215 Best Performing Arts Venues in Canada

Every summer, from the middle of June to mid-August, a celebration of music and art brings classical music, jazz, and chamber orchestra concerts to Parc du Mont-Orford. It's organized by the Orford Arts Centre, which has been teaching students the art of classical music and performance since 1951.

A vibrant LGBTQ+ celebration that brings together diverse communities through parades, concerts, and cultural events that take place during the first week of August. In what is now known as Montréal's Gay Village, it is a dynamic platform for expression and solidarity that promotes inclusivity, raises awareness, and honors LGBTQ+ history.

Innovative theater and modern dance are showcased at this intimate Downtown space, set in a 1907 firehouse on the border of trendy Gastown and the Downtown East Side.

Taking place over the first three weeks of June, Fringe Montréal embraces playwrights, acting troupes, dancers, comics, and musicians. Revered for its avant-garde and thought-provoking essence, the festival offers an uncurated stage to 700 artists with absolute autonomy over their performances.

In the Montréal Botanical Garden, numerous vibrant silk lanterns in the Chinese garden offer enchanting evenings. Every autumn, from September 1 to October 31, these immersive sensory encounters blend art, science, technology, and emotion seamlessly, providing a captivating experience.

Promoting itself as a theater for all audiences, this accomplished English-language company has been delighting kids and adults since 1982. Most productions are performed at the Centaur Theatre.

This upscale cinema and performance space is located inside Gander International Airport alongside Union East & Drinks eatery (even though the airport might make for a surprising venue for dinner and a movie---both venues are open to the public). Showing new films, cult classics, and live performances, the 75-seat theater has all-VIP seating and two wheelchair-accessible spaces. With their popcorn, guests can enjoy beer, wine, and cocktails from Union East concessions.

Performances are staged here most nights, depending on the season, and the lighthearted fun begins when you arrive in the lounge.

Québec City's main theater has two stages for symphonic concerts, opera, plays, and touring companies of all sorts. The Grand Théâtre also presents a dance series with Canadian and international companies. Inside, a three-wall mural by the Québec sculptor Jordi Bonet depicts death, life, and liberty. Bonet wrote "La Liberté" on one wall to bring attention to the Quebecois struggle for freedom and cultural distinction.

This sweeping Queen Anne revival–style building, built in 1889, is one of the city's grandest concert venues, with four event spaces packed over three stories. The Main Hall is a cavernous auditorium with a second-floor gallery overlooking the main floor below, though events are also often held in the basement-level Longboat Hall, which was once a gymnasium in the building's former life as a YMCA. The space hosts everything from touring bands to theater events to craft shows.

One of Charlottetown's major cultural centers, the Guild hosts plays, musicals, comedy and other performances, and a variety of exhibits throughout the year.

Sharing space with the Eptek Art and Culture Centre (but accessed through a different entrance), this 527-seat theater stages dramatic and musical productions year-round. Touring musicians and comedians routinely drop by, too.

The main theater space of the University of Toronto since 1919, Hart House mounts emerging-artist and student productions throughout the school year, with musicals, dance, Shakespeare, contemporary plays, and classics all represented.

Created in concert with homegrown megastar Drake, this spacious 2,550-seat venue is a bona fide performing arts destination in the otherwise sleepy Beach, drawing boldface names across a variety of genres—Stereolab, the Psychedelic Furs, Lil Nas X, Muse, and Demi Lovato, to name just a few.

North America's largest documentary film festival. April--May.

If you like your films factual, informative, and inspiring, then the Hot Docs Cinema is for you. The permanent home of the Hot Docs festival each spring, this historic cinema (which opened in 1913) also has an ongoing calendar of documentaries, plus special engagements and crowd-pleasing classics.

Arguably the best chamber orchestra in Canada, I Musici performs at several venues around town, including the Salle Bourgie at the Musée des Beaux-Arts and the Place des Arts' Nouvelle Salle.

Igloofest, Montréal's winter electronic music festival, turns the Old Port into an icy dance paradise. With world-class DJs, dazzling lights, and ridiculously layered outfits to keep warm, it's a celebration that captures the city's love of music and winter, creating an unforgettable fusion of sound and snow. From mid-January to mid-February each year.

This major event features films made by and about people in the LGBTQ+ community. May--June.

Artists from Indigenous communities from all over the Americas come to this festival, which presents a dynamic multidisciplinary program of concerts, international film competitions, traditional dances, exhibitions, and seminars over 10 days in Montréal's premiere cultural venues. Come watch Place des Festivals being transformed into a vibrant space that reflects the worldview of the First Peoples, with teepees, a longhouse, and contemporary Indigenous arts.

This local theater company tells stories with heart and humor. The main show, a two-man comedy show called From Jasper with Love, is a fun and entertaining way to experience another side of Jasper. They also host improv nights, a Christmas show, workshops, and events.

More than just a port for the many cruise ships that dock here each year, the pavilion is a popular entertainment venue, too. Its main stage and lighthouse stage host many musical acts, especially during events like Sydney's nine-day Sydney Harbour Front Festival in August and the 10-day Celtic Colours International Festival in October. Even if you're not arriving by ship, the pavilion is easy enough to find: just look for the 60-foot fiddle that towers outside it.

Montréal's world-famous comedy festival hosts international comics, in French and English, from the second through third weeks of July. There are tons of shows to watch, in venues from big concert halls to quaint bars. Walk around the Quartier des Spectacles during the festival and giggle your way from one outdoor act to another. The twins parade is not to be missed.

Drama, concerts, comedy, and independent films are among the offerings at this intimate but up-to-date venue that opened in 1921 as a movie house.

Canada's longest-running theater offers a mix of theatrical performances, live music from well-known Canadian musicians, and doubles as a movie theater. 

Margie Gillis, one of Canada's most exciting and innovative soloists, works with her own company and guest artists to stage performances at Place des Arts, Agora de la Danse, and other area venues.

Le Diamant is a multidisciplinary space that welcomes the world's most prestigious contemporary creations to its strikingly modern stage in the heart of Old Québec. It is also the home of EX MACHINA, the production company of Robert Lepage, director and author known worldwide for his large-scale projects (including the Image Mill, the largest architectural projection ever created). At Le Diamant, dance, theater, and opera productions are enhanced by new technologies, continuously pushing the limits of the imagination.

Le Vieux Clocher de l'Université de Sherbrooke presents music, from classical to jazz, and a variety of theater and comedy shows.