Eric Church Gives UNC-Chapel Hill Commencement Speech and Performs ‘Carolina’ for 2026 Grads

Eric Church turned UNC-Chapel Hill’s 2026 commencement ceremony into a guitar-led speech and ended it with a performance of “Carolina” for the graduating class.

Church spoke at Kenan Stadium in Chapel Hill, N.C., on Saturday (May 10), addressing more than 7,000 graduates with his guitar in hand and sunglasses on. The country star said he had torn up several versions of the speech before settling on the format that made sense to him.

“I have torn up multiple speeches,” said Church, who has twice topped the Billboard 200 albums chart and has logged three No. 1s and two No. 2s on Top Country Albums. “I have thrown things. And in one of my fits of frustration, I sat down with a guitar. And I thought, man, who am I kidding. I need to figure out a way to do this with a guitar.”

He opened by comparing the sound of an out-of-tune guitar to a life that has not been tended to, then built the speech around six strings that stood in for faith, family, heart, ambition and resilience, community, and self. Church tied that framework to the class of 2026, which included 4,453 undergraduates, 1,608 master’s students, and 981 doctoral degree students, 5,594 of whom are North Carolina residents.

“I want you to want things. You should want things. The world has more than enough people standing at the edge of their own potential waiting for a permission slip that was never gonna arrive. Want the thing. Say it out loud. Build toward it with everything you have,” Church said.

He also warned graduates about what he called the pressure to be visible everywhere and rooted nowhere.

“Your generation faces a temptation no generation before has ever faced. The temptation to perform to everyone and belong to no one. To be globally visible and locally invisible. To have thousands of followers and no one knows actually where you live. Resist it. Plant yourself somewhere. Put down roots with the full intention of growing there. Learn the actual names, not usernames, of the people around you. Volunteer. Coach the team. Build the thing your community needs even if the internet will never see it.”

Later, Church told the students, “You were made uniquely, wonderfully, distinctly. There’s a sound only you can make. A voice that has never existed before you and will never exist again. A contribution only you can bring. A way of seeing that belongs to only you. The world does not need another cover song. It needs an original.”

He returned to the six-string metaphor again near the end of the keynote, saying that the strings represented principles that drift in different seasons of life.

“Six strings of light and willingness to keep them in tune. Six principles. Six pillars. When all six are in tune with each other, the chord your life makes is full and resonant and true. All six will drift. Not one or two. All six. In their own time, in their own season.”

Church then spelled out how those areas can fall out of balance, from faith going quiet to family becoming complicated to ambition and resilience wearing down. “This is not failure,” he said. “This is not weakness. It’s the inevitable, universal experience of living in an imperfect world that doesn’t stop to let us tune up.”

He closed that thought by urging the graduates to pay attention before they turn up the volume and miss what needs adjusting.

“And the difference between a life that sounds like music and a life that sounds like noise is whether you stop and listen. Whether you’re honest enough to hear which string has drifted out of tune, humble enough to make the adjustment instead of just turning up the volume and hoping nobody notices. Because you will notice. The part of you that knows what the chord should sound like will always notice. It will not let you go. Life won’t be right until it is tuned. Trust what your heart hears and is telling you about your song.”

As expected, the ceremony ended with “Carolina,” the title track from Church’s second studio album, released in 2009. He played it on guitar while rows of graduates put their arms around one another and swayed.