Legendary entertainer, humanitarian and activist Bette Midler has been selected as the recipient of the 2026 Woody Guthrie Prize.
For more than 50 years, Midler has inspired audiences around the world as a singer, actress, author and producer. Beyond her celebrated career, she is also one of America’s most recognized advocates for environmental conservation, public spaces, LGBTQ+ rights, public health initiatives and a wide range of humanitarian causes.
The 2026 Woody Guthrie Prize event will take place on Oct. 16 at the historic Cain’s Ballroom in Tulsa, Okla. The fundraising event will feature remarks from Cady Shaw and members of the Guthrie family, the award ceremony and an intimate conversation between Ms. Midler and music journalist Rona Elliot. The evening will conclude with a special solo acoustic performance by rising country star Bryan Andrews, whose honest storytelling, blue-collar perspective and fearless songwriting have captured significant attention on social media.
Thank you to our supporters:
Gold Circle:
Bonnie Darby
Jody Parker
Silver Circle:
Marian and Dennis Bires
Gail and Kip Richards
Bronze Circle:
The Cope Family
Bill and Rozann Knight
The Guy and Phyllis Logsdon Family
Bob and Debbie Russell
The Whelan Family
Jan Whitener
Details
Friday, Oct. 16, 2026
Cain’s Ballroom
423 N Main St, Tulsa, OK 74103
Tickets
Tickets will go on sale exclusively to Woody Guthrie Center members on Aug. 28, 2026.
Membership and ticket proceeds will fund the center’s 2028 educational programming, public events, exhibitions and outreach. For sponsorship and other support opportunities, contact support@woodyguthriecenter.org.
For general event inquiries, contact info@woodyguthriecenter.org.
About Bette Midler
As one of the world’s best-loved and most versatile entertainers, Bette Midler has garnered accolades across all facets of show business. The Divine Miss M’s expansive body of work has been recognized with four Grammy Awards, two Academy Award nominations, three Emmy Awards, two Tony Awards, three Golden Globe Awards, and nine American Comedy Awards. In December 2021, Midler was inducted as part of the 44th Kennedy Center Honors for lifetime artistic achievements. One of the bestselling female singers, her albums have sold over 30 million copies worldwide.
On screen, some of her iconic films include The Rose, Beaches, two Hocus Pocus films, The First Wives Club, and The Stepford Wives amongst others. On Broadway, she starred in one of the most celebrated musicals in theater history as “Dolly Gallagher Levin” in Hello Dolly! for which she won a Tony.
Midler founded the New York Restoration Project in 1995, an open space conservancy and New York City’s largest private land trust. NYRP is dedicated to protecting and preserving community gardens and other green spaces throughout all five boroughs. NYRP owns and manages 52 community gardens, maintains over 80 acres of parkland, and in collaboration with the New York City Parks Department, has planted over 1,000,000 trees in New York City.
About Bryan Andrews
Bryan Andrews is one of country music’s most outspoken progressive voices, blending blue-collar authenticity with fearless songwriting that challenges expectations of what the genre can say and stand for. Raised in a musical family in Carrollton, Missouri, with a father who taught high school band and a mother who directed choir, Bryan later spent four and a half years working as a pipe welder before pursuing music full time, experiences that continue to shape his perspective as a songwriter. His honest storytelling and unapologetic social commentary have earned him more than 3.8 million TikTok followers and 1.5 million Instagram followers, along with recognition from Rolling Stone, Billboard, NBC News, Don Lemon, MusicRow, and more. His breakout hit “The Older I Get” topped Billboard’s Country Digital Song Sales, Digital Song Sales, and Emerging Artists charts, establishing him as one of independent country music’s fastest-rising artists. Most recently, Bryan released his eight-song mixtape Independence Day, continuing his mission of examining the country’s promises and contradictions through country music.
About Rona Elliot
Rona Elliot has spent five decades inside the rooms where modern music history was made — not as a performer or celebrity, but as a witness, interviewer and cultural observer trusted by some of the most influential artists of the twentieth century.
Over the course of her career, she interviewed and traveled with Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo Starr, Tina Turner, Eric Clapton, U2, Sting, The Who, Billy Joel, Marvin Gaye, Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, The Rolling Stones, and many others—conversations that moved beneath publicity and performance into the emotional realities of the work itself.
Best known nationally for her years as the Music Correspondent for NBC News Today Show, she built a reputation for creating an atmosphere of trust and reflection rarely found in mainstream television journalism, drawing out the creativity, identity, spirituality, and private life hidden beneath public fame. Artists and cultural figures as varied as the Dalai Lama and Dolly Parton responded to that quality in equal measure.
As U.S. Editor for Genesis Publications, Elliot has conducted the interviews and edited the source material for a series of limited-edition, collector volumes including CSN&Y: Love the One You’re With; Janis Joplin: Days & Summers; The Doors: A Guide to the Labyrinth; Henry Diltz: California Dreaming; and The Woodstock Experience – 40th Anniversary, among numerous other volumes and consulted on PBS American Masters and Masterpiece documentaries on Raul Julia and Woodstock 40. She has been a part of Live Aid, Band Air, the Mandela tributes, and the Princes Trust charitable concerts.
For fifteen years, Elliot has served as a Trustee on the Board of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Museum, and Archive in Cleveland, and she also serves on the Board of the Museum at Bethel Woods (the Woodstock Museum). She has conducted oral histories and interviews for the Spielberg Shoah Visual History Foundation, the Dalai Lama Foundation and the Grammy Living Legends Foundation.
She currently lives in Los Angeles, where — when her children were younger — she played percussion and sang in a parents’ band that opened for Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys at school events
