23 Best Performing Arts in Las Vegas, Nevada

The 7,000-seat concert hall was the first on the Strip when it was built as the Aladdin Theatre for the Performing Arts in 1976. Now, it's the only part of the original Aladdin to survive the conversion into Planet Hollywood. It was remodeled in 2013 to host Britney Spears, but its rotation of stars leaned country in 2023, with the likes of Miranda Lambert and Keith Urban. To create more of a club vibe, a VIP area and two general-admission standing-room areas were added down front. The balcony isn't used for a lot of the shows, bringing capacity down to a cozier 4,500. After a few years as the Zappos Theater, a name change and new branding partner came in early 2023.

Unlike its New York namesake, the Las Vegas Brooklyn Bowl only looks like it was retrofitted from an old warehouse. It was actually built from the ground up in 2014 as an anchor for The LINQ outdoor retail plaza. The Las Vegas location copies and expands upon the original by surrounding its concert space with 32 bowling lanes and food outlets offering fried chicken and other goodies from the Blue Ribbon group. The live concert lineup still favors jam bands when possible. Most of the concert space is standing-room only, so arrive early if you want a shot at the limited seating without paying for VIP upgrades.

MGM Resorts needed a venue to compete with The Colosseum at Caesars Palace, so the company tore down the Monte Carlo's old showroom to build this flexible venue (which opened as the Park Theater). It can hold up to 6,000 people for concerts, but it also hosts boxing and mixed martial arts. Bruno Mars, Usher, Maroon 5, and the Jonas Brothers were 2023 highlights. Unlike most of these venues, the lobby with its elegant furnishings and picture windows is a place you don't mind hanging out before the show.

No one should question either Donny Osmond's work ethic or his showmanship. What began as a "late career" reunion with sister Marie turned into an 11-year run at the Flamingo. Now, he's going solo next door at Harrah's Las Vegas, with momentum from The Masked Singer (he was the Peacock, you know) and a pop album of new music, Start Again. He's a "down front" entertainer drawing from his six decades in show business, displaying a congenial self-awareness in a showcase that covers everything from his child star days in the 1960s to his credible attempts to keep up with current musical trends. This old-school Vegas showcase also includes dancers and production visuals, but it's really all about the stage presence of a perennial who grew up in front of America and wears his variety training with pride.

Wynn's 1,480-seat "regular" theater—next door to the circular one that hosts Awakening—has quite a history, having hosted everything from Broadway musicals to Garth Brooks's first solo-acoustic residency. Of late it's been the home base for comedians, such as Nate Bargatze, and musicians, including Bryan Adams, Jack Johnson, and Brad Paisley's Acoustic Storyteller show. Most of the seats are on the floor, but there's a 12-row mezzanine.

Magic maestro David Copperfield has come to dominate the schedule about 40 weeks a year at the MGM Grand. The old-Vegas booths are cool, but at least half the crowd of 700 or so is packed into tight table seating. It's not very comfortable, but the sight lines are decent and the sound quality is good in a room that is, oddly, about the only part of the MGM that hasn't been remodeled since the early 1990s.

The Las Vegas branch of this chain books one-night concerts that tend to skew toward younger, heavier hard-rock bands and all-ages shows. That said, Carlos Santana has become somewhat branded with the room after more than 300 shows there. As with other branches, rustic folk art covers the walls and the Gospel Brunch is a Sunday staple. This one differs from other locations, however, in having a balcony level with reserved theater seating along with the general-admission floor that accommodates about 1,200.

T-Mobile Arena is now the top dog for concert acts, but home games for the Vegas Golden Knights still require a lot of big concerts to move over to the MGM Grand Garden. It seats as many as 17,000 depending upon the configuration. But the lack of a second deck of seating means more quality seating without being tucked under overhangs when the likes of Jimmy Buffett play there.  Now that MGM properties charge for parking, remember the Grand Garden is easily accessed by the MGM monorail stop for those on the east side of the Strip.

This 12,000-seat arena (formerly the Mandalay Bay Events Center) has yielded the big concerts to T-Mobile Arena and become more of a sports venue after a $10 million upgrade, including new seats. It's the home court for the WNBA team Las Vegas Aces, who won the championship in 2022. The Aces now share dates with the National Lacrosse League's Desert Dogs, of which Wayne Gretzky is a part owner. Mandalay Bay also has a great outdoor venue, Mandalay Beach, set up for general-admission concerts in the hotel's lushly landscaped pool and beach area. Both a monorail and retail mall connect Mandalay Bay to Luxor and Excalibur, so if you have to drive to a show, parking at either hotel makes for an easier post-concert escape than the Mandalay garage.

This 5,000-seat theater feels grand and spacious, claiming to have the largest and tallest performance stage on the Strip. It has both a mezzanine and an upper balcony, but uses 265 speakers to reach them. The theater and its rotating list of headliners (including Luke Bryan, Katy Perry, and Carrie Underwood) are the true stars at Resorts World, which has no other show venues (aside from bands playing inside its Dawg House Saloon). Pit bosses might debate the merits of a unique feature of the layout: uniquely in Las Vegas, you can go straight to the theater—"turning left" past the front door—without passing through the casino.

This stylish, 400-seat showroom is a throwback to old Vegas with its coziness and tables-and-booth seating. Visitors are likely to be surrounded by locals for name comedians, tribute acts, or veteran musical acts. The 2023 schedule included multiple dates from three former headliners on the Strip: The Righteous Brothers, comedian Rita Rudner, and the Australian vocal group Human Nature.

This local casino, about 15 miles off the beaten path west of the tourist corridor in the Summerlin suburb, has a handsome 450-seat showroom that brings a classic Old-Vegas feel to the suburbs.

The 20,000-seat, $375 million arena opened in 2016 and instantly became the home of top-tier concerts and sporting events such as UFC fights and the Pac 12 Men's Basketball Tournament. It's the first Las Vegas arena built with 50 luxury boxes. Concerts have to be booked around home games by the arena's resident team, the Vegas Golden Knights, the National Hockey League expansion team that went all the way to the Stanley Cup finals in its debut season of 2017–18.

The Cosmopolitan's 40,000-square-foot venue is elegantly trimmed but a versatile bare box in its layout. The floor can offer seating or general-admission standing room, wrapped by a gallery of limited fixed seating, five rows deep, and an in-between area that can be either bleacher seating or more standing room. It usually hosts smaller-capacity concerts for 2,000 or more, with rockers Jane's Addiction and comedian Gabriel Iglesias among the recent attractions.

The $95-million theater invented the current model for concert residencies when it was built for Celine Dion in 2003. More recently the 4,300-seater was remodeled to be more versatile and allow general-admission space up front for younger-skewing acts. A new video system and VIP booth areas were added in time for the much-touted Adele residency. Garth Brooks staked out the Colosseum for 2023, with veterans Jerry Seinfeld, Rod Stewart, and Sting also in the mix. The two balconies can seem distant from the ridiculously wide 120-foot stage, but a huge video screen improves the views, and the sound system is impeccable.

This comfortable, 1,250-seat theater will apparently survive a gradual remodeling of the entire property into a Hard Rock Hotel. Longtime resident ventriloquist Terry Fator and some of the fixture comedians, such as Gabriel Iglesias, have moved to other properties, but the room still saw plenty of use in 2023 from magician Shin Lim and longtime comedians such as Ray Romano and Daniel Tosh. The collectively branded Aces of Comedy will reportedly remain with a new lineup under the name Center Stage Comedy.

The Orleans Arena plays to locals with such family favorites as ice shows and touring children's productions.When it comes to concert acts, the 9,500-seat arena settles for the Strip arenas' hand-me-downs, but has much cheaper beer.

A superwide stage (originally designed to lure TV production) highlights this 800-seat room slightly west of the Strip, which draws a mix of locals and visitors. It hosts the type of headliners who play tribal casinos around the country: Air Supply, Three Dog Night, and Jeffrey Osborne among them.

The Golden Nugget's upstairs cabaret room is a comfortable movie theater–style layout with 600 roomy seats. Of late it's home (for two nights each week) to impressionist Gordie Brown, who is used to sharing the venue with one-night concert acts, which typically play tribal casinos around the country: anyone from Foghat to Tommy James and the Shondells.

The 4,600-seat venue had a prestigious track record as The Joint before the old Hard Rock Hotel became the new Virgin Hotels Las Vegas. The hotel's closure for a makeover allowed the concert hall to be refurbished with $7 million in upgrades, including redesigned bar and VIP areas. Unchanged is a stage large enough to handle concert tours designed for sports arenas. The property also has a smaller, club-size venue now known as 24 Oxford and occasionally hosts ticketed concerts in its outdoor events lawn and pool area.

Built for a six-year run of Phantom of the Opera and appropriately designed like a European opera house, this 1,800-seat theater has since hosted a variety of short-term and weekend performers. It may still seem a little ornate for ZZ Top, but they and other classic rockers such as Chicago and Styx have become the theater's mainstays. Even the top balcony seats and views are fine, though a bit of a stair climb unless you use the elevator.

This sports arena on the corner of the UNLV campus hosts such sporting events as the National Finals Rodeo and, of course, Runnin' Rebels basketball. Concerts became more rare after large venues opened on the Strip, but a few still land here. The adjacent Cox Pavillion is a smaller venue for women's basketball and the occasional touring children's show.

Once famous as the home base for Elvis Presley, this 1,600-capacity theater (at what was originally the Las Vegas Hilton) regained some of its former profile by luring Barry Manilow out of retirement. Manilow had the majority of the theater's bookings in 2023, with the remaining dates filled in by durable acts such as Kool & The Gang.