The Blue Note Jazz Festival is not a weekend — it is a month. Running from June 1 through July 1 across multiple venues in New York City, the festival transforms the early summer calendar into an extended celebration of jazz and its adjacent traditions: soul, R&B, funk, and the experimental edges where those genres blur into something new.
Anchored by the Blue Note Jazz Club in Greenwich Village — one of the most storied jazz rooms in the world — the festival expands across Sony Hall, Central Park SummerStage, and other venues throughout the city. The result is not a single event but a season within a season, a month-long argument that jazz is not a museum piece but a living, evolving art form that draws from hip-hop, electronic music, and global traditions as readily as it draws from its own history.
The 15th Annual
Founded in 2011, the Blue Note Jazz Festival has grown from a club-based series into one of the premier jazz events in the country. The 2026 edition — the fifteenth — features Arrested Development, Brian Blade, and Big Freedia, a trio of headliners that illustrates the festival’s expansive definition of what belongs under the jazz umbrella. Brian Blade is a jazz drummer’s jazz drummer, revered by musicians and serious listeners. Arrested Development brought hip-hop and Afrocentrism together in ways that jazz has always done instinctively. Big Freedia brings the bounce — New Orleans energy that connects to jazz’s foundational geography through sheer rhythmic force.
Between the headliners, the month fills with performances that span the full spectrum: straight-ahead quartets, avant-garde experimentalists, vocalists working in the tradition of Billie Holiday and Sarah Vaughan, and genre-bending collaborations that could only happen at a festival willing to stretch the definition.
The Venues
The multi-venue format is central to the experience. Catching a set at the Blue Note — intimate, close to the stage, steeped in decades of history — is a fundamentally different experience from a Central Park outdoor show or a Sony Hall production. The festival uses that variety intentionally, matching artists to rooms in ways that serve the music. A solo piano recital belongs in a jazz club. A funk-brass blowout belongs in a hall. The programming reflects that understanding.
A Month-Long Excuse to Visit
For Upstate jazz fans, the Blue Note Jazz Festival offers unusual flexibility. Because it spans an entire month with shows nearly every night, you can plan a trip around the specific artists you want to see rather than committing to a fixed weekend. Pair it with a gallery visit or a dinner reservation, and you have a New York evening built around some of the best live music the city produces.
The 15th annual Blue Note Jazz Festival runs June 1 through July 1, 2026 across multiple venues in New York City. Full schedule and tickets at bluenotejazz.com.