Dolly Parton may be gone, but her Christmas spirit is coming to Toledo.

The 2026 national tour of “Dolly Parton’s Smoky Mountain Christmas Carol” kicks off Nov. 14 in Princeton, West Virginia — and it reaches the Stranahan Theatre in Toledo on Dec. 16, with two nights at Detroit’s Fox Theatre (Dec. 11–12) just before.

Producers Right Angle Entertainment and Paul T. Couch say this holiday season’s performances will be dedicated to Dolly’s memory — celebrating, in their words, “not only the extraordinary body of work she leaves behind, but the joy, compassion and generosity she brought to the world.” Parton, the “Queen of Country,” died Aug. 25 in Nashville at 80 after a brief battle with cancer.

What the show is

The musical reimagines Ebenezer Scrooge as the owner of a mining company town in the 1930s Smoky Mountains of East Tennessee — with music and lyrics by the 11-time Grammy winner herself and a book by David H. Bell, adapted for the stage by Bell, Couch and Curt Wollan. Antoinette DiPietropolo directs and choreographs.

The tour visits 25 cities, wrapping Dec. 23 in Indianapolis. Tickets are on sale now at smokymountainchristmascarol.com.

For a generation raised on “Jolene,” “9 to 5” and the Imagination Library books that showed up in their mailboxes, a December night at the Stranahan with Dolly’s songs filling the room might be the most fitting goodbye of all.

Dolly Parton. Photo: Curtis Hilbun, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Sources: EIN Presswire (official tour announcement), BroadwayWorld, DollyParton.com