Chad Gilbert Dies Aged 45 After Years-Long Cancer Battle As New Found Glory Pays Tribute
Chad Gilbert Has Died At Just 45 — Months After Fighting Back From Emergency Brain Surgery
Chad Gilbert’s Death At 45 Sends Shockwaves Through The Pop-Punk World
Chad Gilbert, the founding guitarist, songwriter and backing vocalist for New Found Glory, has died aged 45 following years of serious illness and cancer treatment.
Gilbert died peacefully in his sleep on the morning of Sunday, September 20, 2026, according to a joint announcement from his family and band. His wife Lisa Cimorelli and his mother were with him during his final moments. A specific medical cause of death has not been formally announced.
The news brings to an end an extraordinary final chapter in Gilbert's life. Earlier this year, he underwent emergency brain surgery after losing control of the left side of his body and discovering that cancer had spread to his brain. Just months later, he made an emotional return to the stage in Nashville.
For New Found Glory, the loss is also the loss of one of the creative forces who had been at the heart of the band since its formation in Florida in 1997.
New Found Glory Announce Chad Gilbert’s Death
New Found Glory and Gilbert's wife confirmed his death in a statement shared on social media.
The band said Gilbert had died surrounded by friends and family and described themselves as devastated by how rapidly events had unfolded.
They remembered him not simply as a guitarist but as a songwriter, creative driving force and friend whose influence had helped shape New Found Glory throughout its existence.
“He was a legendary musician,” the statement said, while stressing that Gilbert regarded being a husband and father as his greatest achievement.
The statement also described how friends and loved ones had gathered at the hospital as Gilbert's condition deteriorated, reflecting the size of the community surrounding him.
Gilbert is survived by his wife Lisa, their daughter Lily, his mother Jackie and his brother Brian.
A Five-Year Battle With Cancer
Gilbert had spoken unusually openly about his health over recent years.
His serious cancer battle began in 2021, when he was diagnosed with metastatic pheochromocytoma, a rare cancer associated with the adrenal glands. He underwent major surgery that included the removal of part of his liver, his gallbladder and an adrenal gland.
After initially receiving encouraging news, further disease was later discovered.
Gilbert subsequently underwent surgery to remove a tumour from his spine, and his cancer also affected his lungs. His diagnosis was later described as adrenocortical carcinoma, or ACC, an aggressive cancer originating in the adrenal cortex.
Throughout the process, Gilbert continued recording music and regularly updated fans about treatment, setbacks and recovery.
That battle entered a particularly serious phase in February 2026.
Three Brain Tumours Changed Everything
Gilbert was performing with New Found Glory in Nashville in February when he began struggling to control his left hand.
His left leg was also weakening.
He later recalled vomiting before the show, needing help from his bandmates and eventually performing while seated. After returning home, his condition worsened and he repeatedly lost control of the left side of his body.
Doctors ordered urgent hospital treatment.
Scans revealed three tumours in his brain, including one pressing against the right side of the brain and contributing to the loss of movement on his left side.
Gilbert underwent surgery on February 27.
He initially showed striking signs of improvement, including regaining movement in his left hand, but his recovery became complicated by swelling, falling sodium levels and cognitive problems. He later underwent ten rounds of radiation targeting the remaining brain tumours.
Despite the seriousness of his condition, Gilbert continued to talk publicly about recovery rather than retreating entirely from music.
In an interview published in April, he said he felt “very, very lucky” to still be able to talk about what he had endured.
Chad Gilbert Returned To The Stage
Then came one of the most powerful moments of his final year.
On June 8, Gilbert returned to a New Found Glory stage in Nashville for the first time since his emergency brain surgery.
He performed using a motorised mobility scooter and joined the band for two of its best-known songs, Hit Or Miss and My Friends Over You.
The appearance carried another deeply personal significance: it was the first time Gilbert had performed in front of his daughter Lily.
The comeback occurred only around three months before his death.
It now stands as one of the defining images of Gilbert's final period — seriously ill but determined to reconnect with the music, band and audience that had occupied most of his adult life.
The Guitarist Who Helped Build New Found Glory
Gilbert helped establish New Found Glory in Coral Springs, Florida, in 1997 while still a teenager.
Alongside Jordan Pundik, Ian Grushka and other early members, he became part of a band that would help push pop-punk from punk clubs and local scenes into mainstream rock culture during the late 1990s and early 2000s.
New Found Glory's self-titled 2000 record helped accelerate that rise, before albums including Sticks And Stones and Catalyst established the group among the era's most recognisable pop-punk acts.
Gilbert's importance extended far beyond simply playing lead guitar.
He was central to the band's songwriting and helped write songs including My Friends Over You and Head On Collision.
The combination of fast punk rhythms, heavy guitar breakdowns, bright melodies and enormous choruses became part of New Found Glory's distinctive sound — and influenced countless bands that followed.
Gilbert remained involved throughout the band's changing eras rather than becoming simply a member of its classic line-up.
Listen Up! Became Part Of Gilbert’s Final Chapter
New Found Glory released Listen Up! in February 2026.
The album was shaped in part by Gilbert's experience of living with metastatic cancer and by the long relationship between the band's members.
New Found Glory's official website describes the record as being written face-to-face at Gilbert's Nashville home, with the band returning to a riff-driven creative process reminiscent of some of its earlier work.
Its themes of resilience, gratitude and survival became especially poignant as Gilbert's condition deteriorated.
The February album-release period also coincided with the symptoms that led doctors to discover his brain tumours.
What should have been another celebratory period in New Found Glory's career therefore became inseparable from Gilbert's escalating medical battle.
His Influence Reached Beyond New Found Glory
Gilbert's musical footprint also extended well beyond his own band.
He had previously performed with hardcore group Shai Hulud and was involved with New Found Glory's side project International Superheroes Of Hardcore.
As a producer, he worked with bands including H2O and had credits connected with several A Day To Remember albums, including Homesick, What Separates Me From You and Common Courtesy.
He also contributed to the wider pop-punk network that connected groups such as Fall Out Boy, Paramore, Blink-182 and many of the acts that emerged around the genre's early-2000s explosion.
That explains why reaction to his death has spread well beyond New Found Glory's own audience.
Mark Hoppus Leads Tributes To Chad Gilbert
Blink-182 bassist and vocalist Mark Hoppus was among the musicians paying tribute.
Hoppus described Gilbert as an intensely positive and creative presence and reflected on the determination with which he had faced his illness.
Hoppus has himself undergone cancer treatment, having publicly revealed his lymphoma diagnosis in 2021.
Other tributes came from figures and bands including My Chemical Romance bassist Mikey Way, Good Charlotte's Joel Madden and hardcore band Madball.
For a musician whose career developed inside a particularly interconnected generation of punk, hardcore and pop-punk bands, the breadth of those reactions demonstrates how far Gilbert's relationships extended.
A Career Spanning Nearly Three Decades
Gilbert spent almost 30 years helping define New Found Glory.
When the band formed, the musicians were teenagers.
By the time of his death, New Found Glory had toured internationally for decades, released a substantial catalogue and survived multiple changes in popular music while retaining a dedicated audience.
Their breakthrough helped establish a wave of guitar music that would dominate alternative radio, music television, Warped Tour culture and teenage bedrooms during the early 2000s.
My Friends Over You, released from Sticks And Stones in 2002, became one of the band's signature songs and reached the Billboard Hot 100.
For many listeners, Gilbert's guitar parts became inseparable from that era.
But his final years also changed the way many fans encountered him.
He increasingly became known not only as a musician from a successful band's classic era, but as someone documenting serious illness while trying to remain creatively active.
Gilbert Kept Writing Through Illness
Cancer repeatedly interrupted Gilbert's ability to tour, but it did not completely stop his involvement with music.
During treatment he continued writing and recording, and even hospital stays fed into New Found Glory's creative development.
His health meant substitute musicians sometimes covered his role onstage, but he remained central to the band's identity and songwriting.
Speaking months before his death, Gilbert repeatedly focused on gratitude — for his career, for the people around him and particularly for his family.
That attitude is central to the tributes now being shared.
What Happens To New Found Glory Now?
New Found Glory has not announced any detailed long-term plan for how it will operate without Gilbert.
The band's statement instead concentrated on mourning its friend and recognising the scale of his contribution.
Its members said his influence would continue to be present whenever New Found Glory performed.
That is more than ceremonial language.
Gilbert's guitar work and songwriting are embedded throughout the band's catalogue, meaning any future version of New Found Glory will inevitably perform material he helped create.
His death therefore represents something larger than a line-up change.
It closes a partnership that began when the musicians were teenagers and survived nearly three decades of albums, tours, changing musical fashions and eventually years of serious illness.
Chad Gilbert’s Legacy
Chad Gilbert was 45.
He helped turn New Found Glory from a teenage Florida punk band into one of the defining names of modern pop-punk.
He wrote riffs and songs heard by millions, produced music for other influential bands and continued creating while confronting an increasingly aggressive cancer.
Yet the people closest to him have emphasised another part of his life.
His band's farewell made clear that Gilbert considered becoming a husband and father more important than his musical achievements.
Only months before his death, after emergency brain surgery and weeks of hospital treatment, he managed to return to the stage and play New Found Glory songs while his daughter watched him perform.
For a musician whose life had revolved around those songs since his teenage years, it became a final collision of the two things his family and bandmates say mattered most to him: music and family.
New Found Glory now continues without one of the people who created it.
But Chad Gilbert's guitar playing, songwriting and influence remain woven through almost three decades of the band's music — and through the pop-punk generation that grew up alongside it.
