How to watch tonight’s Kennedy Center Honors hosted by Trump on CBS and Paramount+

2025 Kennedy Center Honors will be broadcast tonight, honoring this year's honorees and their contributions to the performing arts. Viewers will be able to watch the ceremony on CBS and Paramount+ beginning at 8:00 pm ET/PT.

The Trump administration has done radical changes to the Kennedy Center, including dismissal of the chairman of the board of trustees and its president, and putting in their place Mr. Trump and one of his allies, former ambassador Richard Grenell. Last week, the White House announced that the board had voted to rename the facility Trump-Kennedy Center.

This year's Kennedy Center Honors, which took place earlier this month, marks Trump's first appearance at the annual event during his two terms in office. He also hosted a celebration, a change from past years when presidents sat with honorees and watched the show.

Who will be the 2025 Kennedy Center Honors recipient?

Mr Trump This year's laureates have been announced over the summer. They are:

• George Strait
• Gloria Gaynor
• Rock band Kiss: Paul Stanley, Gene Simmons, Peter Criss and the late Ace Frehley
• Michael Crawford
• Sylvester Stallone

How to watch the Kennedy Center Honors

• What: President Trump hosts the Kennedy Center Honors, which honors George Strait, Gloria Gaynor, Kiss, Michael Crawford and Sylvester Stallone.
• Date: Tuesday, December 23, 2025
• Time: 8:00 PM ET/PT.
• There is a TV: On CBS TV channels. Find yours local station here.
• Online broadcast: Paramount+

George Strait, King of Country Music

With hits like “All My Ex's Live in Texas,” “Amarillo by Morning” and “Check Yes or No,” George Strait is known as the king of country music.

The multi-platinum artist has won dozens of Academy of Country Music and Country Music Association awards, as well as a Grammy Award for Best Country Album. In 2006, he was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.

When Strait received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in 2021, he said his father taught him the way of the cowboy life and that he tried to maintain his Western heritage throughout his career. But he also said that from the very beginning he was challenged to stay true to himself.

“When I first signed with MCA Records in 1981, you know, they, all the people, said, 'Take off your hat,'” he said, pointing with a grin at his signature 10-gallon cowboy hat. “Now, can you imagine if I did that?”

The producer also floated the idea of ​​Strait changing his name. “My dad was so glad I didn’t do it,” Streit said.

Gloria Gaynor, queen of disco

Gloria GaynorThe 1978 hit “I Will Survive” has stood the test of time, lasting far longer than disco and crowning the New Jersey singer as queen of the genre.

The song won a Grammy for Best Disco Recording. When it was added to the Library of Congress” National Recording Registry In 2016, the library said “I Will Survive” has become known as “an emblem of female empowerment” and an anthem in the LGBT community.

“This song touches on the innate instinct for survival and the tenacity of the human spirit,” Gaynor told CBS News. in 2016.

As she recently recalled, when she recorded the hit, she was paralyzed from the waist down while recovering from a serious spinal injury after falling on stage.

“I was in the hospital for over three months, hoping that I would get over, you know, this trauma that I went through, hoping that I would get over the fact that my mother passed away several years ago,” Gaynor said. “Yes, I lived this song and I was sure that I would not be the only one.”

Legendary rock band Kiss

This year's celebration was a bittersweet moment for the Kiss founders. Ace Frehleythe band's original lead guitarist, died in October, just weeks after he, Peter Criss, Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley were named among this year's honorees.

“The saddest thing is that Ace didn't live to see this amazing thing,” Simmons told CBS News.

Kiss is known both for their hits such as “Rock and Roll All Nite”, “I Was Made for Lovin' You” and “Detroit Rock City” and for their signature black and white face paint. The band rose to fame on the glam rock wave, selling more than 100 million records worldwide and being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2014.

Simmons and Stanley's partnership lasted for decades, overcoming the challenges of achieving success in the music business.

“I don't think it's a coincidence that we're both Jewish and immigrant Holocaust survivors,” Stanley told CBS News. “I think we innately have compassion for other people, as well as a sense of survival.”

Tony winner Michael Crawford

Famed composer Andrew Lloyd Webber chose Michael Crawford to play the title role in the long-running musical The Phantom of the Opera when it first premiered in London in 1986.

“When he played me the overture, my hair stood on end,” Crawford told CBS News. “I loved playing and creating it, building it.”

After winning the Olivier Award—the British equivalent of the Tony Award—for musical of the year, the show opened on Broadway in New York in 1988, winning seven Tony Awards, including Best Actor in a Musical for Crawford.

Crawford's career also included film and television roles, but he considered them auditions for his next role. For him, playing the Phantom was a gift.

“So you want to do eight shows a week,” Crawford said. “You don’t want to miss one.”

American icon Sylvester Stallone

Sylvester Stallone wants people to understand one thing about his classic movie Rocky.

“Even to this day, I get angry when I hear it's a sports movie,” Stallone told CBS News. “This is wrong. This is a love story. It starts with love.”

For Stallone, who received an Oscar nomination for playing Rocky Balboa and writing the screenplay for the film, which was named Best Picture of 1976, the film was about the love of Rocky and Talia Shire's Adrian.

“This movie will rise and fall on love, not on fighting,” Stallone said. “Anyone can go, oh my god, it’s the little things in life, it’s love, it’s caring—it’s winning.”

Stallone calls this film his biography, although at the time he felt that he could not win. He began acting at age 20 after growing up with his father, who Stallone said was emotionally and physically abusive. Film was Stallone's way of coping, and he said the mythical heroes he saw on screen changed his life.

“I said, 'I'm going to be that guy,'” Stallone said. “I don’t want to be the one in the house, but I want to be that noble being.”

New Kennedy Center Honors Medallion

The rainbow ribbons adorned with three gold bars, which have long been awarded to honorees, were replaced this year with new gold medallions.

Each medallion designed by Tiffany and Co. is engraved in the center on one side with the colors of the rainbow running through it. The other side shows the name of each honoree and the date they received it.

Each medallion is suspended from a dark blue ribbon at the center, described as “the color associated with dignity and tradition.”