Red Hat Amphitheater's final show: what's next

Raleigh's most recognizable outdoor stage has officially gone dark. The Red Hat Amphitheater played its final show at 500 South McDowell Street on Friday night, a sold-out Steve Lacy concert that closed out a run more than a decade in the making. The venue, which opened on June 4, 2010, and went by the Raleigh Amphitheater name from 2010 to 2012, is now being taken out of service so its equipment and furniture can be cleared before the site is demolished to make room for the Atlantic Union Bank Convention Center expansion.

For anyone who spent their summers downtown, the numbers tell the story of how big this place became. At its peak in 2024, the amphitheater hosted 51 concerts — its busiest season ever — and moved 265,000 tickets, which brought in $17.5 million for the city. That same year, it closed out with 'Music For the Mountains,' a benefit for hurricane Helene relief that raised more than $1 million. And in the off-season, the site didn't stay quiet, transforming into 'THE RINK' for the Christmas season. The venue was city-owned and operated, with bookings handled through an agreement with Live Nation, and it ran from April through October each year with room for roughly 5,990 people split between fixed seats, movable seating and the lawn.

The final stretch gave the city one last run of the kind of bills that made the place a fixture. In September alone, Malcolm Todd brought his 'Do That Again Tour' through on the 16th, Shaboozey played on the 22nd, Rise Against took the stage on the 27th, and Turnstile closed out the month on the 29th. It was a fitting send-off for a spot that had become the default home for a summer night out in Raleigh.

The good news is that the name isn't going anywhere. A new Red Hat Amphitheater is scheduled to open in 2027 just one block south of the old site, and Red Hat is staying on as the lead sponsor at least through 2030. The new version is being built bigger, with more than 6,000 sloped seats and a whole list of upgrades the old place lacked: better views of the stage, permanent bathrooms, improved dressing rooms and a dedicated catering space for artists. The $40 million project was approved by the Raleigh City Council back in August 2021, with construction led by a joint venture of Clancy & Theys, Skanska and D.A. Everett, and design by TVS and RATIO Design.

Work is already well underway. As of late October, crews had installed structural flooring along McDowell Street, poured concrete for the seating bowl and put up the ticket booth and steel doors. A 600-room Omni Hotels & Resorts hotel with 61,000 square feet of meeting space is part of the same plan and is also set to open in 2027, while the convention center expansion itself adds 298,100 square feet to bring the total to 798,100, with a projected opening in 2028. And if you're wondering what happened to the history of the old place, a time capsule filled with signage, artwork, a vinyl record player and letters from city leaders was buried at the new site on October 5. For now, the only thing left to do is wait for the new stage to rise.