The Best of CMA Fest 2025’s Free Performances

If there’s one thing that the Country Music Association has succeeded at, it’s creating a festival that truly feels inclusive to all fans, both paying and not.

Though much of the attention each year at CMA Fest in Nashville goes to the stars that grace Nissan Stadium, Ascend Amphitheater and special installations running in tandem such as Spotify House at Ole Red, various talent lends their time and likeness each year to completely free concerts throughout the city, all while still supporting CMA Foundation’s charitable mission to provide students with access to high-quality music education, as well as empower music teachers.

For the 2025 edition of the festival, the association clearly sought to establish a healthy balance between empowering new stars to take the stage at one of the premier events in country music, as well as providing longtime fans opportunities to check out some of its biggest names at no cost.

Where else could one simply pull up a picnic blanket and catch a free Megan Moroney concert, followed by equally as compelling performances from Dasha, Gavin Adcock and Ashley Cooke directly afterward? Only at the Chevy Riverfront Stage in Nashville, and that’s exactly what an at-capacity crowd who filtered into the concert area to hear the “Tennessee Orange” singer received.

Fans of country music prove their dedication time and time again by showing up and showing out for their favorite stars, evident by the thousands that crowded the Riverfront stage each morning to hear free performances from other chart-topping artists such as Alana Springsteen, Colbie Caillat, Kameron Marlowe, Tucker Wetmore and Ella Langley.

Non-ticketed individuals in attendance at CMA Fest were free to wander between five public stages: Chevy Riverfront, Dr Pepper Amp, Chevy Vibes, Good Molecules Reverb and Hard Rock. Though the Riverfront stage has the largest capacity and often, as a result, the biggest acts, talent was abound at virtually every other free stage at the festival.

Take, for example, rising star Kashus Culpepper, who performed a free afternoon set at the Chevy Vibes stage outside of the Country Music Hall of Fame to a group of dedicated fans, and then later took to the Platform stage at Nissan Stadium following Ashley McBryde’s set to sing his critically-acclaimed track “After Me” to the largest live audience he has ever played in front of.

Similarly, on the Vibes stage directly after Culpepper, Drake Milligan channelled Elvis Presley with an electric cover of “Blue Suede Shoes,” as well as renditions of his other hit tracks.

Some may forget that it was only less than a decade ago that Morgan Wallen was performing covers of Linkin Park to only a handful of early fans at a CMA Fest free stage. Country risers have always been the backbone of the entire festival, and this year was no different.

Burgeoning talents such as Willow Avalon stepped up to the Good Molecules Reverb stage to perform “Gettin’ Rich, Goin’ Broke,” and The Jack Wharff Band honored country tradition with a rousing cover of “Messed Up Kid.”

Over at the Hard Rock Stage, rising group Jason Scott & The High Heat turned the heat up with their viral track “High Country,” while later on the same stage, Mexican-American country singer Leah Turner brought the house down with her signature vocals.

Talent oftentimes appears limitless in Nashville, and as CMA Fest 2025 showed, there’s more than enough to go around, even beyond the ticketed constraints of the festival.