Las Vegas in January 2027, From CES Week to the Quiet Weeks

The short version: January 2027 in Las Vegas is two expensive weeks wrapped around two cheap ones. January 4–9 is CES, when the hotels near the Convention Center and the Venetian charge more than at any other point in the month. January 11–14 is the softest stretch of the month, with only a 16,000-person promotional-products show in town. January 15–18 is Martin Luther King weekend with the Eagles at Sphere, and it runs straight into January 19–22, when the World of Concrete and the SHOT Show put roughly 100,000 trade visitors in the same hotels. The College Football Playoff National Championship on Monday, January 25 fills the last full week, and the Tuesday and Wednesday after it are the second value window. Pools run winter hours, the sun sets before 5:10 p.m. every day, and the hiking is the best of the year.

January weather in Las Vegas, date by date

57°F on January 1, 58°F on the 15th, 60°F on the 31st. Those are the National Weather Service's normal daily highs at Harry Reid International Airport, and the lows climb the same gentle slope, from 39°F to 42°F. The swing between afternoon and night is about 18 degrees, so a day that feels like spring at 2 p.m. is coat weather by 6. A normal January has three nights that touch freezing and none with a daytime high below 32°F. The records show how wide the range can get, 77°F on January 26, 1975 and 8°F in 1937 and 1963, and January 2026 was the fifth-warmest on record, so recent Januaries have leaned mild.

It is also the calmest month of the year by wind, averaging 6.3 mph against 10 mph in April, and nearly dry: 0.56 inches of rain in a normal January, spread over about three days with measurable rain, which works out to a one-in-ten chance on any given date. Snow on the Strip is a once-a-decade event. The last measurable fall at the airport was February 20–21, 2019, about an inch, and before that December 2008; January's normal snowfall is a trace.

The catch is daylight. Sunrise is 6:52 a.m. and sunset 4:37 p.m. on January 1, and by the 31st the day has stretched only to 6:42 a.m. and 5:06 p.m., under ten and a half hours of light at best. Las Vegas stays on Pacific Standard Time all month, and Arizona, which does not observe daylight time, runs one hour ahead in winter, so Grand Canyon West and the Arizona side of Hoover Dam close an hour earlier than your phone suggests.

Hotel prices and the conventions that set them

January's reputation as the cheapest month is only half true. The tourism authority's figures for January 2026 put the citywide average room at $199.73 a night, $215.36 on the Strip and $99.97 Downtown, with midweek occupancy at 77.5 percent; the summer months ran $150–157. What January does have is wide swings inside the month, and they track four trade shows and one football game.

• CES, January 6–9 (Wednesday to Saturday), with media days on January 4 and 5. The consumer-electronics show counted 148,392 participants in 2026 across the Convention Center, the Venetian Expo and a cluster of hotel ballrooms, and in 2027 Lenovo's keynote moves into Sphere. One corporate-travel data set put the 2026 CES-week median at $439 a night near the Convention Center against $269 in a quieter week later that January; a Review-Journal survey of advertised rates two weeks out found a $262 citywide average and $113 Downtown. The pattern is the same every year: the Strip's north end and the Venetian corridor price for engineers on expense accounts, Downtown barely moves.
• January 11–14. The only convention is the PPAI Expo at Mandalay Bay, about 16,000 people. This is the week to book if price is the point.
• Martin Luther King weekend, January 16–18, lands on the Eagles' first pair of Sphere nights and feeds directly into the next spike.
• World of Concrete, January 19–21, and the SHOT Show, January 19–22. Concrete fills the Convention Center (47,400 attendees in 2026); the shooting-sports trade show fills the Venetian Expo and Caesars Forum (53,000). Together they are a second CES-sized week for hotel pricing, minus the badges on the Strip.
• Las Vegas Market, January 24–28, is a furniture trade show at the World Market Center Downtown, and the CFP National Championship on Monday, January 25 brings two fan bases for the weekend before it. Expect the Strip to price up from Saturday the 23rd through the game, then drop on the 26th.

That leaves two quiet windows: Monday, January 11 through Thursday, January 14, and Tuesday, January 26 through Thursday, January 28. Downtown is the January bargain regardless of the week, at roughly half the Strip's average rate and with lower resort fees; our Downtown hotels page has the options. The wider seasonal picture is in Best Time to Visit Las Vegas.

New Year's Day and the first weekend

January 1, 2027 is a Friday. The Strip is fully closed to cars by 8 p.m. on New Year's Eve, and the county's sweepers start between 12:45 and 2 a.m., reopening the boulevard about a mile at a time; it is normally fully open by 6 a.m. The resorts spend the morning on the biggest checkout of the year, so a January 1 arrival should expect a slow front desk and a room that is not ready before mid-afternoon. The night's own plan, closures, free views and the fireworks cascade, is in New Year's Eve in Las Vegas.

The holiday season does not stop at midnight. The Backstreet Boys play Sphere on January 1 and 2 after their New Year's Eve show, Now You See Me Live plays its final performances at the MGM Grand Theater through January 5, and Taylor Dayne closes her Harrah's Showroom run on January 2. Ethel M's Holiday Cactus Garden lights in Henderson stay on through January 3, from 5 to 8 p.m. on New Year's Day and 5 to 10 p.m. on the 2nd and 3rd; Glittering Lights, the drive-through at the Motor Speedway, also runs through January 3; the Bellagio Conservatory's holiday display is announced through January 2. The Las Vegas Bowl plays Allegiant Stadium on New Year's Eve at 12:45 p.m., and the three College Football Playoff quarterfinals on New Year's Day put every sportsbook screen on football from the morning. For the lights and rinks that close before the month starts, see Christmas in Las Vegas and December week by week.

Concerts and residencies in January 2027

Sphere has three acts in January. The Eagles play January 15, 16, 22 and 23 at 8:30 p.m., the four dates that stretched their run to 72 shows, with seats from $175 all-in when they went on sale in August. Metallica resumes Life Burns Faster on Thursday, January 28 and Saturday, January 30, also at 8:30 p.m., with the Thursday and Saturday setlists built not to repeat; standard seats sold out at the on-sale, so what remains is packages and resale. The Backstreet Boys close their holiday block on January 1 and 2 at 8 p.m. Between the concerts, The Wizard of Oz at Sphere plays most days of the month, about 75 minutes with no late seating, from $130.

The rest of the month clusters late.

• January 1–10. Lord Huron at the Virgin Hotels theater on January 2; the holiday closers above; Disney On Ice presents Jump In! at the Thomas & Mack Center, seven performances from Thursday, January 7 to Sunday, January 10, from $20 before fees at the arena box office.
• January 20–31, the busy stretch. Santana plays eight nights at House of Blues, January 20, 21, 23, 24, 27, 28, 30 and 31, doors at 7 p.m. and the show at 8; Nikki Glaser and David Spade bring their co-headline comedy residency back to The Colosseum at Caesars Palace on January 22 and 23 at 8 p.m.; Ali Siddiq plays PH Live on January 23; Styx open their Venetian Theatre run on January 29 and 30 at 8:30 p.m. before three more nights in February; the touring Broadway musical The Outsiders sits in Reynolds Hall at the Smith Center from January 19 to 24.

The resident productions keep their winter patterns. Cirque du Soleil put its 2027 schedules on sale on September 22: Mystère plays Tuesday to Saturday at 6:30 and 9 p.m., "O" Wednesday to Sunday at the same times, Michael Jackson ONE Thursday to Monday, and KÀ keeps its split week of 6 and 8:30 p.m. weeknight curtains and 4:30 and 7 p.m. on weekends, so check the dark days on each show page against your dates. Absinthe, Blue Man Group and the tribute and magic shows run all month. Every date above comes from the venues' ticketing feeds as of October 8, 2026; the residencies add nights through the winter, and the live list is on our January 2027 calendar and the residencies page, with the season in narrative form in Las Vegas residencies month by month.

Sports

The Golden Knights have seven home games at T-Mobile Arena: Colorado on Saturday, January 2 (7 p.m.), Minnesota on Thursday the 7th (6:30 p.m.), Seattle on Saturday the 9th, Edmonton on Wednesday the 20th, Boston on Friday the 22nd, Buffalo on Thursday the 28th and Washington on Saturday the 30th, all 7 p.m. unless noted; the team is on the East Coast from the 12th to the 17th. The Raiders have no January home game, their regular season ends at Arizona on January 3 and at Kansas City the following week, but the NFL playoffs run through the month on every sportsbook screen, with the wild-card weekend from January 16, the divisional round on the 23rd and 24th and the conference championships on Sunday, January 31 on the current league calendar, ahead of a Super Bowl in Los Angeles on February 14.

The big one is the College Football Playoff National Championship at Allegiant Stadium on Monday, January 25, kickoff 4:30 p.m. Pacific, the first title game played in Las Vegas. The finalists are not known until the semifinals on January 14 and 15, most seats go to the two schools, and the public routes are team reservations, hospitality packages and the official exchange. The free part is the fan week from January 20 to 25, with Fan Central at the Convention Center from the 22nd to the 24th and two nights of free concerts on the 23rd and 24th.

Sunday, January 10 is the Las Vegas Marathon, the first full 26.2 miles on Las Vegas Boulevard since 2019. All three distances, the marathon, the half and a 7.02-mile race named for the area code, start at 6:30 a.m. at The STRAT; the marathon runs through the Fremont Street Experience at miles 3 and 4 and the Springs Preserve before heading south on the Strip to the Welcome sign and back, and the course closes at 1:03 p.m. Registration is $189, $169 and $99 through December 8, with the expo and packet pickup on Saturday, January 9 at Caesars Palace. It is a daytime race, not the old neon night run, and it closes the Boulevard for the morning; the organizer had not published the street-by-street closure hours as of October 8, so an airport transfer that Sunday morning should go via the freeway.

Pools in January

The dayclubs are closed until March; in 2026 the first of them reopened on March 6 and most followed by the middle of that month. The resort pools run a winter service, usually one heated pool from 9 or 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. with the bar closed and the deck chairs thin.

• Stadium Swim at Circa, Downtown, is the real winter pool: six pools heated to 94–104°F facing a 143-foot screen, open every day of the year with day passes from $20 and free entry for guests of Circa, Golden Gate and The D. On a January Sunday it is the best seat in town for the NFL playoffs.
• Caesars Palace keeps the adults-only Venus Pool open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. with a $16 day pass, while the main Garden of the Gods complex is closed from November through February.
• Bellagio runs its pool and hot tub from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. with no cabanas; the Venetian and Palazzo pools keep the same hours, with day visitors from $50; Mandalay Bay moves swimmers to the Moorea Beach Club, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., $25 for non-guests, while the wave pool takes its annual break.
• Wynn and Encore keep one pool open for guests, typically 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., and which one changes through the winter.
• Tailgate Beach Club at Mandalay Bay opened in May 2026 with three heated pools built for year-round football viewing; confirm its January hours with the club before you plan a Sunday around it.

Any of these can close for a cold or windy day, so treat the pool as a bonus rather than the point of a January trip.

Lights off, Lunar New Year on, and the desert at its best

The Bellagio Conservatory changes over in the first week: the holiday display closes after January 2, and the Lunar New Year display, which opened on January 9 in 2026 and January 10 in 2025, should follow in the second week and run into late February. Lunar New Year itself falls on Saturday, February 6, 2027, the Year of the Goat, so the lions, lanterns and red-and-gold decorations go up across the Strip's casinos through the last week of January. Enchant at the Ballpark closes on December 27 and the Cowboy Christmas market is gone with the rodeo, so by January 4 the city is between seasons.

That is the moment for the desert. Red Rock Canyon is at its best in cool, still air, but the Scenic Drive requires a timed-entry reservation for arrivals between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. from October through May on top of the $20 per-vehicle fee, and the drive itself closes at 5 p.m. in winter, so book the slot before the rental car. Valley of Fire, an hour northeast, is open sunrise to sunset for $15 per out-of-state vehicle with no reservation, and its summer trail closures do not apply. Hoover Dam's visitor center and tours run 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. with the last tour at 4:10 p.m. and the Power Plant tour at $25 for adults; the dam itself is walkable from 5 a.m. to 9 p.m. Lee Canyon, the ski area under an hour northwest of the Strip, is in full season, with variable lift-ticket pricing that starts low on quiet weekdays and rises on storm weekends; kids 12 and under ski free with the mountain's children's pass, there is no cell service on the mountain road, and chain controls apply after snow.

What to pack for Las Vegas in January

• A real coat. Lows near 40°F and three freezing nights in a normal month; the walk between resorts after a 9 p.m. show is the coldest part of the day. Calm winds mean 40°F feels like 40°F, which is cold enough.
• Layers for the afternoon. A T-shirt under a sweater and the coat covers a 58°F lunch and a 40°F midnight.
• Sunscreen and sunglasses. The low winter sun sits in your eyes all afternoon, and rain shows up on about three days a month.
• Hiking shoes if a canyon is on the list. Red Rock and Valley of Fire are the reason to come in January; the Strip's marble floors are the reason to leave the sandals at home.
• A swimsuit only for the pools above. Heated, yes; warm on the deck, no.
• Show and restaurant clothes. Dress codes do not relax for the cold; the specifics by venue are in What to Wear in Las Vegas.

The honest downsides

• Short days. Under ten and a half hours of daylight all month, with sunset before 5:10 p.m.; day trips need a 9 a.m. start and the outdoor attractions run cold after dark.
• CES. If you are not attending, January 4–9 is the wrong week: the hotels near the Convention Center and the Venetian charge convention rates, and the north end of the Strip runs at trade-show pace from breakfast to the evening rush.
• A second convention spike on January 19–22 that the holiday calendars never mention.
• Pools on winter hours and the dayclubs dark until March.
• The holiday displays end on January 2 and 3, and the Lunar New Year ones take a week to arrive.
• January is not the cheapest month citywide; the savings are in the two midweek windows and Downtown, not in the month itself.