68 Best Performing Arts Venues in Nevada, USA

Las Vegas's oldest community theater runs a main-stage season of six or more titles, as well as a \"new works\" competition and a summer \"fringe festival.\" Productions are staged in a sparse but comfortable theater in a strip mall that's become much more interesting and popular thanks to the growth of Las Vegas's Chinatown.

Formed in 1998, the Philharmonic performs a nine-show season (September through May), lately with a rotation of guest conductors as it searched for a full-time leader. The nine full concerts each year typically pair familiar classics with less-heard works. Two programs of the 2025–26 season were expressly labeled as \"pops\" concerts. The orchestra performs at The Smith Center for the Performing Arts downtown. 

Mad Apple is Cirque du Soleil on a budget, clearly Cirque's answer to its competitor Absinthe. After the pandemic as well as belt-tightening and ownership changes within the company, Cirque downsized its more grandiose ambitions to create a modest cabaret-style show. The big departures from past Cirque shows are music and ribald comedy getting nearly as much stage time as the acrobatics. And, to further Absinthe comparisons, there's a pre-show bar right onstage in the cozy U-shaped theater that previously housed Cirque's more ambitious Zumanity. In keeping with the title and host property's theme, New York–themed songs and imagery—a yellow cab, a disco ball shaped like an apple—loosely connect the now familiar action, such as hand-balancing and a sexy aerial adagio. You probably wouldn't want to choose this one over the more mind-blowing Cirque shows if you haven't seen them, but it's consistent fun if you have.

Channing Tatum didn't just cash a check to lend the name of his Magic Mike film franchise to a Las Vegas effort. He was an active member of the creative team, working with the movie's two female choreographers for this male revue that debuted in 2017 (originally at the Hard Rock Hotel). The action has moved over to this custom venue, which was converted from convention space at the Sahara, again allowing for aerialists and in-the-round action. Magic Mike Live still pairs the G-string antics with a nice-guy vibe and with more wit and modesty—some gals will say too much—than the genre usually allows. 

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. Of late, the Majestic has kept bringing back its most popular title—a musical parody of the Scream movies called Scream'd—and subsequently adopted a more flexible schedule for titles such as Cabaret instead of announcing a full season of fixed dates.

A winning smile (and winning America's Got Talent) turned out to be a formidable combination for a 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 gives the classics a youthful attitude, 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 and some sporting events 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 Tyler the Creator or Alejandro Fernandez 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.

His signature glove and boots magically come to life. And so does Michael Jackson—at least in the video bombardment that comes at you from the stage, side walls, and even the ceiling of Cirque du Soleil's salute to the late superstar. Since 2013, this partnership with Jackson's estate has been blending the music-video imagery every child of the 1980s knows with Cirque's own creativity, this time leaning as much into dance as acrobatics. ONE has outlasted Cirque's Beatles tribute Love (which closed with the Mirage) and was \"reimagined\" (as Cirque puts it) in 2024 with new content, costumes, and impressive technical upgrades, including drones in the opening number. As in the Beatles show, Jackson's songs are given startling clarity by some 7,000 speakers and are sliced, diced, and cross-pollinated. Given the controversies over Jackson's personal life, the show is smart to steer away from biography and instead externalize the music and its messages, including hard-hitting imagery of racism and famine during They Don't Care About Us. The original through-line of four fans out to save Jackson's reputation from robotic tabloid paparazzi (Remember them? How quaint) is still floating around in there—the glove, boots, etc. spring to life for them—but is now buried deep within the sensory overload. While it helps to go in as a fan, even the less devout can emerge with a fresh appreciation of Jackson songs, both the familiar and forgotten.

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. Other pro sports such as tennis and concerts by the likes of J Balvin fill in during the Aces' off-season stretches. 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.

\"It's great to see all the big stars of today,\" you say, \"but where in Vegas can I still find an Elvis?\" Right here—along with tributes to the likes of Tina Turner, Frank Sinatra, and Selena—in these twin cabaret-sized venues, the 160-seat Athena and 120-seat Pegasus, both at the Alexis Park. The hotel is a 1980s-era non-gaming hotel on a sprawling campus, now geared to the budget traveler and slowly getting a needed facelift. Those who miss the days when Vegas thought a little smaller will dig this throwback, where the seating is cozy with a swanky fern-bar vibe, and tickets are $60 or less for back-to-back productions that start as early as 6 pm.

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. When his longtime home at the Tropicana was demolished, Murray moved north for weekend shows inside the L.A. Comedy Club at the Strat.

The Strip's first permanent Cirque du Soleil show celebrated its 30th anniversary in late 2023, evidence enough that 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. It has changed every now and then over the years as the producers try to keep it fresh, but not in fundamental ways most people would notice. 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. 

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. Having relocated from Planet Hollywood, 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 one of the few show bargains left on the Strip.

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.

The Orleans Arena plays to locals with such family favorites as ice shows and touring children's productions, along with sports events such as the WCC Basketball Championship.When it comes to the occasional concert act, 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, Tracy Byrd and Jeffrey Osborne among them.

The Palms's 2,500-capacity music hall has an inventive layout to create great sightlines, and locals love the easy access and parking. It has a flat floor for either general admission or reserved seating, and two decks of fixed seating. Bookings skew more toward veteran musical acts and comedians, running the gamut from the Go-Go's to DL Hughley. It occasionally hosts boxing and mixed martial arts events as well.

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. To create more of a club vibe, a VIP area and two general-admission standing-room areas were added down front. The 2025 calender included durable ventriloquist Jeff Dunham and classic rockers the Scorpions. The balcony isn't used for a lot of the shows, bringing capacity down to a cozier 4,500. 

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 Janet Jackson and comedian Kevin Hart) 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 momentum of his TV competition—with 17 seasons and counting—into a live spin-off. The format allows performers to rotate in and out of the revue, so the line-up isn't consistent, though don't look for the actual RuPaul beyond surprise appearances or special occasions.

Call it destiny that this Canadian-American magician ended up in Las Vegas. His first big break was on Penn & Teller's TV show Fool Us, which frequently films at the Rio. A viral performance there led to winning America's Got Talent, which has created a home on the Strip for at least five other resident headliners. Not only that, he followed his 2018 victory on AGT by winning an all-star edition, The Champions, the very next year. Shin Lim has since become a steady presence on the Strip, moving across the street to the Palazzo Theatre after The Mirage closed. In some ways he is the most unlikely of the Las Vegas magic stars, since much of his act depends on \"close-up\" magic and card manipulation tracked by video cameras rather than comedy or big, showy illusions. But he got to where he is by being different and theatrical, not by following some other magician's lead.

The Golden Nugget's upstairs cabaret room is a comfortable movie theater–style layout with 600 roomy seats. In recent years, impressionist Gordie Brown has anchored the venue on Thursdays and Saturdays, leaving the rest of the week for one-night concert acts which typically play tribal casinos around the country: anyone from Grand Funk Railroad to Tommy James and the Shondells.

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, typical of those that play tribal casinos elsewhere in the country.

Acts like Dave Mason, Les Claypool, and Sheila E. play Harrah's big showroom, along with the psychedelic Pink Floyd Laser Spectacular show and comedians like Rob Schneider.

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 select Las Vegas Aces games. 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. Pre- and post-game fun can be found at the bars and eateries in front of the arena, between New York-New York and Park MGM.

Tape Face is one of several America's Got Talent variety performers to take up a residency 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 the MGM.)

This sports arena on the corner of the UNLV campus has lost most of its concert action to the Strip. The big tourist draw remains the National Finals Rodeo in December, and it still draws visitors for Runnin' Rebels basketball and related sports activities such as the Mountain West championships. A few stray entertainment attractions such as the Harlem Globetrotters and childrens shows land here as well. The adjacent Cox Pavillion is a smaller venue for women's basketball and the occasional touring children's show.

The Australian gents planted their G-strings on the Strip in 2001, as the first male dance revue to counterbalance all the topless burlesque and showgirl revues for men. With table-top dancing and a hands-on approach to their forays into the audience, the Thunder dudes relied on a low-tech, in-your-face appeal, even as Chippendales and Magic Mike Live brought more theatrical and slickly produced competition. But the Thunder struck back in early 2019, with an $8.5-million renovation of the troupe’s longtime space at the Excalibur, which now lets them cavort amid immersive technology such as LED screens and pod stages throughout the room.