Drink Las Vegas: Everything You Need to Know About MGM’s New Strip Food Festival

• Drink Las Vegas (September 24–27, 2026) is the first marquee multi-property food festival the Las Vegas Strip has hosted since Vegas Uncork’d’s quiet exit in 2019 — a seven-year silence the city has never publicly acknowledged
• The four-day festival spans 22 ticketed events at $275–$450 across Bellagio, ARIA, The Cosmopolitan, and Park MGM, hosted by 45 named chefs, mixologists, and Master Sommeliers, with three party events already sold out within six days of the announcement
• MGM-only host properties, cocktail-forward programming, and a21 production muscle are the three structural choices that make this festival meaningfully different from anything the Strip has staged before

The Strip’s marquee food festival has been dark for seven years. Most people on it don’t realize that.

Vegas Uncork’d by Bon Appétit ran thirteen annual editions from 2007 through 2019, anchored at the Garden of the Gods Pool at Caesars Palace, with the country’s best chefs swapping kitchens across Bellagio, ARIA, MGM Grand, the Cosmopolitan, and the Venetian for one long Mother’s Day weekend each May. Then COVID cancelled the 2020 edition, and the festival quietly never returned. By the time a Palms Casino press release in 2024 referred to Vegas Uncork’d as “now defunct”, the country’s biggest culinary city had been operating without its flagship food festival for half a decade.

Recently, MGM Resorts announced Drink Las Vegas — a four-day cocktail and culinary festival debuting September 24 through 27 across four MGM Resorts properties: Bellagio, ARIA, The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, and Park MGM. It is the first marquee multi-property food festival the Strip has hosted since 2019. Twenty-two ticketed events. Forty-five named chefs, mixologists, and Master Sommeliers. a21 — the agency behind the Food Network’s New York City Wine & Food Festival, Pebble Beach Food & Wine, and the South Beach Wine & Food Festival — running production. Tickets between $275 and $450. Three party events sold out within a week of the announcement.

The more interesting story isn’t that MGM is launching a festival. It’s that MGM is launching one alone. On its own properties. With its own chef roster. No Caesars co-host. No Bon Appétit brand on the masthead. No LVCVA tourism-board scaffolding behind it. For thirteen years, the Strip’s food festival ran across MGM, Caesars, and Venetian doors with a magazine partner steering the brand. Drink Las Vegas runs in four MGM hotels, period. That isn’t a side detail. That’s the entire story.

Here’s everything you need to know — every event, every chef, every venue, every price point, and the seven-year shift in Strip dining strategy that explains why this festival exists now.

The Strip’s Marquee Food Festival Returns After Seven Years of Silence

A vacuum nobody publicly named

For thirteen years, Vegas Uncork’d was the city’s culinary tentpole. Bon Appétit branded it. The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority had created the concept in 2007 to draw the country’s chefs into the Strip’s resort kitchens for one weekend each May, and by the late 2010s the Grand Tasting at the Garden of the Gods Pool was selling thousands of tickets a night, with chef-driven dinners and cocktail seminars rippling out across at least six resort properties. Bon Appétit’s own 2019 retrospective confirmed that May edition as the festival’s thirteenth year. It was also its last.

When COVID hit in March 2020, the 2020 edition was cancelled and the festival never returned. Bon Appétit moved on. The LVCVA shifted its tourism programming elsewhere. The Strip’s restaurant scene kept growing — Sphere opened, Resorts World debuted, Fontainebleau finally lit its tower — but no successor festival materialized to anchor the calendar. The city that calls itself a culinary capital spent half a decade operating without a flagship food festival, and almost no one outside the industry seemed to register it.

Drink Las Vegas is what fills that vacuum. Not a comeback of Uncork’d. Not a Caesars-led replacement. An MGM-owned festival on MGM properties with an MGM-only chef and cocktail roster, claiming the seasonal slot the Strip has been missing for seven years — and choosing September instead of May so the direct calendar comparison can’t even be made.

The Four-Day, Four-Property Map

Each MGM property carries a different role in the weekend

Drink Las Vegas takes place across four MGM Resorts hotels, all clustered on the same stretch of the central Strip: Bellagio, ARIA, The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, and Park MGM. Each property carries a different role.

ARIA Yucca Pool is the festival’s architectural anchor. Three of the four signature walk-around tastings happen here — Opening Night with Jean-Georges Vongerichten on Thursday, A Night of Excellence with the James Beard Foundation hosted by Tom Colicchio and Tiffany Derry on Friday, and Timeless Taste: Celebrating the Legacy of Las Vegas hosted by Michael Mina on Saturday. All three open with VIP entry at 7:15 PM and general admission at 8:00 PM. If you are booking around the headline events, ARIA is where you want to be by sundown.

Bellagio carries the marquee dinner spine. The property hosts the festival’s most high-profile single-restaurant programming: the Carbone Riviera Lunch on Saturday, the 24K Caviar & The Classics cocktail event at The Pinky Ring by Bruno Mars on Saturday evening, the Palate & Pour dinner with Karen Akunowicz and Mary Sue Milliken at Sadelle’s, the Spago lunch with Timothy Hollingsworth, and the closing Curtain Call brunch at The Mayfair Supper Club. Saturday is the property’s biggest night of the festival.

The Cosmopolitan is the cocktail and blind-menu lab. Westoria hosts three of the four chef-driven dinners — In Rare Form with Tom Colicchio and Tristen Epps-Long, Time & Terroir with Gabe Bertaccini and David Nayfeld, and Palate Deception with Eric Adjepong and Timothy Hollingsworth, a blind-menu dinner where guests are asked to guess which chef made which course. Amaya hosts the agave lunch. Momofuku closes the festival on Sunday with a lunch led by Master Sommelier Michaël Engelmann. The Cosmopolitan is the property for guests who want concept-driven programming over signature-tasting volume.

Park MGM is the late-night anchor. Two of the festival’s most distinctive nights happen here: Island Alchemy, a Caribbean dinner at Primrose with Paul Carmichael (of NYC’s Kabawa, named the East Village’s #1 restaurant by The New York Times in 2025), Tristen Epps-Long, and bartender Pepper Stashek; and Roy Choi’s IN THE MIX: Music Meets Mixology party at On the Record from 10 PM to 1 AM on Friday. If you’re staying up late, Park MGM is the address.

The $275–$450 Question

What you’re paying for, and what’s already sold out

Individual event tickets run from $275 to $450 per person, with VIP passes priced higher for the signature tastings. All attendees must be 21 or older. Las Vegas Advisor reported the price band on May 25 and called the events “focused enough to be worth it, most likely, to anyone who has a special interest in a particular restaurant, libation, chef, venue, or party.” Translation: this isn’t an everyone festival. It’s a niche-passionate-spender festival.

The demand evidence supports that read. As of six days after the announcement, three of the festival’s social events were sold out: the Welcome Party Thursday night, After Hours Thursday late-night, and the Closing Party Saturday night. The chef-driven dinners and signature tastings are still available as of this writing, but if the pattern holds, the marquee dinners — Carbone Riviera Lunch, 24K Caviar at Pinky Ring, the James Beard Foundation Night — are the ones that will close next. Tickets are at drinklasvegas.com.

The $275 floor is the same number Vegas Uncork’d was charging at the Grand Tasting in its later years. Drink Las Vegas is not undercutting the historical price; it is matching it and adding more programming hours and more cocktail content for the same dollar.

The Veterans: Vongerichten, Puck, Mina, Colicchio, Morimoto, Choi

The Strip’s resident heritage chefs, all on one weekend

The chef bench at Drink Las Vegas reads like a Las Vegas restaurant index. Jean-Georges Vongerichten, who runs Prime Steakhouse at Bellagio and Jean Georges Steakhouse at ARIA, hosts Opening Night. Wolfgang Puck, who has been a Strip dining presence since opening the original Spago at the Forum Shops in 1992, returns to his current Spago at Bellagio for Friday’s Contemporary Classics lunch with Timothy Hollingsworth. Michael Mina, of Bardot Brasserie at ARIA and Orla at the Cosmopolitan, hosts Saturday’s Timeless Taste. Tom Colicchio of Craftsteak appears at two events — Thursday’s In Rare Form steak dinner at Westoria, and Friday’s James Beard Foundation Night. Masaharu Morimoto, Mary Sue Milliken of Border Grill, and Roy Choi of Best Friend at Park MGM round out the heritage-chef bench.

Every one of these chefs has either a current Strip restaurant, a Strip history, or both. Drink Las Vegas is not flying chefs in to perform; it is gathering the city’s resident culinary stars onto one weekend. That structural choice matters. It signals that the festival is about showcasing what is already here, not about importing prestige.

The New Wave: Adjepong, Derry, Chauhan, Akunowicz, Carmichael

A deeper bench of newer-generation chefs, mostly TV- and James Beard–credentialed

Behind the veterans is a deeper bench of newer-wave talent, most of whom carry television and James Beard credentials. Tiffany Derry, a Top Chef alum and MasterChef judge, co-hosts the James Beard Foundation Night with Colicchio and appears at the Sunday Curtain Call brunch. Maneet Chauhan, the Food Network star and James Beard Best Chef–Southeast winner, also appears at Curtain Call. Eric Adjepong, the Top Chef finalist, hosts Saturday’s blind-menu Palate Deception dinner with Timothy Hollingsworth. Karen Akunowicz, James Beard Best Chef–Northeast, co-hosts Palate & Pour at Sadelle’s with Mary Sue Milliken. Paul Carmichael, the chef behind NYC’s Kabawa and Bar Kabawa, hosts the Caribbean Island Alchemy dinner at Park MGM’s Primrose. Ayesha Nurdjaja of Shuka and Shukette in NYC, Michelle Bernstein of Miami, Robbie Felice of New Jersey, and Jamie Bissonnette of the Toro restaurants fill out the modern bench.

Pair the heritage and the new-wave benches at the same festival and the message is clear: Las Vegas is a city of dining now, not a city of touring chefs. The veterans live here. The new wave is being invited to perform here. Drink Las Vegas is constructed as a showcase, and the showcase has its own depth chart.

The Cocktail Program Is the Real Story

Sixteen mixologists and why the festival’s name is literal

The name is “Drink Las Vegas,” not “Eat Las Vegas,” and the cocktail roster reflects that priority weighting in a way no Strip festival has done before. Sixteen mixologists are billed across the program: Meaghan Dorman of Raines Law Room and Dear Irving (the NYC bars that catalyzed the modern speakeasy revival), Lynnette Marrero, one of the country’s most influential female mixologists, Christine Kim of Washington’s Service Bar (a North America’s 50 Best Bars standout), Jason Asher of Juniper & Jigger Hospitality in Arizona, Rio Azmee of Stone & Soil (known for sustainability-driven cocktail design), Frank Maldonado of Employees Only, and Jeremy Barrett of Lemon, among others.

The cocktail-led format is what makes Drink Las Vegas structurally different from Vegas Uncork’d, which was always a wine-and-food festival with cocktails as a side program. Programming-wise, the cocktail seminars (No/Low: Re-defining Cocktails in the Modern Market; The Future Pour: Beverage Leaders Under 35) and cocktail-anchored events (Elements of Agave Lunch, IN THE MIX with Roy Choi, 24K Caviar at Pinky Ring, Gymkhana After Dark) carry close to half the festival’s footprint.

That’s not a marketing choice. That’s an industry bet. The U.S. beverage industry has been pivoting toward cocktail-led, no- and low-alcohol, and sustainability-driven programming for five years, and Vegas Uncork’d’s wine-and-food template doesn’t speak to the audience the post-pandemic festival circuit is being built for. Drink Las Vegas is, in its name and in its programming weights, designed for the next era.

Four Master Sommeliers — And Jason Smith’s Quiet Homecoming

The wine bench includes a former MGM Resorts wine director returning under a Constellation Brands title

Wine programming is led by four Master Sommeliers: Michaël Engelmann, who has worked across two decades of global hospitality groups and hosts the Sunday Momofuku lunch; Jesse Becker, co-owner of The German Wine Collection and Rockwerk Grüner Veltliner; Joe Phillips; and Jason Smith.

The Smith name deserves a flag. He is now Vice President of Global Strategy for Constellation Brands, but for years he ran MGM Resorts’ wine program as Executive Director of Wine. His return to a marquee MGM festival, under his current Constellation hat, is the kind of insider detail the local industry will read as a homecoming. Smith doesn’t appear at MGM properties often anymore. He’s appearing at this one.

It’s a small thing in the press release. It’s not a small thing in the room.

Five Marquee Events to Plan Around

The five tickets that define the weekend

Drink Las Vegas runs 22 ticketed events. Five are the ones building the festival’s identity. Plan your weekend around at least one of them.

Opening Night with Jean-Georges Vongerichten (Thursday, ARIA Yucca Pool, VIP 7:15 PM / GA 8:00 PM). Vongerichten leads the festival’s first walk-around tasting at one of the Strip’s signature outdoor venues. ARIA Yucca Pool has been the city’s go-to address for poolside high-production events since the property opened in 2009, and Opening Night is the festival’s brand-setting evening.

A Night of Excellence with the James Beard Foundation (Friday, ARIA Yucca Pool, VIP 7:15 PM / GA 8:00 PM). Hosted by Tom Colicchio and Tiffany Derry. The James Beard Foundation co-presented event is the festival’s institutional credibility night — a signal to the food world that Drink Las Vegas is being built on a James Beard-tier foundation, not on resort marketing.

24K: Caviar & The Classics at The Pinky Ring by Bruno Mars (Saturday, Bellagio, 6:00–8:00 PM). Bruno Mars’s emerald-and-mahogany cocktail lounge, tucked into Bellagio’s casino corridor, serves a caviar-and-classic-cocktail menu accompanied by Mars’s own house band. This is one of the festival’s most photographable events and, anecdotally from the festival’s first-week sell-through pattern, one of the harder tickets to land.

Timeless Taste: Celebrating the Legacy of Las Vegas (Saturday, ARIA Yucca Pool, VIP 7:15 PM / GA 8:00 PM). Michael Mina hosts. The conceit — Strip culinary history, served by the chefs and bartenders who built it — is the festival’s most thematically Las Vegas event. If you want one ticket that explains why this festival exists in this city, this is it.

Curtain Call: A Spirited Performance Brunch (Sunday, Bellagio’s Mayfair Supper Club, 1:00–3:00 PM). Hosted by Maneet Chauhan, Tiffany Derry, Kelsey Murphy, and Ayesha Nurdjaja — the only headliner event of the festival with an all-female chef lineup, at one of Bellagio’s most theatrical dining rooms. It’s the festival’s closing event and, structurally, its most distinctive choice. More on this below.

Carbone Riviera Lunch — At a Six-Months-In Bellagio Flagship

The festival lunch is a private menu at an already-open MFG restaurant, not a soft launch

Saturday’s Carbone Riviera Lunch (12:00–2:30 PM) is one of Drink Las Vegas’s most coveted seats, and it deserves the right context. Carbone Riviera is not a new opening or a soft launch. The restaurant opened on November 7, 2025 in Bellagio’s former Picasso space, by Major Food Group co-founders Mario Carbone, Jeff Zalaznick, and Rich Torrisi in partnership with MGM Resorts.

The Martin Brudnizki-designed dining room features original Picasso, Miró, and Renoir art on the walls. The patio extends to a Riva yacht on a floating deck overlooking the Bellagio Fountains. The menu plays the hits — Carbone’s famous spicy rigatoni vodka is on it — alongside seafood-forward additions including whole king crab, whole turbot, lobster polpette fra diavolo, and a branzino al sale verde reported by the local food press at $325. By the time Drink Las Vegas convenes in September 2026, Carbone Riviera will have been operating for roughly ten months.

The festival lunch is a curated private menu served once, and it is selling against demand from a restaurant that has waiting lists for its regular reservations. The original Carbone at ARIA, which opened in 2015 and altered Major Food Group’s trajectory by establishing the brand as a Strip cultural fixture, is the right historical reference. Carbone Riviera at Bellagio is the next move in that arc.

The event is the marquee for guests who want the “we got into Carbone Riviera” story to lead with. It is not your only chance to dine there.

The Curtain Call Brunch — The Sunday Closer Nobody Is Talking About Yet

Four female chefs at Bellagio’s Mayfair Supper Club, structurally the festival’s most distinctive event

The festival’s last event is, by any structural measure, its most editorially distinctive. Sunday’s Curtain Call brunch at The Mayfair Supper Club is hosted by four chefs — Maneet Chauhan, Tiffany Derry, Kelsey Murphy, and Ayesha Nurdjaja. It’s the only Drink Las Vegas headliner event with an all-female chef lineup. The venue — a high-theatrical supper club inside Bellagio’s casino floor, built for live performance — is constructed for the kind of mid-day brunch that gets photographed all afternoon and circulates all week.

The press release barely mentioned this event. The trade coverage has been quiet on it. It is, in our reading, the event that says the most about where Drink Las Vegas wants to sit culturally going forward — a closing flourish that takes the festival out on a different note than it began on, and a programming choice that quietly suggests MGM is paying attention to the conversation about whose names anchor a food festival’s identity.

If the festival becomes annual, expect this event to grow.

What Vegas Uncork’d Was, and What Drink Las Vegas Is Doing Differently

A structural comparison, since Uncork’d is the only fair benchmark even though it’s been dark since 2019

Vegas Uncork’d is the right benchmark, even though it hasn’t run since 2019. It ran for thirteen years and it ran across resort lines — Caesars Palace was the host, but Bellagio, ARIA, MGM Grand, the Cosmopolitan, and the Venetian all programmed chefs into the schedule. Bon Appétit gave it the magazine brand. The LVCVA gave it tourism-board scaffolding. It read as a city festival under a Caesars roof.

Drink Las Vegas is structured almost as the inverse. The host is a single operator. The four properties are all MGM. The brand co-host is the festival itself — no magazine partner is going to give Drink Las Vegas a Condé Nast title. The charitable beneficiary is Keep Memory Alive at the Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health, the Frank Gehry-designed brain-health institution the Ruvo family founded in Las Vegas, rather than a tourism-board allocation.

Pricing is the one place Drink Las Vegas and Uncork’d actually look similar — Uncork’d’s Grand Tasting historically sat near $275, and Drink Las Vegas’s signature events open at $275. The shape of the weekend is otherwise entirely different: tighter venue scope, cocktail-led programming, no magazine-brand co-host, and a single operator behind every door.

If Drink Las Vegas works, it isn’t because it replaces Uncork’d. It’s because it doesn’t try to.

The Strategic Frame: Buffets Out, Festivals In

Drink Las Vegas is the editorial centerpiece of MGM’s broader F&B reset

Drink Las Vegas isn’t an isolated marketing program. It’s the editorial centerpiece of a broader MGM Resorts food-and-beverage strategy that’s been quietly visible across the past year.

Three other moves matter here. First, the MGM Grand Buffet closed permanently on May 31, 2026 — one of the Strip’s most iconic all-you-can-eat rooms turning off its lights after decades of service. Second, Casino.org reported in spring 2026 that all remaining MGM Resorts buffets will close by the end of 2027, confirming a portfolio-wide exit from the buffet model. Third — and the announcement that sits inside this same May 2026 news cycle — Drink Las Vegas launches as the first ticketed experiential food program MGM has run at this scale on its own properties.

Put it together and the strategy is legible. MGM is replacing all-you-can-eat economics ($60 buffets feeding 800 covers a day) with ticketed experiential dining ($275–$450 covers feeding 200 a night). Volume out, margin in. The buffet was about visitor density. Drink Las Vegas is about visitor selectivity. And the festival is structurally how MGM signals to the food world that its premium-dining strategy isn’t a per-property question — it’s a coordinated city-strategy bet.

The buffet era closes the same year Drink Las Vegas opens. That isn’t a coincidence. That’s the calendar of a reset.

About a21, the Festival Operator MGM Hired

The production agency behind New York City Wine & Food, South Beach, and Pebble Beach

A festival announcement is only as serious as its production team. MGM hired well.

a21 is a Florida-based experiential events agency founded in 2006, and its portfolio reads like the U.S. food-festival circuit’s address book. It runs the Food Network South Beach Wine & Food Festival, the Food Network New York City Wine & Food Festival, Pebble Beach Food & Wine, Atlanta Food & Wine, Los Angeles Wine & Food, and Palm Beach Wine & Food, plus SunFest and the International Wine & Spirits Competition. CEO and founder Brett Friedman, quoted in MGM’s announcement, called Drink Las Vegas “the next great chapter for live culinary experiences in the U.S.”

The reason a21 matters for your read on this festival: if you are a chef invited to do Drink Las Vegas, you already know a21’s brand, you have probably worked one of their other festivals, and you are showing up expecting Pebble Beach-tier production rather than resort-marketing improvisation. The chef booking quality is partially explained by who’s running the event behind the scenes. a21 is the answer.

It’s also why the festival is being read as part of the national food-festival circuit from year one rather than as a regional MGM event. That circuit positioning is hard to fake.

Where to Stay: A Cross-Property Lodging Strategy

Each host property has a different argument for being your base

The four host properties are within a fifteen-minute walk of each other on the central Strip, but the weekend programming pattern means each property has a different argument for being your base.

Stay at ARIA if your priority is the three Yucca Pool signature tastings, the Sunday lunch at Momofuku next door at the Cosmopolitan, or the Thursday Zodiac Dinner at Blossom. ARIA is also where Gymkhana After Dark lands (11 PM–1 AM Saturday) — the Michelin-starred Indian restaurant from JKS, which opened at ARIA in late 2025 and remains one of the property’s hardest reservations.

Stay at Bellagio if you’ve prioritized Saturday: Carbone Riviera Lunch, 24K Caviar at the Pinky Ring, Palate & Pour at Sadelle’s, and Sunday’s Curtain Call at the Mayfair Supper Club are all here, plus the property is home to Friday’s Spago lunch and the Jasmine cocktail seminar. Bellagio is the highest-event-density address of the festival.

Stay at The Cosmopolitan if you’re a Westoria-heavy planner — three chef dinners run out of that restaurant alone — or if you’d rather walk to the Bellagio events than from ARIA. The Cosmopolitan is also the only host property with a Momofuku.

Stay at Park MGM if you’re prioritizing late-night programming (Roy Choi’s IN THE MIX, the Friday Caribbean dinner at Primrose) and want easy walking access to the south end of the Strip.

For MGM Rewards members, the festival weekend is also a tier-credit play — every booking through MGM Resorts loyalty during the festival window pulls full credit on the property nights and the F&B spend, which over four days of $300+ tickets adds up.

Why September Is the Right Time to Plan a Vegas Foodie Trip

Weather, room rates, and the festival’s deliberate calendar choice

September on the Strip is one of the city’s quietly best windows. Average highs drop from the low 90s to mid-80s by month-end. Evenings sit in the mid-60s. The convention pace eases off compared to October’s peak. Football season hasn’t fully locked the city’s room block yet. Pool nights — Drink Las Vegas hosts three of its four signature tastings poolside at ARIA Yucca — are still seasonally viable.

A Drink Las Vegas weekend (Thursday through Sunday, September 24–27) lands inside that window. It also doesn’t compete with EDC (May), Vegas Uncork’d legacy ghosts (May), or NFL home opener weekends. MGM Rewards rate availability for September 23–27 currently runs substantially below the October 1 cliff. If you’re flying in for the festival, this is the easiest non-summer window the calendar will give you.

The September choice was also deliberate on MGM’s part. Booking Drink Las Vegas in May would have put it directly into Vegas Uncork’d’s old slot, which would have read as either a tribute or a takeover. September puts the festival in clean calendar space — no inherited timing, no inherited audience expectations, no inherited comparisons. The new festival gets its own season.

What’s Still to Come

The open questions, and the festival’s published commitment to more programming announcements

drinklasvegas.com explicitly notes “additional programming to be released.” The press release backs that up. MGM has signaled more chefs, more events, and more partner announcements are coming between now and September 24.

Two things are still unknown. First, whether MGM positions Drink Las Vegas as an annual fixture or as a one-time inaugural. Friedman’s “next great chapter” quote implies recurrence, but no public commitment to a 2027 edition has been made. Second, whether Caesars Entertainment responds. The Strip’s other major resort operator has been notably quiet about the MGM festival launch, which is either a sign of confidence (Vegas Uncork’d is dead and they’re not coming back to it) or a sign of planning (a Caesars-led festival announcement is the obvious counter-move). Either way, the fall calendar is suddenly in play.

For Drink Las Vegas ticket holders, the operational read is simple: events that haven’t been announced yet won’t be cheaper, and they won’t be less in demand. If you have a budget for one more event, hold it for the August programming drop.

FAQ

Q: What is Drink Las Vegas?

A: Drink Las Vegas is the inaugural four-day cocktail and culinary festival hosted by MGM Resorts International, running September 24–27, 2026 across Bellagio, ARIA, The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, and Park MGM. It features 22 ticketed events with 45 named chefs, mixologists, and Master Sommeliers, produced by a21, the agency behind the Food Network’s New York City and South Beach Wine & Food Festivals.

Q: What happened to Vegas Uncork’d?

A: Vegas Uncork’d ran 13 editions from 2007 through 2019 before COVID cancelled the 2020 edition. The festival never returned. A 2024 Palms Casino press release referred to Vegas Uncork’d as “now defunct.” Drink Las Vegas is the first marquee multi-property food festival on the Strip in seven years.

Q: How much do Drink Las Vegas tickets cost?

A: Individual event tickets range from $275 to $450 per person, with VIP passes priced higher for the signature tastings. All attendees must be 21 or older. Tickets are available at drinklasvegas.com.

Q: Which Drink Las Vegas events are already sold out?

A: As of late May 2026, three social events are sold out: the Welcome Party on Thursday, After Hours late-night on Thursday, and the Closing Party on Saturday. The chef-driven dinners and signature tastings remained available at the time of writing.

Q: Which chefs are headlining Drink Las Vegas?

A: Headline chefs include Jean-Georges Vongerichten, Wolfgang Puck, Michael Mina, Tom Colicchio, Masaharu Morimoto, Roy Choi, Mary Sue Milliken, and Paul Carmichael. The new-wave bench includes Tiffany Derry, Maneet Chauhan, Eric Adjepong, Karen Akunowicz, Ayesha Nurdjaja, Michelle Bernstein, and Jamie Bissonnette.

Q: Is Carbone Riviera new?

A: No. Carbone Riviera opened at Bellagio on November 7, 2025, in the former Picasso space. The restaurant is a Major Food Group flagship by Mario Carbone, Jeff Zalaznick, and Rich Torrisi, with a Riva yacht on a floating deck patio overlooking the Bellagio Fountains. The Drink Las Vegas Carbone Riviera Lunch on September 26 is a special festival event at an established restaurant — not a soft launch.

Q: Where should I stay during Drink Las Vegas?

A: It depends on your itinerary. Bellagio is highest-event-density. ARIA is closest to the Yucca Pool signature tastings. The Cosmopolitan is best for Westoria-heavy planners. Park MGM is best for late-night programming. All four properties are within a 15-minute walk of each other on the central Strip.

Q: What’s the cocktail program at Drink Las Vegas?

A: Sixteen mixologists are billed, led by Meaghan Dorman of Raines Law Room (NYC), Lynnette Marrero, Christine Kim of Service Bar (Washington DC), Jason Asher, and Rio Azmee of Stone & Soil. Programming includes cocktail seminars (No/Low, The Future Pour) and cocktail-anchored events (IN THE MIX with Roy Choi, 24K Caviar at Pinky Ring, Gymkhana After Dark).

Q: What charity does Drink Las Vegas support?

A: Proceeds benefit Keep Memory Alive at the Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health in Las Vegas. The Lou Ruvo Center is a Frank Gehry-designed brain-health institution founded by the Ruvo family.

Q: What’s happening at The Pinky Ring during Drink Las Vegas?

A: Saturday September 26 from 6:00 to 8:00 PM, The Pinky Ring by Bruno Mars at Bellagio hosts 24K: Caviar & The Classics — a caviar-and-classic-cocktail event accompanied by Bruno Mars’s house band. It is one of the festival’s most photographable events.

Q: Will Drink Las Vegas be annual?

A: MGM has not formally committed to an annual edition, but a21 CEO Brett Friedman’s “next great chapter for live culinary experiences in the U.S.” language implies recurrence. Watch the ticket sell-through and the post-festival press signals for a definitive answer.

Q: Why is MGM launching a food festival now?

A: Two reasons. First, the Strip’s marquee food festival has been absent since Vegas Uncork’d’s 2019 demise — seven years of vacant calendar territory to claim. Second, MGM is restructuring its food-and-beverage strategy from all-you-can-eat economics to premium ticketed experiences: the MGM Grand Buffet closed May 31, 2026, all remaining MGM buffets are scheduled to close by 2027, and Drink Las Vegas is the editorial centerpiece of that pivot.

Sources

• MGM Resorts International. (2026). MGM Resorts International Reveals Lineup of Cocktail, Culinary and VIP Experiences for Drink Las Vegas, Sept. 24-27. PR Newswire. Retrieved from https://www.prnewswire.com/
• Drink Las Vegas. (2026). Events. Retrieved from https://www.drinklasvegas.com/events/
• Drink Las Vegas. (2026). Talent. Retrieved from https://www.drinklasvegas.com/talent/
• Las Vegas Advisor. (2026, May 25). Drink Las Vegas Announced. Retrieved from https://www.lasvegasadvisor.com/news/
• Wang, A. (2025, November 10). Carbone Riviera Lands in Las Vegas With Fittingly Theatrical Flair. Observer. Retrieved from https://observer.com/2025/11/carbone-riviera-restaurant-bellagio-las-vegas-opening/
• Bellagio Las Vegas. (2026). Carbone Riviera — Restaurant Details. MGM Resorts. Retrieved from https://bellagio.mgmresorts.com/en/restaurants/carbone-riviera.html
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