- Cody Johnson headlined the 2025 Houston Livestock and Rodeo.
- The concert made history with the highest concert-only attendance record.
- Cody brought out Carrie Underwood for a surprise duet.
The 2026 Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo has officially come to a close. After roughly three weeks of competitions, concerts, and carnival fun, Cody Johnson took the stage on Sunday, March 22, to conclude the annual event with a bang. The second-ever artist to land a RodeoHouston concert-only performance—following in the footsteps of the one and only George Strait—he knew he had to go big. And what better way to wow a crowd than with a surprise appearance from one of country music’s most illustrious stars?
In a jaw-dropping surprise to the more than 80,000 fans in attendance, Carrie Underwood joined Cody onstage to perform their beautiful duet, "I'm Gonna Love You." And NRG Stadium went wild.
“I jumped up screaming so loud I scared my fiancé,” one fan commented on an attendee’s TikTok from the event. “I SOBBED when my dad texted from the rodeo and said Carrie walked out with COJO,” someone else commented on another TikTok. “How loud it got was insane,” another fan chimed in.
Cody couldn’t have been more thrilled to close out RodeoHouston and to bring Carrie onstage with him for the occasion. The monumental performance went down in the history books, marking the all-time highest concert-only attendance record.
The RodeoHouston surprise appearance marks Carrie’s first-ever rodeo performance. The 43-year-old artist is accustomed to singing in front of large crowds, though, particularly after performing at Glastonbury in 2019 and headlining Stagecoach in 2022. This year, the duet duo is trading places with CoJo headlining the opening night of Stagecoach 2026. Catch him Friday night on the T-Mobile Mane Stage.
Rebecca Norris is a full-time freelance writer living in the Washington, D.C. metro area. Over the past 10+ years, she’s heavily covered a range of lifestyle topics, including travel, home, beauty, style, wellness, and celebrity news. She is a graduate of George Mason University, where she earned a B.A. in Media: Production, Consumption, and Critique, along with a minor in Electronic Journalism. When she's not writing, she can be found strolling with her Jack-Chi, Cash, sipping iced matcha lattes, indulging in delicious cuisine, perusing farmer’s markets and antique sales, collecting colored glass, getting lost within the pages of a book, and exploring new bucket-list cities.
