WESTLAKE VILLAGE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 1, 2026--
Guitar Center today announced the return of Drum-Off, bringing back its national drumming competition in 2026 after nearly a decade. Starting May 1, drummers can step into any of Guitar Center’s 300 stores nationwide to record and submit an original three-minute on-camera audition video. Every store will feature a premium acoustic drum kit with simple, step-by-step instructions for submission. First launched in 1988, Drum-Off ran for 28 years and served as a proving ground for drummers for more than three decades, helping emerging talent gain recognition and advance their careers.
This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260501657699/en/
Originally launched in Southern California, Drum-Off began as a grassroots, store-led competition where anyone could sign up and step behind the kit. As Guitar Center expanded nationally in the early ’90s, the program grew with it, evolving into a multi-stage competition that has seen more than 100,000 drummers participate over its lifetime. Along the way, it became a defining platform within the drumming community, featuring some of the most respected names in music as judges, including Travis Barker, Peter Criss, Chad Smith, Taylor Hawkins, and Steve Ferrone. From legendary live moments to career-launching performances, Drum-Off has earned its place as one of the premier stages for drummers in the industry. The 2026 competition will continue that legacy with a lineup of high-profile judges, with additional details to be announced.
Drum-Off aligns with Guitar Center’s Legends Play Here™ brand initiative, bringing together emerging drummers, established players, and industry judges in a competition built around live performance. Past Drum-Off competitors include Tony Royster Jr. (Jay-Z, Katy Perry), Cora Coleman-Dunham (Prince, Beyoncé), Thomas Pridgen (The Mars Volta), Glen Sobel (Alice Cooper), and Ilan Rubin (Nine Inch Nails, Foo Fighters). The competition has built its reputation on performance, where technique, creativity, and musicality determine who advances. With more than 300 stores nationwide and long-standing relationships across the music industry, Guitar Center brings this competition to life at a scale unmatched in music retail.
“I cannot tell you how often musicians (not just drummers) ask me when we’re going to bring back Drum Off,” said Gabe Dalporto, CEO of Guitar Center. “It was literally an iconic part of music culture for nearly three decades, shining a spotlight on emerging talent and launching careers. Well - it’s back, just bigger and louder."
Drum-Off 2026 begins in Guitar Center stores nationwide, where participants visit any of the brand’s 300 locations to record and submit an original on-camera audition video using premium DW acoustic drum kits. Select entries will advance to live district competitions held at 24 Guitar Center locations, followed by regional competitions in key markets including Hollywood, Nashville, and New York City. The competition will culminate on August 20, 2026, at the Fonda Theatre in Hollywood, CA, where six finalists will perform in front of a live audience and a panel of legendary judges for the title of Drum-Off Champion.
At the national level, the Drum-Off Champion will receive $25,000 in cash, a premium drum kit and cymbal package from participating sponsors, a brand endorsement opportunity, and an electronic drum kit from Roland. The winner will also travel to Drumeo HQ to create original content across Drumeo’s platforms.
Additional prizing builds throughout the competition, beginning at the district level. Up to 480 district competitors will receive a commemorative gear and swag bag, with advancing participants earning gear from leading drum and percussion brands including DW, Zildjian, OCDP, Pearl, Roland, Yamaha, Gretsch, Tama, ProMark, Evans, Remo, Sabian, Mapex, Drumeo, Ludwig and Vic Firth.
Drum-Off 2026 marks the return of one of Guitar Center’s longest-running programs, reinforcing its commitment to supporting musicians at every stage. Full details and audition submission information are available at https://drumoff.guitarcenter.com.
About Guitar Center:
Guitar Center is the leading retailer of musical instruments, lessons, repairs and rentals in the U.S. With more than 300 stores nationwide and one of the top direct sales websites in the industry, Guitar Center has helped people make music for more than 60 years. Guitar Center provides a range of musician-based services, including Guitar Center Lessons for players of all ages and skill levels, GC Repairs, an on-site maintenance and repair service, and GC Rentals, offering easy access to instruments and gear. Guitar Center’s family of brands includes Music & Arts, which operates more than 250 stores specializing in band and orchestral instruments for sale and rental, serving teachers, band directors, college professors, parents and students, and Musician’s Friend, a leading direct marketer of musical instruments in the United States. Guitar Center Business Solutions is the company’s commercial division, delivering professional audio, video, lighting and integrated technology solutions for businesses, institutions and creators nationwide through a portfolio of brands including AVDG (Audio Visual Design Group), GC Pro and Custom House at Guitar Center. The Guitar Center Music Foundation is a national nonprofit that expands access to music through instrument donations and support for communities in need.
Guitar Center announces the return of Drum-Off, the national drumming competition returning after nearly a decade. Drum-Off offers emerging drummers a platform to showcase their talent and advance their musical careers. Starting May 1, aspiring musicians can visit any Guitar Center store nationwide to record auditions. Winners compete before legendary judges and a live audience on August 20, 2026, in Hollywood, CA for a career-defining prize package.
WASHINGTON (AP) — When Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin was questioned by senators during his confirmation hearing about his vision for implementing President Donald Trump's mass deportation agenda, he said his goal was to keep his department off the front pages of the news.
To some degree, he has. Gone are the social media video clips of now-retired Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino clashing with protesters. Mullin's predecessor, Kristi Noem, made her first trip as secretary to New York City to make arrests with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. In contrast, Mullin went to North Carolina to review hurricane recovery efforts.
The Republican administration appears to be recalibrating its approach to a centerpiece policy that helped bring Trump back to the White House, moving in many ways away from aggressive, public-facing tactics toward a quieter approach to enforcement. Despite that shift, the administration insists it is not backing down from its lofty deportation goals.
“Clearly they’ve stepped back from the, for want of a better word, the Bovinoist tactics of before," said Mark Krikorian, the president of the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for immigration restrictions. "But it’s not clear this means they’re actually stepping back from immigration.”
The Trump administration launched a series of immigration enforcement operations last year in mostly Democratic-led cities, which drove up arrests in large-scale sweeps. The crackdown sparked clashes between protesters and enforcement officers and led to the shooting deaths in Minneapolis of two U.S. citizens.
Since then, the president’s hard-line anti-immigration agenda has lost popularity with voters and there have been no new high-profile city-based operations launched, raising questions about the administration's strategy.
“We’re still enforcing immigration laws. We’re still deporting illegals that shouldn’t be here. We’re still going after the worst of the worst — but we’re doing it in a more quiet way,” Mullin said in an interview April 16 with CNBC.
ICE arrests have fallen in recent months, and the number of people in immigration detention has dropped from a high of roughly 72,000 in January to 58,000 this week, according to data obtained by The Associated Press.
But in a sign of its continued determination, ICE in budget documents says it plans to remove 1 million people this fiscal year and the next compared with roughly 442,000 people last year. The agency also has plenty of money to carry out its mission, with Congress granting the Department of Homeland Security more than $170 billion for Trump's immigration agenda last year.
The administration aims to have enough space to detain roughly 100,000 people this fiscal year, which would more than double the average daily number held in ICE detention last year. The administration has already expanded its detention capacity with the purchase of 11 warehouses across the country.
“They are working on really building a juggernaut of a system,” said Doris Meissner, who headed the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, a predecessor to ICE, during President Bill Clinton's Democratic administration and is now a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute.
White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said there had been no change to Trump's strategy.
"President Trump’s highest priority has always been the deportation of illegal alien criminals who endanger American communities,” Jackson said.
ICE did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
Advocates for immigrants are bracing for the Trump administration to turn its attention more intently to stripping away protections for migrants with temporary legal status to remain in the U.S. while their cases are being adjudicated.
In one example of this, the number of green cards approved by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services dropped by half over the course of a year under the Trump administration, according to an analysis by the Cato Institute, which supports immigration into the U.S. Humanitarian visas for refugees or people who qualified for asylum saw the biggest declines.
USCIS spokesman Zach Kahler said the drop was due to increased vetting of applicants by the administration.
The Trump administration has also pushed to strip Temporary Protected Status from hundreds of thousands of people, with a key case weighing whether it's overstepped its power to do so being heard at the Supreme Court this week.
Advocates see it as a way to send a chilling message to immigrant communities and make more people vulnerable to deportation. It also enables the department to operate without the public spectacle of workplace raids or home arrests.
ICE has also focused over the past year on creating agreements with jurisdictions around the country that allow local and state law enforcement to carry out an expanding array of immigration enforcement tasks, ranging from checking the immigration status of people in their jails to incorporating immigration checks during routine traffic stops.
These agreements, known as 287g, have grown from 135 in 20 states before Trump took office to more than 1,400 in 41 states and territories now.
Some states, most noticeably Florida and Texas, have mandated various forms of cooperation between local law enforcement and ICE.
Meissner, from MPI, said Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, is likely to prioritize further discussions about how cities and states can cooperate with ICE.
“At the end of the day, some of this may very well succeed in increasing the numbers,” Meissner said.
Conservatives who want more deportations say the only way to truly crack down on illegal immigration is to make it so difficult for the migrants to work that they’ll leave on their own.
The Trump administration has already taken steps to make life harder for people in the country illegally including limiting who can live in public housing by immigration status, sharing Medicaid information with ICE and requiring people in the country illegally to register with the federal government.
Krikorian, of the Center for Immigration Studies, said the Social Security Administration could send out letters alerting employers when an employee's name doesn't match their Social Security number. Authorities could repeatedly and consistently carry out audits of I-9 forms, which companies are supposed to fill out and submit to the federal government showing that new hires are legally able to work. And they could require banks to collect citizenship information on customers.
Whatever the strategy going forward, the administration is facing heavy pressure not to back away from its goals.
“The numbers are too low," said Mike Howell, part of the Mass Deportation Coalition, which launched a playbook for how the administration can actually get to a million deportations a year by using tactics such as worksite enforcement.
“The deportation numbers are just too low," Howell said, "and they need to be much higher, and they can be much higher.”
This story has been corrected to show Meissner’s quote was “working on really building a juggernaut,” not “working really on building a juggernaut.”
Associated Press writers Lisa Mascaro and Will Weissert contributed to this report.
FILE - A federal agent approaches a vehicle on Jan. 29, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Adam Gray, File)
Federal agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection walk along West Wacker Drive in the Loop, Sunday, Sept. 28, 2025, in Chicago. (Ashlee Rezin/Chicago Sun-Times via AP)
FILE - Demonstrators rally before marching to the White House in Washington, Jan. 8, 2026, as they protest against the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent who fatally shot Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File)
FILE - Demonstrators march down Fifth Avenue during a protest against war in Venezuela and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Jan. 11, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Heather Khalifa, File)
FILE - Federal officers stand guard after detaining people outside of Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building, Jan. 13, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Adam Gray, File)
