59 Best Performing Arts Venues in Chicago, Illinois

Fine-tuned performances, such as the glittering production of The Nutcracker, make this Chicago's premier classical-dance company. The Joffrey performed at the Auditorium Theatre of Roosevelt University for nearly two decades but took up residence with the Lyric Opera in 2021.

The Neo-Futurists artist collective is most famous for their long-running, late-night hit The Infinite Wrench, where 30 original plays are performed in 60 minutes. Performances take place at their intimate, black-box space adjacent to Andersonville where audience members often participate in the show.

Chicago's oldest folk-music school has served as folk central in the city since it opened in 1957. The welcoming spot in Lincoln Square hosts outstanding performances by national and local acts in an intimate-feeling, 420-seat concert hall that has excellent acoustics. A major expansion in 2012 added a new, environment-friendly facility across the street, with a 150-seat performance hall and acoustically engineered classrooms.

Chicago's music scene got a major upgrade in 2022, when the owners of small-but-cool clubs like the Empty Bottle converted a disused Morton Salt facility into one of the country's most exciting places to see live music. There are two distinct spaces here: the acoustically excellent Shed, an indoor venue that's big enough to attract acts like the Flaming Lips and PJ Harvey but small enough to feel special, and the Fairgrounds, an outdoor stage with music festival vibes perched beside the Chicago River. In 2024, homegrown brewer Goose Island launched an on-site brewpub with a great riverside patio, adding a pre-show pint spot into the mix.

Steppenwolf's alumni roster speaks for itself: John Malkovich, Gary Sinise, Joan Allen, and Laurie Metcalf all honed their chops with this troupe. The company's trademark cutting-edge acting style and consistently successful productions have won national acclaim. An ultramodern 2021 expansion added a 400-seat theater in the round, an education center, and two bars to the company’s already-impressive assets.

Telling imaginative, almost magical stories is Redmoon Theater's specialty. The company's “spectacles” take a number of forms but can best be described as madcap theater with a twist—imagine a mix of live music, puppetry, pageantry, and visual art. Some are staged outdoors, others inside a converted Pilsen warehouse called Spectacle Hall.

Formed in 1872, the Apollo Chorus of Chicago is one of the country's oldest oratorio societies. Don't miss the annual Handel's Messiah if you're here in December. Otherwise, the group performs choral classics throughout the year at area churches.

The largest operating theater in Uptown, the Aragon has played host to hundreds of national touring acts over the decades, including legends like the Rolling Stones and U2. The Aragon can pack in fans by the thousands, while smaller acts play at the nearby Riviera Theater and Lakeview's Vic Theater.

The 1,200-seat Athenaeum Center, which sits adjacent to St. Alphonsus Church and dates back to 1911, stages classical music performances, live podcast tapings, panel discussions and artist conversations, dance festivals, comedians, and more. 

Designed by notable architects Louis Sullivan and Dankmar Adler, the 4,300-seat, Romanesque Revival–style Auditorium Theatre of Roosevelt University opened in 1899 as an opera house and later became a National Historic Landmark. Known for its perfect acoustics and excellent sight lines, the ornate theater features marble mosaics, dramatic gilded ceiling arches, and intricate murals. (Also of note: This was one of the first public buildings to have electric lighting and air-conditioning.)

Bella Voce—"beautiful voices," indeed. Formerly known as His Majestie's Clerkes, the 20-person a cappella group performs a variety of sacred and secular music, including everything from early music to works by living composers. Concerts are often held in churches, providing a powerful acoustical and visual accompaniment to the music.

Founder and executive producer Jackie Taylor opened the Black Ensemble Theater a half-century ago, and since then has written and directed musicals and plays like The Marvin Gaye Story and The Other Cinderella. The theater has a penchant for long-running musicals based on popular African American icons. In 2011, they opened their own theater facility on Clark Street, which hosts performances most weekends.

Originally built as a horse stable for Marshall Field, Briar Street Theatre is the spot to catch the long-running hit Blue Man Group, which has been performing there since 1997. 

Formerly known as Drury Lane, the 550-seat theater in Water Tower Place was taken over in 2010 by the Broadway in Chicago group, which modernized the space and reopened it as the Broadway Playhouse. Its inaugural season included a new production of hometown scribe Studs Terkel's Working.

Designed by famed theater architects the Rapp Brothers, the Cadillac Palace opened to much fanfare in 1926. The ornate, gilded interior was inspired by the palaces of Versailles and Fontainebleau; restored to its original opulence in 1999, the 2,500-seat space now hosts a wide range of traveling productions.

Thrill-seekers and families flock to the Chicago Air & Water Show, a lakefront spectacle featuring aerial acrobatics and daredevil water acts. See the U.S. Navy Blue Angels perform precision flying maneuvers at the two-day event in mid-August.

One of Chicago's most popular festivals, The Chicago Blues Festival in Millennium Park, is a very popular three-day, four-stage event in June. It attracts  blues greats not only from from Chicago but from around the country. It should not be missed.

A performance by the Chicago Children's Choir is the closest thing we can imagine to hearing angels sing. Its members—ages eight to 18—are culled from a broad spectrum of racial, ethnic, and economic groups. Most concerts are scheduled during the holiday season and in May.

This block-long landmark building houses several performance spaces. The most magnificent is the top-floor Preston Bradley Hall, with its Tiffany glass dome and ornately detailed white marble walls.

The Chicago Jazz Festival holds sway for four days during Labor Day weekend in Millenium and Grant Parks.

This company shrugs off esoteric notions of opera, preferring to make productions that are accessible to aficionados and novices alike. From innovative versions of traditional favorites to important lesser-known works, the emphasis is on both theatrical and musical aspects. Fear not—performances are sung in English or in Italian with English supertitles projected above the stage.

The Chicago Shakespeare Theater devotes its considerable talents to keeping the Bard's flame alive, and also showcases new international dramas and musicals. It has three theaters of varying sizes in its Navy Pier complex, so there's almost always something on.

The venerable Chicago Symphony Orchestra made generational waves when it chose a successor to longtime music director Riccardo Muti; the Finnish conductor and cellist Klaus Mäkelä, just 28 years old at the time of his appointment in April 2024, is the youngest leader in the CSO's 133-year history. The orchestra's impressive roster includes regular concerts as well as special themed series dedicated to classical, chamber, and children's concerts. The season runs from September through June. Tickets are sometimes scarce, but they do become available.

Since 1921, visitors to the Chicago Theatre, which began as a Balaban and Katz movie palace, have marveled at its stunning baroque interior. The 3,600-seat auditorium features crystal chandeliers, bronze light fixtures, and murals on the wall and ceiling. These days the marquee draws tend to be big-name music and comedy acts.

After debuting as the Majestic in 1906, this 1,800-seat theater became a major stop on the vaudeville circuit. Today, after a series of name changes (the current naming-rights holder is a Canadian bank), the plush, red-and-gold venue hosts Broadway in Chicago performances such as Jersey Boys, The Book of Mormon, and other traveling shows.

City Lit Theater Company produces notable staged readings and full productions of famous literary works—by the likes of T.S. Eliot, August Wilson, and Mark Twain—as well as original material with a literary bent.

Actors, artists, and musicians share the stage in Collaboraction's experimental free-for-alls. In recent seasons, the company has refocused its mission on social justice, with original performances taking on issues specific to Chicago communities.

A converted warehouse on Western Avenue is home to an eclectic mix of adventurous performances, ranging from genre-fluid jazz and contemporary classical music to small, scrappy dance troupes to cutting-edge solo performance art.

This professional theater on the campus of the University of Chicago has a mission of producing "classic theater," but it's expanded the definition of that term well beyond Shakespeare and the Greeks. You'll find those here—done exceptionally well—but Court also produces stunning reinventions of musicals, works by August Wilson and Pearl Cleage that have helped it tap into Hyde Park's largely Black population, and the occasional new play dealing in classical themes.

Thought-provoking fare with leading national and international contemporary-dance artists is presented by the Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago.