM Awards. It was a ballad heavy, tribute-filled night sprinkled with pops of energy.

Ella Langley and Miranda Lambert brought some heat. So too did Jelly Roll and Brothers Osborne. But another Post Malone collaboration could have taken this show to new levels.