Thanksgiving in Las Vegas 2026 (Thursday, November 26)

More than 35 ticketed shows already list a performance for Thursday, November 26, 2026, the casinos never close, the Strip's indoor malls kept holiday hours last year, and the only things that reliably go dark are the Hoover Dam tours and two Cirque shows that skip every Thursday anyway. Thanksgiving in Las Vegas is an ordinary operating day with a turkey menu attached. It lands five days after the Formula 1 race, and that shapes the week more than the holiday does: rates soften Monday to Wednesday, the weekend fills from Southern California, and the Sunday drive home is the worst traffic of the year. Dinner is the one thing to plan now. Restaurants post their 2026 menus in late October and November; the 2025 prices below show you the ladder.

What's open on Thanksgiving Day

Casinos and their restaurants keep normal hours, and most sit-down rooms swap in a holiday menu rather than closing. The Strip's indoor malls stayed open on the day itself in 2025: the Forum Shops, Grand Canal Shoppes and Miracle Mile Shops all traded through the holiday, while Fashion Show and both Premium Outlets took the Thursday off and opened early on Black Friday. The 2026 mall hours post in November. The Neon Museum is open 365 days a year, 3 to 11 p.m. from September through May, and the Mob Museum has kept shortened hours on Thanksgiving in past years.

Day-trippers lose the dam. The Hoover Dam visitor center and every dam tour close on Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day, so the dam is a Friday plan. Red Rock Canyon's Scenic Drive opened only from 6 a.m. to noon on Thanksgiving 2025, with the visitor center running 8 a.m. to noon, and the BLM posts the holiday hours again each November; the timed-entry reservation that covers October through May still applies to arrivals between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. Go at sunrise or leave it for Friday.

Thanksgiving dinner in Las Vegas: what's confirmed for 2026 and what 2025 cost

As of September 2, 2026, no Strip restaurant has posted a priced Thanksgiving menu for this year. The Venetian's Thanksgiving landing page is already live with turkey-and-pumpkin-pie copy and no menus behind it. That's normal. The Review-Journal's 2025 roundup first ran on November 3 and was still growing on November 21, so expect this year's menus between mid-October and mid-November, buffets and celebrity rooms first.

The 2025 ladder, all for Thursday, November 27, 2025:

• Buffets. Bacchanal Buffet at Caesars Palace charged $97.99 for adults and $53.99 for children 4 to 10, brunch from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. and dinner from 3 to 10 p.m., with citrus-brined turkey, baked ham and porchetta added to the regular stations. That's a holiday premium over its usual $85 to $95 weekend dinner. A.Y.C.E. at the Palms was $79.99 with whole lobster and crab legs on the line, Brezza at Resorts World ran a $65 evening buffet from 4 to 8:30 p.m., South Point's Garden Buffet was $34.95 with a players card and $39.95 without, and Main Street Station's Garden Court downtown was $44 including prime rib.
• Prix fixe on the Strip. Mon Ami Gabi at Paris was $59.95 for a full turkey menu served 11 a.m. to 10 p.m., the widest window on the Strip. La Cave at Wynn did four courses for $74 from 3 to 9 p.m. Pisces at Wynn served roasted organic turkey for $85, Carversteak at Resorts World was $85, Bouchon at the Venetian was $125 for three courses between 1 and 8 p.m., and the Eiffel Tower Restaurant was $135. Delmonico Steakhouse ran a turkey plate alongside its regular menu.
• Downtown and the budget end. Oscar's Steakhouse at the Plaza was $110 for three courses. Barry's Downtown Prime at Circa charged $79 for the roast turkey and $89 for prime rib. Yard House locations served a turkey plate for $29.99, with a $13.99 kids' version, Silverton's Sundance Grill did three courses for $28, and Emerald Island Grille in Henderson fed you for $15.99.

Service windows shrink on the holiday. Bouchon closed at 8, La Cave at 9, and several steakhouses opened at 4 or 5 p.m. and seated nothing after 9, so a post-show 10 p.m. turkey doesn't exist on the Strip. Bacchanal's 90-minute table limit applies at busy dayparts; assume that means all day on Thanksgiving. If you want a specific room at 6 p.m., reserve the day its menu posts. The everyday version of the dining map is in Where to Eat in Las Vegas.

Shows on Thanksgiving: two dark, several early

Two Cirque shows sit out the holiday, and neither is doing it for the holiday. KÀ is dark every Thursday and Friday, Mystère every Wednesday and Thursday, so neither plays on November 26 under its regular schedule; Mystère returns Friday, KÀ on Saturday. O and Michael Jackson ONE both have Thursday in their normal week, and the box-office calendars already show O and ONE on sale for the holiday. Penn & Teller keep their 8 p.m. Thursday. Comedy thins out: Comedy Cellar and Carrot Top list Thursday shows, while Brad Garrett's Comedy Club and the Laugh Factory show no November 26 date as of early September.

The holiday mostly adds matinees. Now You See Me Live puts a 4 p.m. performance on November 26 through 28 ahead of its regular 7 and 9:30 p.m.; Shin Lim adds a 4:30 p.m. show on the Thursday before his usual 7:30; Jabbawockeez runs 2 p.m. matinees Wednesday through Saturday; The Wizard of Oz at Sphere starts at 10 a.m. on the holiday and screens five times through 10 p.m. An early curtain plus a 7 p.m. dinner reservation is the schedule that works. Check your exact date before buying, because holiday weeks are the one time the calendars get rewritten.

The weekend belongs to concerts. The Eagles play Sphere on Friday and Saturday, November 27 and 28. The MGM Grand Garden Arena calendar lists Journey on the 27th and the Jonas Brothers on the 28th, LISA plays the Colosseum at Caesars Palace on the 27th, and the Golden Knights host a 1 p.m. Saturday game at T-Mobile Arena. Mariah Carey's Christmastime run at Dolby Live opened the day after Thanksgiving in 2025 and ran to December 13; as of September 2 there are no 2026 dates announced.

Football on the Strip

By 10 a.m. Pacific the sportsbooks are standing room. The NFL's 2026 Thanksgiving slate is Bears at Lions at 10 a.m., Eagles at Cowboys at 1:30 p.m. and Chiefs at Bills at 5:20 p.m., and for the first time the league has wrapped games around it: Packers at Rams on Wednesday, November 25 at 5 p.m. Pacific on Netflix, and Broncos at Steelers on Black Friday at noon on Prime Video. Five games in three days. Circa downtown, with the sportsbook it bills as the world's largest, is the obvious room if the game is the point, and every Strip book will be full from the first snap. The night game is the trap for dinner plans: a 5:20 p.m. kickoff runs straight through the prime reservation window, so book turkey for 3 p.m. or after 8:30.

The Raiders don't help. They're in Cleveland on Sunday, November 29, a 10 a.m. Pacific kickoff, and then on their bye week, so Allegiant Stadium sits quiet all weekend and the hotels around it don't get a game-day spike.

The week after F1: traffic and room rates

The Las Vegas Grand Prix runs November 19 to 21, 2026, race on Saturday night, and Thanksgiving falls the following Thursday. The same gap existed in 2025, and the organizers' plan was to have Las Vegas Boulevard back to 95 percent of its lanes by Thanksgiving, track barriers gone by midnight Wednesday. What lingered was the Bellagio Fountain Club: two southbound lanes and the sidewalk between Flamingo Road and Bellagio Drive stayed closed through December 26. Expect the same pattern in 2026; the teardown schedule is published the week of the race, and the race-week closures themselves follow the same published-late pattern.

Sunday through Wednesday after the race is a soft stretch: the F1 crowd has gone and the Thanksgiving crowd hasn't arrived, which makes those four nights the cheapest way to see the town dressed for the holidays. From Wednesday afternoon the drive-in market arrives on I-15 and the weekend runs like any busy Vegas weekend with more strollers. Leaving is the hard part: the RTC projected southbound I-15 delays at the California line from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on the Saturday and 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. on the Sunday after Thanksgiving 2025, and backups from the state line have stretched for miles on past holiday Sundays. Leave before 7 a.m. Sunday, stay through Monday, or fly.

Weather at the end of November

Sixty-two and forty-three. Those are the NOAA daily normals for November 26 in Las Vegas, a 62°F afternoon and a 43°F night, against a monthly average of 67°F and 47°F, so the last week of the month runs a few degrees cooler than the first. Rain is close to a non-factor: 0.3 inch across the whole month, spread over one or two wet days, with about eight hours of sunshine a day. Practically, that means a sweater for the afternoon walk, a real coat for the Fountains after dark, and sunglasses regardless. Sunset comes before 5 p.m., so the Red Rock or dam morning has to be a morning.

Black Friday and the rest of the weekend

Friday starts at the outlets. In 2025 Las Vegas North and South Premium Outlets, closed on the Thursday, opened early on Black Friday, Fashion Show reopened the same morning, and the casino malls, having never closed, simply kept going. None of this is a reason to fly to Vegas, but if you're here anyway the outlets at opening on Black Friday are a genuine spectacle.

The holiday-lights season is already running by Thanksgiving week. Ethel M's cactus-garden lights in Henderson switch on November 5, 2026, and Enchant at Las Vegas Ballpark opens November 20. The Glittering Lights drive-through at the Speedway opens in the first week of November, and Bellagio's Conservatory changes over to its holiday display in mid-November; the 2025 version opened November 14. Dates and prices are in our Christmas in Las Vegas guide. The weekend also has a run in it, the Life Time Turkey Trot 5K and one-mile in Summerlin, which starts Thanksgiving morning at Las Vegas Ballpark. And it has a deadline: the National Finals Rodeo opens Thursday, December 3, and the first rodeo weekend prices far above Thanksgiving weekend. If you can stretch the trip, stretch it backward into the quiet post-F1 days, not forward into NFR.