The co-founder of the Grateful Dead, guitarist and singer Bob Weir, has passed away at the age of 78 following a battle with cancer and lung issues.

This news was shared through a post on Weir’s official social media page, which is included below in its entirety.

It discloses that Weir was diagnosed in July 2025. Despite beginning his treatment just weeks earlier, the guitarist performed with the band’s latest offshoot, Dead and Company, in August during a three-night series of shows celebrating the Grateful Dead’s 60th anniversary in their hometown of San Francisco.

Weir co-founded the Grateful Dead in 1965 after meeting fellow guitarist and singer Jerry Garcia at a music store on New Year’s Eve. “He said he had the key to the instrument room and asked if we wanted to jam,” Weir later recalled. “We played for hours and realized we had enough half-talent to start a jug band, which somehow became successful. A year later we had a rock and roll band, and the rest is pretty well documented.”

Read More: How the Grateful Dead Met

Emerging as early leaders of San Francisco’s vibrant ’60s psychedelic rock scene, the Grateful Dead went on to challenge the conventional music industry model by becoming more renowned for their expansive, ever-evolving live performances than for their recorded music.

A whole subculture full of “Deadheads” developed around the band, who spent decades following them from concert to concert and trading bootlegs of their live shows with the band’s full approval.

After Garcia’s death in 1995, Weir and the remaining band members retired the Grateful Dead name; however, he continued touring as part of Dead and later, Dead & Company.

Weir’s passing leaves drummer Bill Kreutzmann as the only surviving founding member of the Grateful Dead. Bassist Phil Lesh died in 2024, while singer and keyboardist Ron “Pigpen” McKernan passed away in 1973. (Longtime drummer Mickey Hart joined the group in 1967.)

You can read the official statement regarding Weir’s death below:

It is with profound sadness that we share the passing of Bobby Weir. He transitioned peacefully, surrounded by loved ones, after courageously overcoming cancer as only Bobby could. Unfortunately, he succumbed to underlying lung issues.
For over sixty years, Bobby took to the road. A guitarist, vocalist, storyteller, and founding member of the Grateful Dead. Bobby will forever be a guiding force whose unique artistry reshaped American music. His work did more than fill rooms with music; it was warm sunlight that filled the soul, building a community, a language, and a feeling of family that generations of fans carry with them. Every chord he played, every word he sang was an integral part of the stories he wove. There was an invitation: to feel, to question, to wander, and to belong.
Bobby’s final months reflected the same spirit that defined his life. Diagnosed in July, he began treatment only weeks before returning to his hometown stage for a three-night celebration of 60 years of music at Golden Gate Park. Those performances were emotional, soulful, and full of light; they were not farewells but gifts—another act of resilience. An artist choosing even then to keep going by his own design. As we remember Bobby, it’s hard not to feel the echo of how he lived: a man driftin’ and dreamin’, never worrying if the road would lead him home. A child of countless trees. A child of boundless seas.
There is no final curtain here—not really—only the sense of someone setting off again. He often spoke of a three-hundred-year legacy, determined to ensure that his songbook would endure long after him. May that dream live on through future generations of Dead Heads. And so we send him off the way he sent so many of us on our way: with a farewell that isn’t an ending but a blessing—a reward for a life worth living.
His loving family—Natascha, Monet, and Chloe—request privacy during this difficult time and offer their gratitude for the outpouring of love, support, and remembrance. May we honor him not only in sorrow but in how bravely we continue with open hearts, steady steps, and music leading us home. Hang it up and see what tomorrow brings.