If you love country music, you will absolutely love CMA Fest in Nashville. This year was my first CMA Fest and what surprised me the most was how many unbelievable free concerts there were everywhere. A few of the artists I saw in concert for ABSOLUTELY FREE were Bailey Zimmerman, Old Dominion, Warren Zeiders, Chris Young, Lainey Wilson, Nikko Moon and many more! Let me tell you why you need to go to CMA Fest in Nashville!
My first CMA Fest was a couples trip to celebrate our friends joint 50th birthdays. I had been to Nashville before on a girls trip, my husband had never been. I am the trip planner in our family, but this was a trip that I wasn’t planning at all. We were just along for the ride on a birthday celebration for our friends Terri & Pete, and they had done all of the planning. There were 4 couples total from our neighborhood and none of us had ever been to CMA Fest before. We are huge country music fans and had seen the tv concert special in the past, but had no idea of the magnitude of the festival.
What is CMA Fest?
During the day, CMA Fest has incredible free concerts from country music’s stars, spread across 7 stages in and around the famous Broadway Street (also known as Honky Tonk Highway). Each night during the festival, there is a huge multi-artist concert at Nissan Stadium (home of the NFL Tennessee Titans) The concerts at Nissan Stadium are among the few concerts that are not free during CMA Fest. The proceeds from ticket sales go to the CMA Foundation, a charity that works to provide music education and access to all students.
NISSAN STADIUM NIGHTLY CONCERTS
Each night during the four nights of CMA Fest you can watch the biggest names in country music perform at Nissan Stadium. The stadium is located directly across the river from Broadway. There is a pedestrian walking bridge that takes you across the river from Broadway to Nissan Stadium, a little less than a mile walk. There is also a shuttle bus available that takes you to and from Broadway and the stadium.
Nissan Stadium Concert Tickets
The nightly CMA Fest concerts at Nissan Stadium are among the few that you will actually have to pay for during CMA Fest. You can purchase 4 night tickets at a discount or single night tickets if you just want to go one or two nights. Tickets go on sale in July–eleven months before CMA Fest, and they do sell out pretty quickly.
The lineup for the Nissan Stadium concerts isn’t announced until May, only a month prior to the event. So, you will most likely buy your tickets before you know who the lineup will be. If you only want to go to the concert for one or two nights, you could wait until the lineup comes out and try to buy them on a 3rd party ticket site like Stub Hub or Seat Geek, however, they will likely be more expensive.
The lineup for the Nissan Stadium concerts is always the year’s most popular artists in country music, so you will not be disappointed! This was the lineup for the 2023 Nissan Stadium CMA Fest:
Free Daytime CMA Fest CONCERTS
Check out the highlights of the amazing artists we saw for free during the day at CMA Fest in the video below.
FREE CONCERTS AT BROADWAY BARS
In addition to the free concerts offered at the seven different CMA Fest outdoor stages during the day, several of the bars on Broadway have free concerts of big name artists during the day.
PRIVATE FAN CLUB CONCERTS
In addition to the free CMA Fest stages and the free bar concerts, there are also a large number of free private fan club concerts. Most of the big country stars will hold private concerts for members of their fan clubs during CMA Fest.
When we went to CMA Fest, there were 4 couples going from our neighborhood. Two of the couples took a 6 am flight out of DC, putting them in Nashville by 8:30 am on Day 1 of CMA Fest. (They had to leave for the airport at 4:00 am!) That was too early for us, so we took the 10 am flight. As we were boarding our 10 am flight, our friends from the earlier flight were texting us pictures and videos of them at an unexpected private concert with Luke Combs!
They were walking down Broadway looking for a breakfast place just before 9:00 am and happened to walk past a bar that was setting up for a 9:00 am Luke Combs concert. When they tried to go in, the bouncer asked if they were “Bootleggers.” Bootleggers is the name of Luke Combs’ fan club. They weren’t, but quickly signed up on their phones and the bouncer was kind enough to let them in regardless! So they went in and saw Luke Combs with just about 50 other people! I was so jealous that we didn’t take the earlier flight! I would for sure have woken up at 3:30 am for that!
Check out the video below that my friends Terri & Kate took inside the Luke Combs fan club concert.
Our Free Private Old Dominion Concert
Up and At’em!
When the doors opened at 9:30, we received VIP Old Dominion lanyards and were led upstairs to a private room where the stage was set up. When we arrived in the room, we were given goody bags which consisted of Old Dominion beach towels, Old Dominion coozies, and some candy.
The Concert
And Another Surprise Concert!
Click below to watch some highlights from our private concert
CMA Connect App
Between the seven CMA Fest stages, the free bar concerts and the fan club concerts, we felt like we needed a spreadsheet to keep track of it all! The CMA Connect App is really helpful. The app has the line ups for each of the seven free CMA Fest stages each day.
On the app, you can click on each stage to view their line up for the day. Then you can select the artists you are interested in seeing at each stage. The app then gives you your own daily schedule based on the concerts you selected. CMA Connect app sends you reminder alerts 30 minutes before each concert, as well as maps to each of the stages. It will also send you alerts if any of the outdoor stages are at capacity. The only stage that ever reached capacity was the Riverfront Stage.
CMA Connect app only has the official CMA Fest stages, so it does not include the bar concerts or the fan club concerts. I wish there was a way to add those in, too, so that you could include everything in your daily schedule.
FAN FAIR X
CMA FEST TICKET PACKAGES
Helpful CMA Fest Tips
Clear Bag Policy
All CMA Fest Venues Are Cashless
No Chairs or Umbrellas Allowed
You cannot bring chairs or umbrellas into any of the outdoor stages at CMA Fest. If rain is forecasted, bring a poncho. We saw people with blankets to sit on. Blankets are good for the time between artists, but once the artists come on, everyone is standing so you will not be able to see from the ground. I’m not sure it would be worth having to carry the blanket around for the short time time between artists.
Dress For The Hot Weather & Bring Sunscreen
CMA Fest is held outdoors in June, it is hot! The CMA Fest outdoor stages have misting stations that you can cool off with. It is so important to dress for the hot weather. I saw so many girls walking around in suede or leather skirts and dresses. They looked cute, but I can’t imagine how hot they must’ve been in that fabric. Wear something that will keep you cool and that you won’t be sweating in!
Most importantly, don’t forget to bring sunscreen! The concerts are all outdoors with no shade. I applied sunscreen in the morning and packed a travel size sunscreen in my belt bag each day to reapply as needed. You don’t want to start out the week with a sunburn.
Think Twice About Wearing Your Cute Cowboy Boots
CMA Fest covers two square miles of Nashville, and you will be walking everywhere. I was hitting my 10,000 steps most days by lunchtime. Between the amount of walking you will be doing and how hot it will be, you will want to be wearing comfortable, breathable shoes. Resist the urge to wear your cute cowboy boots. They are not comfortable for the excessive amount of walking you will be doing and they will make your feet feel a lot hotter!
I wore sneakers every day during the day and I wore sandals out at night. For our concert at Nissan Stadium I decided to wear my cowboy boots–it was a nighttime concert so it wasn’t going to be too hot, and we were taking the shuttle to the stadium, so I wasn’t going to be walking. BIG MISTAKE! What I didn’t realize is that even though we took the shuttle to the concert, it would be impossible to get a shuttle or Uber after the concert. We ended up having to walk across the pedestrian bridge, which was almost two miles to our hotel. It wouldn’t have been bad if I was in my comfortable shoes. But walking that distance in my cowboy boots after standing for four hours in them during the concert was a beating on my feet..
THINGS I WOULD DO DIFFERENTLY NEXT TIME
Dinner
Arrival and Departure Days
Nissan Stadium Concerts
We only went to one of the 4 concerts at Nissan Stadium. Next time, I would definitely do more. I am torn on the 4 night pass, because the concerts don’t end until close to midnight, which doesn’t give you any time to experience the fabulous live music at all of the regular Broadway bars. For people like my husband, where CMA Fest is also their first time in Nashville, they will want to experience the typical live music Broadway bar scene. But I would definitely want to do at least 2 of the 4 nights at the stadium.
Secondly, next time I will definitely get better seats. We bought our tickets from Stub Hub on the way to the airport! We originally were not going to do any of the evening concerts but made a last minute (wise) decision that we needed to see at least one while we were there. Since we bought the tickets the day before, we were all the way up in the top level. While it was still a great concert, it would have been much better had we had better seats.
Bluebird Cafe Open House
I have been to Nashville twice and still have not been to the famous Bluebird Cafe. During CMA Fest, the Bluebird Cafe hosts an Open House, where they allow fans to come in and take pictures on the stage and shop exclusive merchandise. The Bluebird Cafe is not located in the Broadway district, so it wasn’t as convenient to get there during CMA Fest. Next time I am in Nashville, I definitely want to check out the Bluebird Cafe.
Fan Clubs
After our trip to CMA Fest, I came home and joined the fan clubs of my favorite artists. Most of the fan clubs are free to join and they will give me access to the fan club private concerts at CMA Fest. We talked to several people at CMA Fest who had been to various fan club concerts during the week.
Apple Air Tag
The biggest mistake I made at CMA Fest was not putting an Apple AirTag in my checked luggage. On my flight back home from Nashville to DC, my luggage was lost. Thank goodness it wasn’t lost on the way to Nashville! Regardless, I had to replace all of my toiletries, make up, hair tools, jewelry, shoes, clothing, etc.
I filed a claim with the airline, and the first question on the claim form asked if I had an AirTag in my suitcase to track it. Unfortunately, the answer was no. Six weeks later, my suitcase appeared on my front porch, which I was thrilled about. However, even though I had already purchased replacements in those 6 weeks, the airline would not reimburse me because my luggage was eventually found. An AirTag costs $20, replacing all of my suitcase items cost me over a thousand dollars.
Two months after our Nashville trip, we took a big family vacation and I bought AirTags for all of our checked bags. When they asked me at the gate if I was willing to check my carry on bag, I said no because my carry-on did not have an AirTag in it. I learned my lesson the hard way and will never make that mistake again.
Hotels Within Walking Distance of CMA Fest
These hotels are all within walking distance to CMA Fest. Since CMA Fest is spread over 2 square miles, there is not a specific address to look up. Honky Tonk Central is located on Broadway, in the heart of the CMA Fest and is a good address to type in to maps when calculating walking distance from any hotel,
Check out my post The Top Things To Do in Nashville, Tennessee for more ideas for your next Nashville trip
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