Donald Glover has revealed that he was hospitalized after suffering a stroke after a Childish Gambino concert in New Orleans, LA in 2024.
On Saturday night (November 22), the 42-year-old musician/actor performed at Tyler, the Creator’s annual Camp Flog Gnaw festival, where he admitted on stage to the stroke.
"I was doing this world tour,” he explained to the crowd. “I was having lots of fun, really loving seeing you guys out there. I had a really bad pain in my head in Louisiana and I did the show anyway. I couldn’t really see well, so when we went to Houston, I went to the hospital and the doctor was like, ‘You had a stroke.’"
“And the first thing I thought was like, ‘Oh, here I am still copying Jamie Foxx,’” he continued. “That’s really like the second thing. The first thing was like, ‘I’m letting everybody down.’ I know it’s not true.”
The stroke forced Glover to cancel the rest of his U.S. tour, along with his shows in the UK, Europe and Australia in support of his 2024 album, Bando Stone and the New World, in which he was set to retire the Childish Gambino moniker. At the time he said he was dealing with an ailment that required surgery, saying, “Unfortunately, my path to recovery is taking longer than expected.”
As it turns out, the stroke was only one of multiple health problems Glover admitted to experiencing in the last year. He also broke his foot and discovered that he had a hole in his heart - both conditions needed surgery to repair.
“They say everybody has two lives and the second life starts when you realise you have one,” Glover added. “You got one life, guys, and I gotta be honest, the life I’ve lived with you guys has been such a blessing.”
There was a drone show in the shape of an anatomical heart as Donald Glover told Camp Flog Gnaw about the stroke and heart surgery that cut short last year’s Childish Gambino tour.
— Stereogum (@stereogum) November 23, 2025
“This is the first show I’ve done since the incident. I didn’t think I would be able to.” https://t.co/m1t231srnP pic.twitter.com/tYMAo1SPcw