NBC News and Noticias Telemundo will carry Pope Leo XIV's Concert for Peace live on Wednesday, July 29, 2026, at 1 p.m. ET, giving U.S. viewers front-row access to a Vatican-linked event that mixes ceremony, music and broadcast muscle.
The special will air across NBC and Telemundo in English and Spanish, with streaming on NBC News NOW and Noticias Telemundo AHORA. Tom Llamas will anchor special coverage from Castel Gandolfo and have a special encounter with Pope Leo XIV, while Julio Vaqueiro will do the same. Excerpts from those encounters will air later that evening in special editions of NBC Nightly News and Noticias Telemundo from Rome.
The broadcast is built around Borgo Laudato Si’, part of the Pontifical Residence of Castel Gandolfo outside Rome, where Andrea Bocelli will appear with an interfaith choir of 200 children from conflict-affected regions around the world. Pope Leo XIV is set to make remarks, and the event will also include an interview with Bocelli and a rare tour of Borgo Laudato Si’ and its historic gardens. It marks the 800th anniversary of the death of St. Francis of Assisi, a commemoration that gives the concert its peace theme and its name.
That mix is what makes the event unusual. It is being presented as a global concert celebrating peace and hope, but it is also a tightly controlled live television moment with exclusive U.S. English- and Spanish-language rights. NBC News and Telemundo Enterprises are part of NBCUniversal News Group, and the broadcast plan turns a religious observance into a major cross-platform event for American audiences.
What remains unknown is the full shape of what Pope Leo XIV will lead once the cameras are rolling. The lineup already promises remarks, music, an interview and access to a place few viewers will ever see in person. On Wednesday, the concert will either stand as a one-night appeal for peace or as the start of a new kind of papal media event — one designed to travel as far as the message it carries.
