68 Best Performing Arts Venues in Las Vegas, Nevada

Inventive artistic director Troy Heard maximizes a bare-bones storefront space in the heart of a revitalized Main Street to present challenging, consistently interesting titles, often reflecting his interest in immersive theater. Majestic's past triumphs include the world premieres of The Sandman and Clown Bar 2, and the Las Vegas debuts of Carrie: The Musical and Spring Awakening.

A winning smile (and winning America's Got Talent) turned out to be a formidable combination for a young magician who settled on the Strip after the TV talent show fast-tracked his fame in 2014. Franco's charm and likable attitude compensates for a streamlined production, on a mostly bare stage augmented by video screens. But he makes the classics seem new to a younger audience, and the show builds to a big finale in two bits of trickery that both involve the wider audience.

The campy musical full of song parodies about "the change" has been a female-bonding experience on the Strip since 2006. The audience commiserates, sings along, and sometimes even ends up onstage with the four women in the cast as they bond while cavorting through a day at Bloomingdales.

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.

After traveling the world as The Immortal, Cirque du Soleil's salute to Michael Jackson took on its second iteration in a remodeled Mandalay Bay theater. A partnership with Jackson's estate, it helps everyone remember why he became a worldwide phenomenon. Amid the bombardment of video imagery, Jackson pops up now and then as the spirit guide to a quartet of misfit fans, who gain powers to defeat robotic paparazzi (don't ask) by harnessing the King of Pop's "agility, courage, playfulness, and love." Instead of a live band, the acrobatics and dance numbers unfold to remixes of Jackson's actual recordings in earth-shaking sound delivered by more than 7,000 speakers.

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.

A knack for self-promotion—and an unimaginable outlay for hair products—made this comedy-magician instantly identifiable by his black-framed glasses and an exploding shock of vertical blonde hair. Murray (Sawchuck) has become a Las Vegas mainstay with a relaxed, slow-burn stage presence and a solid showcase of classic magic heavy on audience banter.

The Strip's first permanent Cirque du Soleil show celebrated its 25th anniversary in late 2018 by completing a gradual overhaul that includes several new acts. It's still the town's most consistent family show, and the Las Vegas Cirque show that most purely preserves the Montreal company's innovative reinvention of the circus. Mystère has held up to the increased spectacle of its sister shows by keeping the spectators close to the action and the human acrobatics in the spotlight. You're intimately involved with this surreal wonderland and the comic characters, who interact with the audience. If you're not careful, you could even end up onstage.

The likable magician had the good fortune to be on the very first, highly watched season of America's Got Talent in 2006, parlaying that national exposure into a durable career on the Strip. Burton puts a fun spin on familiar illusions and is family-friendly for those with older children. Mom and Dad will smile because the tickets are routinely discounted.

The city's longest-running fine-arts organization (this being Las Vegas, it only dates from 1973) stages four or five productions each year, anchored by an annual December presentation of The Nutcracker (and making an October tradition of its Dracula every other year). Performing at The Smith Center for the Performing Arts Downtown, the dance company also runs classes from its studio in Summerlin.

Absinthe producer Spiegelworld carried the momentum and winning formula of raunchy humor and scantily clad acrobatics over to OPM (changed from Opium to reflect a 2022 revamp) at The Cosmopolitan. If Absinthe is "shabby chic" with folding chairs and the like, this one goes the other direction and is elevated by a very cool venue reminiscent of the supper clubs you see in old movies. The show venue is adjacent to Spiegelworld's restaurant Superfrico, and some of the show elements cross-pollinate. (A common knock on the show is that it doesn't stand alone quite as successfully as Absinthe.) The visuals tap into the swanky retro sci-fi of Barbarella and Forbidden Planet, but OPM leans more into a gay camp aesthetic in its costuming, humor, and overall tone.

The Palms' 2,500-capacity music hall has great sight lines in a clamshell layout and a stage big enough for big tours to squeeze in their arena staging. It has a flat floor for either general admission or reserved seating, and two decks of fixed seating. After some dormant years, the theater was running strong again with 2023 bookings ranging the musical gamut from Michael Bolton to Iggy Pop.

Billing himself as "The Loser of America's Got Talent" fits the droll humor of the British comedy-magician, whose goal of competing on the TV show was to get a berth in Las Vegas. It worked. The magician who stands out for his satin dragon suit, bad attitude, and stoic chihuahua sidekick, Mr. Piffles, keeps the jokes coming as fast as the card tricks, and pulls plenty of recruits from the audience. It's a testament to Piff's popularity that he's moved from the Flamingo's smaller cabaret to its main showroom.

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.

Drag shows came close to extinction on the Strip until RuPaul transferred the popularity of his cable TV enterprise into a live spin-off. The format allows performers to rotate in and out of the revue, so the lineup isn't consistent, though don't look for the actual RuPaul beyond surprise appearances or special occasions.

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.

Tape Face joins the long line of America's Got Talent variety performers to move in on the Strip—near fellow contestants Shin Lim, Mat Franco, and Piff the Magic Dragon—after mainstream exposure from the TV competition. Tape Face hearkens back to a simpler era of show business, with his silent mime and prop comedy based on the signature gimmick of gaffer's tape plastered over his mouth. He uses his eyes, gestures, and quite a few recruits from the audience to propel the charmingly low-fi shenanigans. (Sam Wills, the creator of Tape Face, generated some controversy when he decided to treat his character more like a Blue Man and less like a Piff. In other words, when Wills is out on tour, another performer he trained to do the act steps in at Harrah's.)

Las Vegas has long been a haven for impressionists, only this one lets his puppets do the talking. Fator's second-season win of America's Got Talent in 2007 led to a long tenure on the Strip, where the variety tradition was a perfect match for him giving ventriloquism a new twist with singing impressions. After 10 years at The Mirage, Fator downsized into a smaller venue at New York–New York formerly used for corporate events. The show is now subtitled Who's the Dummy Now?, adding an autobiographical slant to the career enhanced by puppet sidekicks such as Walter T. Airedale and Winston the Impersonating Turtle. Fator's Christmas show, during the holiday stretch when many titles go on vacation, is even more charming.

Las Vegas welcomed its first independent film house and performance venue when this state-of-the-art facility opened in the spring of 2023. Today "The Bev" hosts everything from art-house movies to live performances and literary events in association with The Writer's Block next door. There's also an open-air (but covered, thankfully) balcony, where guests can sip wine and listen to live music. The theater is the brainchild of The Rogers Foundation, which supports several different arts initiatives Downtown. Take note: the facility is not set up to accept cash.

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.