Drink Las Vegas Festival At MGM Resorts Sep 2026
A new, multi resort beverage and spirits festival is coming to the center Strip in Las Vegas, Nevada, with MGM Resorts International announcing the first Drink Las Vegas for September 24 to 27, 2026. The event is designed for travelers who plan trips around bars, dining, and nightlife, plus industry attendees who want education sessions and brand showcases. If you are considering a fall Vegas weekend, treat this as a demand driver, plan rooms and dining early, and wait for the ticket tiers and full schedule before you commit to nonrefundable spend.
The Drink Las Vegas spirits festival is positioned as a four day program across Bellagio, ARIA, The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, and Park MGM, with MGM saying it will run day and night and include more than 50 events. MGM also said it is working with experiential event agency a21 and sports management agency PRP on the launch.
Who Is Affected
Travelers staying at the four host resorts are the most directly affected, because the festival footprint spans venues inside each property and can reshape what is walk up available for bars, lounges, and dining that weekend. Visitors who are not staying on site should still expect spillover, including busier rideshare pickup zones around the host resorts and more competition for prime time reservations nearby, especially Thursday night through Saturday night.
Food and beverage focused travelers are the target audience, but the practical impact is broader because Las Vegas weekends behave like a system. When a new premium event lands across multiple anchor resorts, it tightens room inventory, pushes some dining experiences into ticketed formats, and increases last minute pricing power for both hotels and high demand venues. If you are traveling for a show, a convention, or a celebration on the same weekend, you should plan as if the center Strip will be busier than a typical late September weekend.
What Travelers Should Do
Start with lodging, because that is the easiest risk to manage. If you want to be in the center of the action, book a refundable room at one of the host resorts now, then reassess when ticket packages and the event schedule go live. If you are price sensitive, consider staying a short ride away, and only coming to the host properties for the sessions or tastings you actually buy.
Set decision thresholds before the hype cycle kicks in. If tickets launch and the experiences you care about sell out quickly, that is your signal to either upgrade to a package that guarantees access or pivot your weekend plan to non festival dining and bars. If tickets look plentiful and the schedule is heavy on daytime education sessions, you can often wait longer to finalize dining, but you should still protect your room rate with a refundable booking.
Monitor three things over the next 24 to 72 hours after each announcement drop. First, watch for the ticket on sale date and tier structure, because that determines whether the best events will be capacity constrained. Second, watch for talent and partner brand announcements, because that is what will pull in destination travelers and raise overall demand. Third, watch for room packages tied to tickets, because that is where MGM can bundle access in a way that changes the true cost of attending.
Background
Drink Las Vegas is being marketed as a modern beverage culture festival, which usually means a mix of tastings, paired dinners, master classes, and late night programming rather than a single expo hall. MGM says the concept is designed to entertain, educate, and engage, with the programming spread across multiple venues at four different resorts.
The ripple effects matter because Strip resorts share guests, labor, and capacity constraints across a weekend. First order effects show up at the source as higher foot traffic in host resort bars and restaurants, plus more event driven staffing and reserved space that reduces walk up availability. Second order effects propagate outward as nearby properties see higher rates from overflow demand, rideshare and taxi queues thicken during peak arrival and late night windows, and popular off Strip dining absorbs displaced diners when on Strip venues become ticketed or booked out. The net result is that even travelers who do not buy festival tickets can pay the cost through higher room rates, fewer last minute tables, and longer waits for transportation.