Gladys Knight will be taking a hiatus from performing.
Taking to Instagram on Thursday, Aug. 27, she explained her decision.
“After much soul-searching, I’ve decided that I will be easing into fewer performances while focusing on transitioning into the next stage of my career and life moving forward,” she said. “I’ll be spending more time on projects with my husband and visiting with my grandbabies and am looking forward to this new era.”
Knight closed by thanking her fans for supporting a “little girl’s dream” across an extraordinary 75-year career.
“I am immensely grateful to all of you and send my eternal love back to you,” she wrote, before concluding, “I hope to see your smiling faces out and about and on the road. God bless all of you and hope to see you soon.”
Her update comes mid-2026 tour and follows the end of The Queens Tour, which she headlined in 2025 alongside fellow icons Chaka Khan, Patti LaBelle, and Stephanie Mills.
During that 2025 run, her son Shanga Hankerson publicly voiced concern, accusing his stepfather, William McDowel, of elder abuse.
He said the strenuous schedule was “detrimental” to her health and claimed her husband largely drove it.
“I went, and I hugged him, and we hugged, and he looked at me, and he’s like, ‘I’m so glad to see you.’ He said, ‘Shanga, it’s been so hard,’” recalled Hankerson, meeting his mother’s longtime road manager, Larry Ward. “I have never seen Larry break down and cry like that…I said, ‘Well, what is it, Larry?’ and he couldn’t put [it] into words.”
“The band played about two or three extra bars, and she zoned out. The background singers started singing, and that brought her back,” he continued. “They’re having to rewind the teleprompters because my mom is forgetting to look at them.