Where To Ring in NYE in Las Vegas and Catch Gwen Stefani, Bruno Mars, Kevin Hart, Pitbull and More Performers

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If eight fireworks displays going off in tandem for eight minutes at midnight on 1-1-23 isn’t enough to usher in the new year with a bang, then Vegas’ seemingly endless list of high-price-tag concerts, dinners, nightclubs and over-the-top experiences should do the trick. Here are the top places to go when heading to the Strip for New Year’s Eve.

Bruno Mars at the Bellagio and Dolby Live

2022 was a very good year in Las Vegas for Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak, also known as the soulful group Silk Sonic. The duo’s An Evening with Silk Sonic residency at Dolby Theater in Park MGM launched in February and was promptly renewed for two more runs, grossing $50.4 million over 51 shows, according to Billboard’s Boxscores.

A show-stopping performance at April’s Grammy Awards ceremony, which took place for the first time in Las Vegas, followed by an intimate private party at Wynn’s Delilah (where they did an unforgettable set decked out in Gucci) rounded out the pair’s highlight reel. Now, Mars will close this banner year with a blow-out New Year’s Eve SelvaRey Rum Fiesta at Mayfair Supper Club at the Bellagio. Mars launched his premium single-estate SelvaRey rum brand almost a decade ago.

With a $5,000 per person price tag, Mars’ appearance is one of the Strip’s biggest ticket NYE experiences with a four-course dinner, live salsa music from La Verdad, an all-vinyl set by DJ Pee .Wee (aka Anderson. Paak), specialty rum cocktails and more. Prior to the countdown, Mars, a 14-time Grammy-Award winner and 30-time Grammy Award nominee, plays Park MGM’s Dolby Live theater Dec. 30 and 31, with tickets available through verified resale from $500 to $10,000.

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Adele at the Colosseum

Also in residency on Dec. 30 and 31, Weekends With Adele at The Colosseum at Caesars Palace undoubtedly will bring the house down with another packed show of headline-making sound bites. Adele chats for a solid 30 minutes with fans in the audience, telling stories from her career and sharing personal reflections. It’s also anyone’s guess which couture gown she will wear. Tickets are only available through resale and range from $400 to $2,500 for performances running through March.

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The Killers and Superfrico at the Cosmopolitan

A leader in New Year’s Eve celebrations since its debut in 2010, The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas hosts hometown band The Killers inside The Chelsea theater. This end-of-year concert is the follow-up to their three-night sold-out run in April, which was also a test run for their summer world tour. In close proximity to where The Killers will be rocking out, Spiegelworld’s galactic disco, pizza party dinner theater Superfrico features a four-course extravaganza with two seatings and admission to its spectacle Opium for $325 per ticket.

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Gwen Stefani, Freestyle Love Supreme and NYE Dining at the Venetian

Gwen Stefani’s Just a Girl residency left Planet Hollywood’s Zappos Theater in 2021, but she returns to the Strip for NYE weekend with back-to-back turns at the Venetian Theatre. Wakuda, the new Japanese restaurant at The Venetian Resort from chef Tetsuya Wakuda, who has Michelin-starred restaurants in both Singapore and Sydney, is offering a 10-course experience for New Year’s Eve. Think bites of Japanese A5 Wagyu with fresh Alba truffle and add in dancers, taiko drummers, a DJ and contortionists. Twenty-three floors above the Strip, the Prestige Club Lounge is a prime place to watch fireworks, previously reserved only for invited guests.

For the first time ever, those outside of high-roller status can welcome the New Year up there with packages ranging from unlimited beverages to bottle options with preferred VIP seating, window tables and private rooms.

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2023 also brings a new era for Venetian as the adjacent Madison Square Garden Sphere entertainment venue (linked to the casino resort by a pedestrian bridge) is expected to debut late in the year — among other reveals. In 2022, Apollo Global Management closed on its $2.25 billion acquisition of Venetian from Las Vegas Sands corporation as former Cosmopolitan exec Patrick Nichols took the helm and announced a $1 billion renovation to include new rooms, restaurants and more entertainment — all of which will be completed soon. As part of that, the Strip will get its first Israeli dining concept, HaSalon (replacing David Chang’s Majordomo) from chef Eyal Shan — his street food outlet MizNon is already open.

Michael Gruber, a former talent agent at WME, who was most recently executive consultant of new business and content for Caesars Entertainment, is now Venetian’s chief content officer. Gruber, through his tight connections with ITV America, was instrumental in bringing major filming opportunities to Caesars such as Hell’s Kitchen, Vegas Chef Prize Fight and Love Island. New partnerships have already begun to pop up at The Venetian including Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Freestyle Love Supreme, which has performances running New Year’s Eve weekend, Dec. 29 and 30 and Jan. 1.

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BIA, Gucci Mane and E-40 and P-Lo at Drai’s

Legendary nightclub Drai’s celebrated its 25th anniversary in October and now the trendsetter is looking ahead to its next quarter century. Helmed by Victor Drai and his son Dustin, Drai’s After Hours in the basement of The Cromwell and Drai’s Beachclub & Nightclub on its rooftop bears the distinction of being the first nightlife venue of its kind in a casino, sparking what would become a billion-dollar industry. Drai’s LIVE, a weekly concert series with full-length performances, hosts BIA (Dec. 29), Gucci Mane (Dec. 30), Chris Brown (Dec. 31), and E-40 and P-Lo (Jan. 1). On Dec. 31, upper dance floor tables go for $35,000.

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Martha Stewart’s The Bedford at Paris Las Vegas

If you have been holding your breath for an invitation to Martha Stewart’s Bedford, New York, home, it might be time to exhale, as the next best thing recently arrived. That is if you don’t mind paying for the pleasure of $90 Whole Roast Herb Chicken, carved tableside and $15 for her famous slammed, sliced and served baked potatoes with a dollop of Golden Osteria caviar. The Bedford, which recently opened at Paris Las Vegas, is Stewart’s first restaurant in her more than 40-year career. Stewart’s attention to detail and love of entertaining and gourmet cooking make for a surprisingly welcome bedfellow to the excesses of Las Vegas. In fact, Stewart and Las Vegas go together just about as well as the Casa Dragones tequila and pomegranate in her Martha-ritas.

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In partnership with Marquee Brands, who owns the Martha Stewart brand, The Bedford is like a showroom designed to look exactly like her 1925 country farmhouse, faux-bois dining room included. Hanging copper pans in a variety of sizes from the Martha by Martha Stewart collection adorn the kitchen area. Famous friends such as Ellen Pompeo, photographer Douglas Friedman and Snoop Dogg, her “partner in wine” — 19 Crimes Wine, that is — have all stopped by. Stewart tells The Hollywood Reporter that “It’s even better than my home. I might move in here. I’ve been coming to Las Vegas for years and an offer was made by Caesars to open a Martha restaurant.” Stewart also clearly knew what she didn’t want. “I didn’t want to do an ordinary bistro,” she says. “I don’t serve bistro food. I wanted a place where I could serve food like I do to my guests in my own home. We eat lobster thermidor and fantastic twice-baked potatoes with mounds of caviar on top. Fancy and delicious — and my guests always enjoy themselves. Enjoyable, tasty eating is very important. And if you’re gonna go out and spend money, you might as well get the very best you can.”

Bedford’s New Year’s Eve dinner highlights some of Stewart’s celebratory dishes like the Bread Basket, Big Martha’s Pierogi, Roasted Chicken, Salmon En Croute and the Upside Down Lemon Meringue, priced at $195.95.

Tenacious D at Virgin Las Vegas

Tenacious D performs Dec. 30 and 31 at The Theater at Virgin Las Vegas. With a decades-long omni-media presence touching films, music and gaming, the duo, also known as Jack Black and Kyle Gass, have garnered hundreds of millions of views on YouTube with both their original songs and their riffs on the classics. Their recent covers of The Beatles’ Abbey Road Medley and Chris Isaak’s Wicked Game made headlines. For a spot in the newly renovated theater’s VIP Social Lounge expect to pay around $250.

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Kevin Hart, Pitbull, Tiësto and NYE Dining at Resorts World

At Resorts World, Kevin Hart returns for Reality Check: New Year’s Eve Experience on Dec. 31 and Jan. 1. Since he first appeared in the AEG’s Resorts World Theatre in November to tape a new stand-up special, the rumor mill has been churning that he will soon announce a residency. Pitbull is the featured performer at the Resorts World Events Center, and Tiësto takes the stage at Zouk Nightclub long after midnight. Prior to the evening’s entertainment festivities, VIPs can indulge in a final celebratory meal at one of Resorts World’s decadent restaurants. Shaun Hergatt’s Caviar Bar gears up a four-course prix fixe menu or five-course prix fixe menu with two seatings ($180-$280), while Carversteak will showcase dual dining time options and menus, ranging from $195 to $295.

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The Chainsmokers, Awakening and NYE Dining at Wynn and Encore

Across the street, Wynn Las Vegas hosts VIPs at its yearly, invite-only guests-of-the-casino party. For those not attending, the resort also features gala dinners at its restaurants like the award-winning Mizumi, helmed by chef Min Kim. Those who dine on his artful modern Japanese cuisine will feast on an eight-course prix-fixe menu ($445) — including wild Japanese snapper sashimi usuzukuri with Ossetra caviar and A5 Wagyu gyoza dumplings filled with Kobe beef and Hokkaido snow beef. Awakening, Wynn’s new stage show narrated by Anthony Hopkins and directed and co-produced by Silent House’s Baz Halpin, starts at 7 p.m. ($150-$600). At Encore’s XS Nightclub, The Chainsmokers perform to tables of die-hard partiers paying from $2,000 to $30,000.

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Off-the-Strip Festivities

Immersive art amusement park Area 15, located west of the Strip, stages performances throughout its indoor and outdoor spaces. Three packages range from $195 to $495, each accessing different attractions and perks including Meow Wolf’s Omega Mart.

In downtown, Plaza Hotel & Casino introduces 150 drones from Fantasy Drone Shows to its annual pyrotechnics display, staged by Pyrotek Special Effects. Next door, Legacy Club on the 60th floor of Circa Resort & Casino offers a panoramic view of the bursting sky with its “Light Up the Night” celebration, featuring cocktails, live music and fire-pit seating on the outdoor terrace.

When the party’s over and the confetti has been swept away, don’t miss the Bortolami Gallery’s exhibit Artist / City on display through March 4. Occupying a vacant Greyhound bus station, adjacent to Plaza Hotel & Casino, it features the works of New York-based Japanese painters Koichi Sato and Sesame Kamijo and Los Angeles-based artist Jonas Wood. Artist / City pairs artists with an unconventional space in an American city for a longer duration than a standard gallery show, in hopes of granting artists the freedom to push the boundaries of their creative practices. Considering Las Vegas’ distinctly American cityscape, the three artists have created new works based on their individual experiences of Americana; the results are depictions of cowboys, gamblers, shoppers and musicians, poodle portraits and garden-scapes and related interiors. 

On New Year’s Day at Allegiant Stadium, the Las Vegas Raiders and the San Francisco 49ers face off in the legendary, once-every-four-years Battle of the Bay, which will happen for the first time ever in the desert, since the Raiders’ relocation.

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2023: A Look Ahead

The next calendar year in Las Vegas will continue to propel the city’s entertainment offerings forward like a comet with the addition of November 2023’s F1 Las Vegas Grand Prix and the imminent opening of Madison Square Garden’s Sphere, featuring a rumored residency from U2.

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January’s Consumer Electronics Show is expected to bring record attendance for its first full event since 2020.

Vic’s Jazz Club in Symphony Park — named for its replica of the iconic Vegas Vic sign — opens in February next to the Smith Center for the Performing Arts.

The Punk Rock Museum with tours curated by the greats of the genre debuts in March.

Later in the year, Maroon 5 and Garth Brooks take up residency at Zappos Theater and The Colosseum at Caesars Palace, respectively.

And to cap it off, Fontainebleau Las Vegas, which has been under construction on and off since 2007, is set to finally make an entrance, thanks to Jeff Soffer’s Fontainebleau Development, with Koch Real Estate Investments as a partner.  A recently announced $2.2 billion construction loan with J.P. Morgan as an administrative partner will complete the 67-story hotel, gaming, meeting and entertainment destination.