NYC events in April 2025

Need a vacation? Head to The Bronx for The Orchid Show: Mexican Modernism at New York Botanical Garden. The sprawling floral exhibition, with its vibrant colors, flowing waterfalls and thousands of orchids, makes for a transportive tropical escape. 

This year's show, presented in the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory, was inspired by the art of the Mexican modernist architect Luis Barragán. Throughout your floral adventure, you'll learn about the late artist's ethos as you stroll through meditative spaces, explore minimalist designs and notice contrasting details. The Orchid Show: Mexican Modernism is open from February 15-April 27. Don't miss Orchid Nights, 21+ events on select nights that feature cumbia music, dancing, and drinks. 

Revel in forthcoming warm weather at the annual Macy’s Flower Show. NYC will be budding with blooms all over, but nothing beats roaming the sweet-smelling foliage that suddenly appears at one of the city’s best department stores: Macy’s Herald Square.

This year's theme hasn't been announced yet, but Macy's says the show will transform the store's main floor, balcony and windows. Expect "a whimsical oasis featuring the beauty and fragrance of spring as thousands of plants, flowers and trees bloom on the iconic store's main floor," Macy's officials said in a press release.

The Flower Show runs from Sunday, April 27 to Sunday May 11, 2025. 

The Easter Bonnet Parade & Festival is one of the highlights of Easter in NYC.

This parade is all about the hats—lavishly decorated, from the exquisite to the outlandish. Anyone is welcome to join, just show up near St. Patrick’s Cathedral at 10am on Easter Sunday to watch or saunter with the group up Fifth Avenue. The free tradition dates back to the 1870s, so you might even see some participants in period costumes. But the highlight is the elaborate bonnets, some of which are truly over-the-top.

If you want to participate, put on your creative thinking cap and get started on your work of chapeaux art ASAP. 

There's nothing like a day of worshipping our planet to put an optimistic spin on dwindling resources, rising sea levels and the alarming acceleration of climate change. This year's events offer a chance to give back to mother nature.

Hitting a Yankees game couldn’t be more quintessentially New York. The Major League Baseball team, which won the World Series in 1978, 1996, 1998, 1999, 2000 and 2009, made it to the World Series again in 2024! To date, the Yankees have won 27 World Series in 42 appearances, the most in the MLB in addition to major North American professional sports leagues.

Even if you're not a big sports fan, going to a game is a bucket list activity with hot dogs, fun cheers, and great energy.

Heading to Madison Square Garden to watch the Knicks play makes for an iconic night out in NYC. The basketball team made the playoffs recently in the 2020-21 season led by forward Julius Randle and RJ Barrett. 

Catch them at MSG now!

Celebrating 4/20 is always a buzz, but the holiday in NYC has become an even bigger deal now that cannabis is legal for adult use in New York.

If you want to celebrate 4/20 in a big way this month, we know just the places to elevate your roll. You may gain some extra inspiration from watching the best stoner movies and listening to the best weed songs.

In the 1950 film masterpiece Sunset Boulevard, Hollywood glamour is a dead-end street. Stalled there with no one coming to find her—except perhaps to use her car—is Norma Desmond: a former silent-screen goddess who is now all but forgotten.

Secluded and deluded, she haunts her own house and plots her grand return to the pictures; blinded by the spotlight in her mind, she is unaware that what she imagines to be a hungry audience out there in the dark is really just the dark.

You may not yet know the name Amy Sherald, but you have definitely seen her work. She's the artist who created those iconic portraits of First Lady Michelle Obama and Breonna Taylor—two of the most recognizable and significant paintings made by an American artist in recent years. You'll get to see those artworks and much more as The Whitney presents a show titled "Amy Sherald: American Sublime," the artist's first New York museum solo show.

With 50 paintings, the exhibition explores Sherald's career to date, her signature portrait style, and her depictions of American life. Dedicated to American realism and portraiture, her work corrects an evident absence of Black Americans the work of early American realists. 

The show's on view from April 9–August 10, 2025.

With a more than eight decade-long run, Mary J Blige's career has stood the test of time, and she's showing her fans some love with a tour aptly named the "For My Fans Tour."

Her concert at Madison Square Garden on April 10 will likely touch on most of the songs from her Gratitude album that came out in November 2024, but we're sure to get some of the biggest hits from her expansive career, too. She's taking the stage with other R&B icons NE-YO and Mario, so expect a full-on production. 

Not even Charli xcx could have predicted the massive success of Brat last year, when she sold out Madison Square Garden on her joint tour with Troye Sivan. Now she's coming to Brooklyn for four consecutive nights from April 30 to May 4—this time by herself—for any of us who might have missed her the go around. 

The impact of Brat will likely be felt in the music industry for years to come, and we're excited to catch Charli perform our favorite songs in her post-Grammys glow.

The pun, that most democratic of jokes: At its best, it’s sublimely satisfying to the reptilian part of our brains that loves easy comedy. At its worst, it produces a groan so gut-deep, it’s almost as good as a belly laugh. The form is mined for all it’s worth at this monthly tournament, hosted by Rodney Dangerfield impersonator Fred Firestone and his daughter, Jo.

A fixture on the NYC comedy landscape for more than a decade, this show at Littlefield in Brooklyn is like a rap battle, only much nerdier. Hear pun pros face-off in the All-Star Tournament of Pun Champions where punsters deliver two-minute pun-stand-up routines, after only two minutes of preparation.

Here's the lineup of 2025 shows: April 30, July 9, September 3, and October 29. 

Explore the overlap between abstract art, weaving, craft, and fashion at this MoMA exhibit. "Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction" delves into the dynamic intersections between weaving and abstraction. See 150 works in a range of mediums—from textiles and basketry to painting, drawing, sculpture, and media works.

The exhibition seeks to challenge long-held notions of the weave as a function of textile alone, exploring the many forms both warp and weft have taken when explored by abstract artists over the past 100 years.

It's on view April 20–September 13, 2025.

The fabulous fighting gals of Sailor Moon, the mega-popular Japanese manga and animated series that captured our hearts and imaginations in the 1990s, are coming to life in a live show right here in Times Square this April.

Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon: The Super Live, which debuted in Tokyo in August 2018, in Paris in November 2018, in Washington, D.C. and in New York in March 2019, is back in town at Palladium Times Square Theater on April 24-26 to conclude its North America tour, “rocking the stage with love, justice and friendship.”

The show is a 2.5D musical, which means it’s based on the 2D manga (Japanese comic book) art form, rather than 3D theater.

The Australian rock band formed in 1983, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, has cycled through many eras, and this might be one of their most iconic yet. Last year, they released their 18th studio album, Wild God, which topped the charts across Europe and was praised for its over the top and poisitive vibes. Catch them at Barclays Center on April 17. 

Need a laugh? The Second City—the renowned comedy club with locations in Chicago and Toronto—just opened in Brooklyn, and you will definitely laugh out loud there. The New York City venue, which opened on the legendary club’s 65th anniversary, offers hilarious live comedy every single night of the week.

Some of the funniest names in comedy got their start at Second City. Just a few Second City alumni include: Bill Murray, Eugene Levy, Catherine O'Hara, Amber Ruffin, Keegan-Michael Key, Chris Farley, Tina Fey, Stephen Colbert, and Aidy Bryant. You might just see the next comedy star on this stage.

The venue offers sketch shows and improv performances, along with a great restaurant and no drink minimums in a beautiful venue. Tickets start at $39.

How is she? Ever since it was confirmed that Audra McDonald would star in the latest revival of Gypsy, Broadway fans have speculated about how Audra would be as Mama Rose—or, more nervously, whether Audra could be Mama Rose, the implacable stage mother who sacrifices everything to make her two daughters into stars. So let’s get that question out of the way up front. How is Audra as Rose? She’s a revelation. 

So, too, is the rest of George C. Wolfe’s deeply intelligent and beautifully mounted production, which comes as a happy surprise.

Following its 2020 closure, the Frick Collection will officially reopen on April 17 inside its historic Gilded Age mansion at 1 East 70th Street by Fifth Avenue. When it reopens, visitors will get to experience even more of the museum's extensive collection by stepping inside restored spaces on the first floor while also walking around a new roster of galleries on the mansion's second floor, open to the public for the very first time.

According to The Frick, the second floor used to be the Frick family’s private living quarters, but later became staff meeting rooms and administrative offices. So yes, you’ll be able to walk into the original bedroom of Henry Clay Frick.

Forget the 14-hour flight from NYC to Tokyo, you can now discover the tastes of Japan with just a short subway ride to JAPAN Fes. The massive annual food festival just announced its 2025 dates, and the schedule is packed with events.

The organization is hosting nearly 30 outdoor events in NYC this year. What used to be just a summertime festival is now a year-round celebration across Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens. Event organizers say it's the largest Japanese food festival in the world, attracting 300,000 visitors and featuring 1,000 vendors every year.

In April, the event pops up on April 5 in the East Village; April 6 on the Upper West Side; April 19 on the Upper West Side; April 20 in Chelsea; April 26 in Chelsea; and April 27 in Astoria.

Following a sold-out debut at Projectorfest, Aarushi Agni’s solo show "EMOJI: The Hieroglyphs of Our Time, or how I learned to stop worrying and send the risky text 🤷🏽‍♀️" is coming to the NYC Fringe Festival at Under St. Marks Theater with shows on April 5, 10, 18, and 19.

Billed as an "ADHD-friendly, chaotic TED Talk," this sharp and funny mix of music, comedy and multimedia explores risky texts, emoji semiotics, and how we navigate love, longing and global crises through connections both digital and deeply human. "Expect laughs 🤣, existential dread 🫠, and maybe even the courage to send that text 💣💖" at this show directed by Dominique Nisperos.

Smorgasburg, the food bazaar spectacular, is back for 2025 with dozens of great local vendors across three locations.

Smorgasburg WTC runs on Fridays; Williamsburg is on Saturdays; and Prospect Park is on Sundays. Each location is open weekly through October. 

For neurodiverse audiences, the world of performing arts is not always a welcoming place. So in its seventh annual Big Umbrella Festival, Lincoln Center is inviting that world to come to them.

From April 4 through April 20, 2025, the arts complex will host companies from the U.S., the U.K., Australia, Mexico and Peru in programs specially designed to entertain and engage with children, teens and adults with autism, sensory and communication disorders or learning disabilities. The festival's events cover a spectrum of theater, music, dance, comedy and visual art.