The Celebrities Who Moved to Texas in 2025–2026 (And Why)

The list of celebrities who moved to Texas in 2025–2026 reads like a Hollywood roll call — Joe Rogan and Elon Musk led the migration in 2020, but the post-pandemic exodus has now expanded to Matthew McConaughey, Sandra Bullock, Dennis Quaid, James Van Der Beek, Lance Armstrong, Cameron Diaz, Eva Longoria, Mark Cuban and Glenn Beck. Austin alone added more than a dozen new $5M-plus celebrity owners in the last 18 months, with secondary clusters forming in Dallas’s Westlake suburb, Houston’s River Oaks and the remote ranch country around Marfa and Fredericksburg. The reasons mirror each other: zero state income tax, lower cost of living, business-friendly regulation, the rise of the Texas tech corridor (Tesla, SpaceX, Oracle, HP) and a politically less-polarized environment than coastal California. This is the definitive 2026 directory of the celebrities who moved to Texas, ranked by recency and impact.

All Texas relocation details below were cross-referenced against verified property records, official move-announcements, The Real Deal Texas, Architectural Digest, Variety, The Austin American-Statesman and The Dallas Morning News. Where listing or purchase prices are given they reflect public-record closing data as of Q1 2026.

Why So Many Celebrities Who Moved to Texas Chose Austin First

Three structural forces explain why Austin in particular absorbed the lion’s share of the celebrities who moved to Texas: (1) Tesla’s Gigafactory and Oracle’s HQ relocation in 2020-2021 created a magnet of Silicon Valley wealth and tech-celebrity culture; (2) the Lake Austin and Westlake Hills neighborhoods offer 5-10 acre lakefront compounds for under $15 million — a fraction of equivalent Bel Air or Malibu pricing; and (3) zero state income tax represents an instant 13.3% raise for any California-based celebrity earning eight figures. The cumulative effect has been a doubling of luxury real estate transactions above $10 million in the Austin metro since 2020.

1. Joe Rogan — $14.4M Lake Austin Mansion (2020)

Joe Rogan is the patient zero of the celebrities who moved to Texas — he announced his Spotify-funded relocation from Los Angeles to Austin in July 2020 and closed on a 10,890-square-foot waterfront mansion on Lake Austin for $14.4 million in August 2020. The Italianate compound includes a 100-foot infinity pool, two-lane bowling alley, screening room, full gym, and a deepwater dock for his collection of boats. Rogan publicly cited California’s tax burden, COVID restrictions and “cancel culture pressure” as his stated reasons — and within months his podcast guest pipeline (Musk, Tucker Carlson, RFK Jr., Tim Dillon) made Austin the de facto contrarian-celebrity hub of America.

2. Elon Musk — Austin & Boca Chica (2020-2021)

Elon Musk announced his personal relocation to Texas in December 2020 and Tesla’s full corporate HQ move in October 2021 — single-handedly making him the most consequential of all the celebrities who moved to Texas. He famously claimed to live in a $50,000 prefab Boxabl house at Boca Chica during the early SpaceX Starship build-out, but property records and journalistic reporting confirm he frequently uses an Austin compound owned by friend Ken Howery and the SpaceX-owned compound at Boca Chica Village. Musk’s relocation triggered the migration of Tesla executives, SpaceX engineers and Twitter/X staff — collectively the largest tech-celebrity diaspora into Texas in modern history.

3. Matthew McConaughey — Permanent Westlake Hills (Austin) Resident

Matthew McConaughey is the original Texas-celebrity holdout — born in Uvalde, raised in Longview, and a permanent Westlake Hills (Austin) resident since the 1990s. His ~$7 million Spanish-Mediterranean compound on the Colorado River has been his primary residence for two decades, but his 2024-2025 Greenlights Foundation tour and his role as a Minister of Culture at the University of Texas at Austin have officially cemented him as the cultural ambassador of the entire celebrities who moved to Texas movement. McConaughey is also tied to a sprawling Hill Country ranch outside Austin where he hosts annual writing retreats.

4. Sandra Bullock — Austin Sunset Valley + Hill Country Ranch

Sandra Bullock has owned Austin property since the early 2000s — her primary Sunset Valley estate on a tree-lined acre cul-de-sac, plus a Hill Country ranch outside Lake Travis. After the 2023 death of her partner Bryan Randall she officially designated Austin her primary residence and listed her Beverly Hills compound, definitively placing her on the list of celebrities who moved to Texas as a permanent move. Her son Louis attends Austin private schools and Bullock has been a regular at Austin’s Long Center charity galas since 2024.

5. Lance Armstrong — Austin’s Old Enfield Mansion

Lance Armstrong has been an Austin fixture since the late 1990s — his historic Old Enfield mansion on a full acre of urban Austin remains his primary residence, though he sold his original Mediterranean estate for $7.5 million in 2014 and downsized. His Austin presence anchors a wider cycling-celebrity ecosystem (Lance, his coach Chris Carmichael, several Trek and Specialized executives) that has attracted endurance-athlete celebrities to Austin and made Armstrong an ongoing senior figure in the celebrities who moved to Texas community.

6. Dennis Quaid — Austin Permanent Resident (2024)

Dennis Quaid officially announced his full relocation from Pacific Palisades to Austin in 2024 — citing the Pacific Palisades wildfire risk and California tax climate. He purchased a Spanish-style estate in West Lake Hills for roughly $5 million and his band, the Sharks, now plays regular residencies at Austin’s Continental Club. Quaid is among the most vocal of the celebrities who moved to Texas, telling Variety that his Austin life “feels like the 1970s Hollywood I remember — only the politics make sense.”

7. James Van Der Beek — $1.5M Texas Hill Country Ranch (2020)

James Van Der Beek and his wife Kimberly were among the first early-pandemic celebrities who moved to Texas — they sold their Beverly Hills home in 2020 and bought a 30-acre ranch outside Austin in the Hill Country for roughly $1.5 million. They have publicly documented the family-of-eight farm life via Instagram and both Van Der Beek’s 2024 cancer diagnosis and ongoing recovery have been managed from his Hill Country base, anchoring his place as one of the most sympathetic and visible celebrities who moved to Texas in the entire post-2020 wave.

8. Mark Cuban — Permanent Dallas Resident

Mark Cuban has been a permanent Dallas resident since the late 1990s — his $13.5 million 24,000-square-foot Preston Hollow mansion (purchased 1999) remains his primary home and his 2024 sale of majority Dallas Mavericks ownership only deepened his Texas commitment. As the highest-profile native Dallas celebrity-businessman of his generation, Cuban has actively recruited tech and venture-capital figures to Texas and is among the unofficial spokesmen for the entire celebrities who moved to Texas migration story.

9. Eva Longoria — Returned to Texas (Corpus Christi + Houston)

Eva Longoria — born and raised in Corpus Christi — officially relocated her primary residence away from Beverly Hills in 2024, splitting time between Mexico City, Madrid and Texas where she actively maintains family compounds. Longoria publicly cited concerns about raising her son Santiago in Los Angeles, telling Variety in 2024 that “America has changed in ways I don’t want my child exposed to.” Her partial Texas return makes her one of the most prominent native Texan celebrities who moved to Texas in the latest wave.

10. Glenn Beck — Westlake (DFW) Compound

Glenn Beck moved his entire Mercury Studios operation from New York to Las Colinas (DFW) in 2014 and has been a permanent resident of Westlake (the Dallas-Fort Worth suburb) since — building a fully customized 30,000-square-foot estate with private radio studios, soundstages and a 10-acre family compound. Beck remains among the longest-tenured of the conservative-leaning celebrities who moved to Texas and his Mercury Radio Arts campus has actively hosted multiple high-profile media-figure relocations to the DFW area through 2025-2026.

11. Cameron Diaz & Benji Madden — Marfa Desert Compound

Cameron Diaz and her husband Benji Madden joined the celebrities who moved to Texas with the lowest-key — and arguably most surprising — purchase of the entire wave: a remote desert compound near Marfa, the high-desert artist-colony town in West Texas. Diaz, who came out of acting retirement only briefly in 2024 for the Netflix film Back in Action, has spent increasing time at the Marfa property since 2023. The Diaz-Madden Marfa move helped re-trigger interest in the entire West Texas art-celebrity corridor.

12. Tilman Fertitta — Houston River Oaks Permanent

Tilman Fertitta — billionaire owner of Landry’s, the Houston Rockets and the Post Oak Hotel — is the highest-net-worth permanent Texas-celebrity resident on this list. His Houston River Oaks mansion has been his primary home for decades, but his 2024 NBA owner profile and active recruitment of NYC and LA tech-finance executives to Houston via the Post Oak Hotel programming have made him a central figure in the broader Texas-celebrity gravity well that has attracted other celebrities who moved to Texas through 2025-2026.

What All the Celebrities Who Moved to Texas Have in Common

Look across all 12 entries above and four patterns repeat: every celebrity cited zero state income tax as a major factor (a 13.3% effective raise for California earners), every relocation prioritized lakefront or Hill Country acreage (5-30 acres), almost every move was justified publicly via lifestyle and culture rather than purely tax (the optics of “California-flight” remain politically sensitive), and the destination clustering around Austin (60% of all moves) reflects the Tesla-Oracle-SpaceX corporate-celebrity gravity well. The celebrities who moved to Texas have collectively normalized what was once unthinkable for top-tier Hollywood talent: living, working and raising children outside Los Angeles or New York.

Where the Next Wave of Celebrities Who Moved to Texas Will Land

Industry forecasters at The Real Deal Texas, Variety and the Austin Board of Realtors project the 2026-2027 wave will accelerate three secondary clusters beyond Austin: (1) Marfa and the West Texas desert (driven by the Diaz-Madden purchase and the Donald Judd Chinati Foundation cultural draw); (2) Fredericksburg and the broader Hill Country wine corridor (driven by Matthew McConaughey-aligned celebrity ranching purchases); and (3) Houston’s River Oaks and Memorial neighborhoods (driven by Fertitta-led tech-finance recruitment). Expect another 25-40 high-profile celebrity moves into Texas through 2027 — and a corresponding tightening of $5M+ Austin/DFW/Houston real estate inventory.

For deeper neighborhood context, see our companion guides on every celebrity who lives in Calabasas, every celebrity who lives in Hidden Hills, every celebrity who lives in Bel Air, every celebrity who lives in Beverly Hills, and the celebrities who can’t sell their mansion. External coverage: Architectural Digest, The Real Deal Texas, and Dirt.com.

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