2026-27 Utah Arts Guide
Utah’s performing and visual arts institutions have rolled out their 2026-27 seasons, and audiences across the Wasatch Front have a packed calendar of world premieres, beloved classics, bold new exhibitions and holiday traditions to look forward to. Here’s a rundown of what’s coming from some of the state’s most prominent arts organizations.
Plan-B Theatre Company: Season 36
Plan-B Theatre, Utah’s home for new work by Utah playwrights, announced its 36th season, and it’s a milestone year built around anniversaries and premieres. The centerpiece is a 20th-anniversary revival of Carol Lynn Pearson’s “Facing East,” running Oct. 22 through Nov. 8, 2026, in the Studio Theatre at the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center. The play, which follows a Mormon couple contending with grief and acceptance after their gay son’s suicide, remains one of the company’s most enduring and profoundly touching works, and its return two decades after its debut is expected to draw both long-time fans and a new generation of theatergoers dealing with similar questions in their own families and faith communities.
The season also brings two world premieres. “Radio Hour Episode 18: The Land of Oz” opens Dec. 16, 2026, continuing Plan-B’s long-running Radio Hour series, which reimagines classic stories as live old-fashioned radio dramas performed in front of an audience — this time putting a fresh spin on the Oz mythology. Then, from March 4-21, 2027, Plan-B presents “What the Phở?,” a romantic comedy following two young Vietnamese restaurant workers navigating family expectations, identity and love.
Rounding out the season is Plan-B’s Free Elementary School Tour, which will bring the new play “Snail Mail” to classrooms across the state to introduce young audiences to live theater, along with the Script-In-Hand Series, which gives Utah playwrights a developmental platform to workshop new material in front of an audience.
Season subscriptions are $63, with single tickets at $25 — prices that have long made Plan-B one of the more accessible tickets in Salt Lake City’s theater scene.
Utah Symphony | Utah Opera: A Blockbuster Year for Abravanel Hall
The Utah Symphony’s 2026-27 season, under the baton of music director Jun Märkl and principal guest conductor Delyana Lazarova, opens strong with “Cirque de la Symphonie” (Sept. 10-12), pairing acrobatics with orchestral favorites, followed quickly by Elgar’s Cello Concerto paired with Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 5 (Sept. 17-19). The orchestra’s “Celebración Sinfónica” on Sept. 21 celebrates Latin American music and culture with soprano Mónica Ábrego and Ballet Las Americas de Utah, a nod to the growing diversity of the symphony’s programming and audience outreach.
Classical highlights continue with “A Night in Ancient Greece: Ravel’s Daphnis and Chloé” (Sept. 25-26), Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5 alongside works by Gubaidulina and Bernstein (Oct. 22-24), and pianist-conductor Conrad Tao leading an evening of Mozart (Nov. 6-7). Pop-culture crossover programming remains a strong draw, with “Disney’s Hocus Pocus in Concert” timed for Halloween weekend (Oct. 28-30) and travel personality Rick Steves bringing his multimedia “Symphonic Journey” to Abravanel Hall on Oct. 17.
Holiday programming kicks into gear with the annual Messiah Sing-In (Nov. 28-29), “The Holiday in Concert” (Dec. 12) and the Holiday Pops Extravaganza (Dec. 17-19) — perennial favorites that reliably sell out and mark the unofficial start of the season for many Utah families. Looking ahead to spring, violinist Joshua Bell returns to play Beethoven on March 17, 2027, and the season builds toward a pair of major film-in-concert events: “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring in Concert” (May 20-22, 2027) and “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban in Concert,” which closes out the season July 1-3, 2027.
On the opera side, Utah Opera’s 2026-27 season at the Janet Quinney Lawson Capitol Theatre leads with the West Coast-facing premiere of “Héctor Armienta’s Zorro” (Oct. 10-18, 2026), a Puccini-inspired retelling of the vigilante-justice legend set in historical Los Angeles. The season continues with Rossini’s whimsical “Cinderella,” Mozart’s morally complex “Don Giovanni,” and “The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs,” a contemporary opera examining the Apple co-founder’s life through a modern, minimalist score. The lineup mixes recognizable classics with adventurous contemporary work, a balance Utah Opera has embraced in recent seasons to draw both classicists and newer opera audiences. .
Salt Lake Acting Company: Celebrating 55 Years
Salt Lake Acting Company enters its 2026-27 season celebrating 55 years of producing bold new work, and the milestone lineup expresses the company’s continued commitment to world and Utah premieres. The season opens with “Very Like a Whale” (Sept. 30-Oct. 25, 2026), a world-premiere comedy by Troy Deutsch. Then comes SLAC’s popular holiday tradition for families, “The Pigeon Gets a Big Time Holiday Extravaganza!” (Dec. 5-29, 2026), a musical adaptation drawing on Mo Willems’ popular children’s books — a lighter, family-friendly counterpoint to the company’s typically edgier programming.
The new year brings Lucas Hnath’s “The Thin Place” (Feb. 3-28, 2027), a disturbing exploration of grief, spirituality and the boundary between the living and the dead, followed by “Lizzie” (April 7-May 2, 2027), the cult musical reimagining of the Lizzie Borden murders through a hard-rock score. The season closes, as always, with SLAC’s community-built Summer Show (June 23-Aug. 15, 2027), an original production created collaboratively with local artists and volunteers each year.
Season subscriptions start at $121, and single tickets for individual shows go on sale each August.
Pioneer Theatre Company: 65 Seasons Strong
Pioneer Theatre Company marks its 65th anniversary with a season built around contemporary premieres and Broadway crowd-pleasers. The lineup opens with the Utah professional premiere of “John Proctor Is the Villain” (Sept. 11-26, 2026), the acclaimed high school drama that reframes “The Crucible” through a modern lens on teenage empowerment and #MeToo-era reckoning. It’s followed by the ever-popular “Little Shop of Horrors” (Oct. 23-Nov. 7, 2026) and the holiday-season comedy “The Man Who Came to Dinner” (Dec. 4-19, 2026), about an insufferable houseguest who upends a small-town Christmas.
The new year brings the Utah debut of “Mean Girls” (Jan. 29-Feb. 13, 2027), the musical adaptation of the beloved film, followed by the satirical “Eureka Day” (March 12-27, 2027), which skewers a progressive private school’s chaotic response to a mumps outbreak. PTC will announce the season’s final musical — the last slot, running April 30-May 15, 2027 — on Sept. 1, 2026.
Pygmalion Productions: Centering Women’s Stories, Under Pressure
As of this writing, Pygmalion has not yet made a full public announcement of its 2026-27 lineup, though auditions and planning for the new season are already underway.
Worth noting for readers who follow Utah’s arts funding landscape: Pygmalion recently had a state grant application denied under provisions tied to Utah’s DEI law, with state reviewers characterizing the company’s women-centered mission as discriminatory. The company has pushed back publicly and is leaning more heavily on individual donations to sustain its programming — a reminder of how quickly the funding environment for mission-driven arts organizations is shifting in Utah, and one more reason to watch for their season announcement in the months ahead.
Utah Museum of Fine Arts: A Quarter-Century Retrospective
The Utah Museum of Fine Arts marks 25 years in its Marcia and John Price Museum Building with “For the Future: Collecting at the UMFA, 2001-2026,” opening Aug. 29, 2026. The exhibition draws from the museum’s permanent collection to showcase what curators have acquired, preserved and prioritized over the past quarter century, giving a window into how the museum’s identity has evolved. UMFA continues its mix of public programming, including its “UMFA in the Wild” outdoor series and its annual gala, positioning the museum as both a serious collecting institution and an accessible community gathering space on the University of Utah campus.
Utah Museum of Contemporary Art: Confronting the West
UMOCA’s 2026-27 slate leans hard into questions of land, identity and the American West. “Altered States in the Acid West,” running through Aug. 29, 2026, examines the “acid western” genre that emerged in the 1970s, using myth and unstable terrain as a lens on colonization, racial violence and cultural erasure. Concurrently, Alfredo Jaar’s “The End” (through Sept. 5, 2026) confronts the disappearance of the Great Salt Lake amid water over-extraction — an urgent, locally resonant piece of art-as-advocacy. Additional exhibitions include Eleanor Mahin Thorp’s “Snowtrickle, feldspar, dirt,” Rick Silva’s “Dirt Nap” (running into January 2027) and Alexis Rausch’s “Rapture | Rupture.” UMOCA’s fall season opening reception is set for Sept. 11, 2026, with programming continuing through June 2027. The museum also recently announced $60,000 in inaugural Assemblage Art Fund grants to local artists, with applications for the 2026-27 fund cycle already underway — a meaningful infusion of support for Utah’s working artists.
A Holiday Tradition: Salt Lake Men’s Choir
No December in Salt Lake City feels complete without the Salt Lake Men’s Choir’s annual holiday concert, and this year’s offering, “Somewhere in My Memory,” promises to be one of the group’s most nostalgic. The concert leans into the warmth of childhood Christmas memories — twinkling lights, fireplaces, family dinners and, of course, music — and will feature guest artist Sofie Zane joining the choir’s roster of singers for an evening of holiday cheer. Ticket sales have not yet opened as of this writing, but the choir, known for drawing enthusiastic, sold-out crowds each December, is expected to announce dates and venue details soon. Readers interested in joining the choir itself should know that rehearsals for the holiday concert are Thursday nights with no audition required, making it one of the more welcoming entry points into Salt Lake’s vibrant choral community.
Taken together, this season reflects a Utah arts community that remains ambitious even amid funding headwinds — leaning into anniversaries, world premieres and urgent contemporary themes while still making room for the holiday traditions that bring families and communities together each winter. Stay tuned to QSaltLake for reviews, previews and more coverage as these seasons unfold.
See also our cover story of
Plan-B Theatre Company’s ‘Facing East,’
Ballet West’s Season, and
Adam Sklute’s retirement from Ballet West
