Kennedy Center Honors move to arena amid building closure

The Kennedy Center Honors will leave the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts for the first time in the awards’ nearly 50-year history, moving this year’s ceremony to a Washington arena while the center’s main building remains closed.

The celebration of American performing arts is scheduled for Dec. 7 at Capital One Arena, the center announced Friday. This year’s honorees have not yet been named. The arena seats about 20,000 people, compared with roughly 2,300 in the Kennedy Center’s Opera House, where the ceremony has traditionally been held since the awards began in 1978.

The main theaters have been closed since Sept. 15, after the center’s board voted to shut them for renovations. In court filings, Executive Director Matt Floca said the closure would be reconsidered weekly as safety assessments continue, according to NBC News.

The board cited a partial ceiling collapse in the center’s Grand Foyer as evidence that repairs could not wait. In a draft resolution proposing a two-year closure for construction, the board said a consultant and the center’s director considered the main building “unsafe for continued occupancy” and anticipated further risks to visitors and employees if it remained open.

The venue change comes amid a dispute over President Donald Trump’s effort to add his name to the Kennedy Center and over the building’s future. Trump has said renovations might not proceed, and the building could be demolished, if courts reject the name change. In a September Truth Social post, he wrote that renovation and reconstruction “cannot begin until such time as the D.C. Circuit rules on the Board’s approved name.” If the ruling went against the name change and was not overturned by the Supreme Court, he wrote, the work “will not take place.”

The Guardian reported that the center’s board, whose members were largely appointed by Trump, voted in December to add his name. Congress established the center, which opened in 1971, as a memorial to President John F. Kennedy. In May, U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper ordered the center to remove Trump’s name, saying it “must be named for, and is meant to honor, president Kennedy alone.”

Cooper also directed the administration to give at least 30 days’ notice before taking any step toward demolition, The Guardian reported. The newspaper said Republican Sen. Mike Lee blocked a bipartisan bill that would have required congressional approval to demolish the center. It also reported falling ticket sales amid changes to programming under Trump and protests over his plans.

Even the pandemic-delayed 2020 Honors, held in May 2021, included performances recorded at sites across the Kennedy Center campus. This year’s event will take place entirely away from its longtime home. The White House declined to comment to NBC News on the venue change.