Post Malone to headline SLC New Year's Eve festival

Salt Lake City is shaping up to be the place to be for New Year's Eve, and the headline act is one of our own. Post Malone, born Austin Post and a Utah resident, is set to headline the New Year's Eve festival at the Delta Center on December 31, sharing top billing with Swedish DJ Alesso. The festival kicks off at 4 p.m., with doors opening at 9 p.m. and the show starting at 10 p.m., so there's plenty of time to settle in before the music begins.

The concert isn't a standalone event; it's the anchor of a four-day sports and entertainment celebration called Winter Weekend, put together by Smith Entertainment Group in collaboration with Palm Tree Crew, the outfit co-founded by DJ Kygo. The whole weekend is built around a Utah first: the state's first-ever outdoor NHL game, the Winter Classic, which pits the Utah Mammoth against the Colorado Avalanche at Rice-Eccles Stadium on December 31. The plan is to catch the game and then head over to the Delta Center for the concert.

If you're planning to make a real weekend of it, the rest of the schedule fills in nicely. On December 30, the Utah Jazz take on the New York Knicks at the Delta Center. The day after the big game and concert, on January 1, the Jazz face the Boston Celtics, and on January 2, the Utah Mammoth take on the Vancouver Canucks. Around that, there's a Gretzky Hockey School camp running December 27 to 30 and the Utah Mammoth Winter Cup youth tournament from January 1 to 3, so the city will be humming with hockey and basketball all through the turn of the year.

On the ticket front, there's some good news for the budget-conscious: more than 6,000 tickets will be priced under $125. Presale opens today, October 29, at 10 a.m., and the general sale follows on October 30 at 10 a.m., so it's worth having your plan ready before they go on sale to the general public. Post Malone is no stranger to the city's bigger stages, either; he played Rice-Eccles Stadium in July 2026 and again in April 2025, and he brings a massive audience with him, clocking in at over 63 million monthly Spotify listeners, while Alesso pulls in more than 16.5 million.

There's a bigger picture behind all this, too. Smith Entertainment Group is planning a new Sports, Entertainment, Culture, and Convention district in downtown Salt Lake City, which is expected to include a new 6,000-seat Live Nation concert venue, with the whole project slated for completion before the 2034 Winter Olympics and Paralympics. Mayor Erin Mendenhall is eyeing around five million visitors a year once it's done. The district is being built in part with public funds, including a half-point sales tax approved in October 2024 that's projected to bring in $900 million, with about $525 million earmarked for Delta Center renovations that should wrap up in 2027. For now, though, the immediate draw is much simpler: a home-state star and a world-class DJ ringing in the New Year in the heart of downtown.