Craig Campbell cornhole challenge raises record $35,000 at CMA Fest

Craig Campbell’s Celebrity Cornhole Challenge turned CMA Fest into a bigger stage for cornhole and a bigger engine for charity, producing its largest fundraising total yet and lifting the event’s profile beyond the sport’s core competitive circle. The 12th annual edition brought in more than $35,000 for The Kenny Campbell Foundation and featured the deepest celebrity field the challenge has ever assembled, a combination that underscored how powerfully the game can travel when music stars and a cause share the same lane.

The challenge ran Tuesday, June 2, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at 6th & Peabody in downtown Nashville, with bidding to team up with celebrity participants opening May 1 at 9 a.m. CST. That setup has become a familiar CMA Fest-week draw: part competition, part auction, part public-facing fundraiser, with cornhole serving as the easy-to-follow centerpiece. The format gives artists, guests and fans a low-pressure way to compete while turning every toss into dollars for colorectal cancer research.

The event’s growth is no accident. Campbell founded The Kenny Campbell Foundation in 2023 in honor of his father, Kenny Campbell, who died of colorectal cancer at 36, and the foundation says it exists to support research hospitals and doctors working on prevention and a cure. Campbell’s site says he has raised more than $1 million for colorectal and colon cancer causes, and the cornhole challenge has become one of the clearest expressions of that mission, using celebrity access to generate both money and attention for a health issue that too often struggles for the same spotlight as the music around it.

The 2026 total followed a steady climb. The 11th annual challenge in 2025 raised more than $30,000, featured 16 teams and ended with a Craig Campbell concert, while the 10th annual event in 2024 was also built around 16 teams at 6th & Peabody. That continuity matters for cornhole, because it shows how a backyard game can sustain a recurring festival presence, deepen its charitable reach and expand its audience through celebrity crossover rather than elite tour branding. At CMA Fest, the challenge proved once again that cornhole’s simplest format may also be its most marketable one.