Cher Accepts Lifetime Achievement Award in Surprise Appearance at 2026 Grammy Awards

Cher made a surprise appearance at the 2026 Grammy Awards on Sunday night, accepting the Recording Academy’s Lifetime Achievement Award and offering a candid reflection on her decades-long career.

The 79-year-old icon received a standing ovation as she took the stage, though she quickly waved the audience back to their seats before beginning her remarks. In a measured but personal speech, Cher traced her path from early success to the professional setbacks that followed. “I knew what I wanted to be when I was five years old,” she said. “I was famous at 19, and I had a top-rated television show in my twenties. But it never occurred to me how difficult my career and my life would be.”

Cher spoke about the volatility of public perception throughout her career, describing long stretches where she oscillated between acclaim and dismissal. “I was either considered a failure or winning an Oscar,” she said, drawing knowing laughter from the audience. “I’m sure a lot of you understand that feeling.”

She also addressed a particularly challenging period in the early 1980s, when her commercial prospects waned, and she relocated to Las Vegas, a move then widely viewed as signaling the end of a mainstream pop career. “Vegas was called the elephant’s graveyard back then,” she recalled. “I was dropped by my label. Then another label picked me up, and I recorded a song called ‘Believe.’”

Cher noted that “Believe,” released in 1998, marked a turning point not only for her career but for pop music more broadly. The song famously introduced the use of Auto-Tune as a vocal effect, though Cher pointed out that the technology was not yet known by that name. “There wasn’t such a thing as Auto-Tune,” she said. “It was just a pitch machine.”

Turning her attention to the next generation of artists in the room, Cher offered simple but direct advice. “Never give up on your dream, no matter what happens,” she said. “Live it. Be it. And if it’s not happening now, it will happen. That’s the only thing I want you to take with you.”

After exiting the stage, Cher returned moments later to present the Grammy for Record of the Year to Kendrick Lamar and SZA for their collaboration “Luther.” During the announcement, she briefly misspoke, confusing the song’s title with the late soul singer Luther Vandross, who inspired the track. She quickly corrected herself and appeared to apologize to producers Jack Antonoff and Sounwave before handing over the award.

Cher herself is a two-time Grammy winner. Her most recent win came in 2000, when “Believe” earned Best Dance Recording and received a nomination for Record of the Year. More than two decades later, her appearance at the Grammys underscored a career defined not only by reinvention, but by endurance.

The Lifetime Achievement Award honors performers who have made “creative contributions of outstanding artistic significance to the field of recording,” a distinction that Cher’s career in music, film, and television has long embodied.