Coney Island fireworks
Photograph: Shutterstock
Photograph: Shutterstock

NYC events in July 2025

Starting making your Independence Day plans and check out the other amazing NYC events in July.

Rossilynne Skena Culgan
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Some of the best things to do in summer are NYC events in July. Even after all the 4th of July events simmer down, there are still many awesome things to do for the duration of the month. After Independence Day, enjoy fantastic outdoor fun, hit up one of the city’s many rooftops and make sure to pencil in getting a tan at the best beaches in NYC while the weather is still hot, hot, hot. 

RECOMMENDED: Full NYC events calendar

Best NYC events in July 2025

  • Sports and fitness
  • Baseball & softball

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. Through 2024, their all-time regular season winning percentage is .569 (a 10,778 – 8,148 record)—the best of any team in MLB history.

Grab your tickets now to see NYC in action!

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  • Musicals
  • Midtown WestOpen run
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • Recommended

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.

  • Things to do
  • Events & Festivals

A bevy open-air night markets will pop up around town this summer, from the Bronx to Brooklyn and Manhattan to Queens. Plus, the Vegan Night Market and Latin Night Market are back! This summer also sees the first Union Square Night Market and the first Lincoln Center Night Market.  

We've rounded up details on all of them, so grab some cash and make plans to eat locally—and deliciously. 

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  • Things to do
  • Events & Festivals

In the resonant words of A$AP Rocky, "The nails, the kilts, the pretty-boy swag, the pearls—I think it's just being comfortable. I just express myself with fashion, and what's fly is fly." What's fly is "Ice Cold: An Exhibition of Hip-Hop Jewelry" at the American Museum of Natural History, a new show that features dozens of incredible necklaces, rings, watches, chains, and more worn by some of the biggest names in music.

A few highlights include T-Pain's Big Ass Chain necklace, Ghostface Killah's eagle arm band, Nicki Minaj's Barbie pendant, Beyoncé's nail rings, Cardi B's nipple covers, and Slick Rick's crown. While the pieces are a sight to behold up-close, the exhibit carries a much deeper meaning, especially as New York City wraps up its 50 years of hip-hop celebrations.

  • Things to do
  • Events & Festivals

Sometimes you’ll feel very tall, sometimes very small, and sometimes in awe of it all at this new New York Botanical Garden exhibit that celebrates the magic of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. With a variety of botanical and artistic exhibitions throughout the Bronx garden’s 250 acres, “Wonderland: Curious Nature” encourages visitors to get “curiouser and curiouser” around every turn. 

See a massive white (well, actually green) rabbit made entirely of plants; explore an enchanting English garden with delightfully weird flora; climb through a rabbit hole; hang out in a house made of mycelium bricks; and much more at this sprawling exhibition. Wonderland: Curious Nature runs through October 27, 2024, and will evolve with each season.

Though it's now more than 150 years since the first publication of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, the delightful story with its heroic protagonist feels just as fresh as ever—especially at New York Botanical Garden with its enchanting scientific and artistic twist on the story. 

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  • Theater & Performance

If you're Broadway enthusiast but don't necessarily have the budget to check out all the best shows, you'll enjoy this: Bryant Park is going to play home to some of the most iconic Broadway productions on select days from 12:30pm-1:30pm next month, so you can get a taste of it all. 

The performances, an effort organized by 106.7 LITE FM and iHeartRadio Broadway, will kick off on Thursday, July 11 and continue for the subsequent three Thursdays on a stage setup in the park at Sixth Avenue between 40th and 42nd streets. 

Dubbed Broadway in Bryant Park, the lineup is stacked with some of the best numbers from some of the most popular musicals. 

Because the events are free, it's recommended that you show up early to secure a good spot. 

  • Music
  • Music

The Rooftop at Pier 17 has long been one of our favorite concert venues in New York City. The panoramic views, the chill vibe, and the stellar acoustics make it a truly special spot to see a show. And with this year's stacked lineup of 60+ concerts this summer, it's definitely worth heading there for a night of live music.

The sixth Summer Concert Series on The Rooftop at Pier 17 features more than 60 artists in genres from rap (Isaiah Rashad) to rock (Social Distortion) to electronic (Electric Callboy) and more. Plus, there are several bands on the roster that will make Millennials swoon with nostalgia (like Taking Back Sunday, Something Corporate, Two Door Cinema Club, and Mayday Parade). Read on for the full lineup and get tickets here.   

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  • Music
  • Music

New York summers wouldn't feel the same without the iconic MoMA PS1 music series, which every year highlights some of the most relevant DJs of the moment. MoMA PS1's Warm Up series is about to back for its 26th season in Long Island City.

For six Fridays in July and August, the museum's outdoor space turns into a giant day party from 4pm-10pm. The lineup includes Hyperdub label founder Kode9, Jersey club pioneer UNIIQU3, Juliana Huxtable and other underground club culture icons from cities like São Paulo, Paris, and beyond. 

  • Things to do
  • Events & Festivals

Eat your way through Japan without ever leaving New York City at JAPAN Fes, the massive foodie festival, which is back and bigger than ever for 2024. The organization is hosting 30 outdoor events this year stretching through November in 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.

Expect dishes including takoyaki, ramen, matcha sweets, yakisoba, karaage, okonomiyaki, and lots more. They're even hosting a ramen contest and a konamon contest this year to crown the best of the bunch. Vendors hail from New York City, as well as other states and other countries. 

Here's the full list of dates and neighborhoods.

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  • Things to do
  • Events & Festivals

Bryant Park's Picnic Performances will bring the best of NYC to the stage, including the New York City Opera, Jalopy Theatre, Carnegie Hall, the Harlem Chamber Players, and the American Symphony Orchestra.

Best of all, all 25 performances are free and open to the public. Many performances will be livestreamed for free on Bryant Park’s social media channels and website in case you can’t make it in person.

The lineup includes The Late Show with Stephen Colbert bandleader Louis Cato; trumpeter Steven Bernstein playing the music of James Bond with Arturo O’Farrill and The Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra; the NYC premiere of Ghanaian highlife band Gyedu-Bly Ambolley; Ronald K. Brown/EVIDENCE dance company; South African world pop star Thandiswa Mazwai and many more.

  • Movies
  • Movies

The beloved Movie Nights series is coming back to Bryant Park this summer with Paramount+. Screenings will take place every Monday at 8pm from June 10 through August 12. 

Be warned, though: the screenings are very popular and Bryant Park recommends getting there at 6pm in order to snag a good spot, but we suggest getting there even earlier, perhaps by 5pm, when the lawn opens for picnicking. 

Here's the July lineup:

  • July 1: The Gladiator (2000)
  • July 8: Old School (2003)
  • July 15: Funny Face (1957)
  • July 22: Cinema Paradiso (1988)
  • July 29: How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days (2003)
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  • Art
  • Art

Basically a massive maze made of ropes, this new exhibit allows attendees to jump inside, climb, relax and even get lost in the whole webbed arrangement that’s comprised of 80,000 feet of handwoven rope, which is part of a 400-square-foot interactive artwork created by Treenet Collective, a net expert company. 

Find "The INTERnet" at INTER_, the interactive art center at 415 Broadway by Canal Street in Soho.

The installation, which accommodates 15 people at once, boasts a variety of different weaving styles, each one creating a "setting" for folks to dive into, including the "quantum leap," where guests can play in mid-air, and the "social network," a more serene space that will feel like you are floating above everyone else.

  • Art
  • Art

Ocean noise, chemical pollution, climate change and sea level rise are words that often appear in the news. But these important concepts can be hard to make sense of—or to understand at all.

That's where artist Jenny Kendler comes in. Her new exhibit, Other of Pearl, confronts these pressing environmental issues in ways that feel more accessible with stirring whale songs, incredible pearl sculptures, a crystalline whale eye cast with human tears, and more. You can see these powerful works for free on Wednesdays-Sundays from 10am-5pm now through October on Governors Island. 

Seven intimate, delicate works are displayed in the cavernous, subterranean magazine of historic Fort Jay, a star-shaped fortification built on Governors Island between 1775 and 1776. 

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  • Drinking

Watermark Bar has transformed into the tropically-themed Watermark Beach. Expect a full season of fun at Watermark Beach, which will be gussied up for the warm weather with Instagram-ready tiki decor, seasonal drinks and twinkling lights for when the party stretches into the nighttime hours.

And this summer, the al fresco experience will introduce new cabanas and a curated new cocktail program, in addition to large-format Cooler Packages, which will allow guests to have their canned and bottled drinks ready on ice as they visit. 

  • Things to do
  • Events & Festivals

Lincoln Center is gearing up to launch the third annual Summer for the City festival. From June 12 through August 10, New Yorkers will get to attend over 200 free or choose-what-you-pay events that span a variety of topics, genres and  locations.

You can read through the entire calendar right here but standouts include virtual reality experience The Dream Machine, which features five distinct game-like interactive performances; a night of opera and drag with two superstar queens from RuPaul's Drag Race, Monét X Change and Sapphira Cristál; and a silent disco night as part of India Week with DJ Rajuju Brown. 

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Smorgasburg, the food bazaar spectacular, is back for 2024 with dozens of great local vendors across four locations.

In fact, with more than 70 vendors, it's the largest Smorgasburg lineup since 2018! Vendors this year will serve up fragrant Ethiopian stews, Hawaii-style street comforts, explosive pani puri, potato puff poutine, and lots more.

Smorgasburg WTC runs on Fridays; Williamsburg is on Saturdays; and Prospect Park is on Sundays. Each location is open from 11am-6pm and operates weekly through October. The outlier is The Shed location; it'll run from July 3-August 22 from 11am-6pm on Wednesdays and Thursdays.

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  • Things to do
  • City Life

Little Island, the beautiful 2.4-acre elevated park that sits above the Hudson River on Manhattan's west side, is offering a lineup of star-studded performances this summer. Performances will kick off on June 1 and close out on September 22, spanning the realms of music, dance, theater, opera, comedy, jazz, pop and funk. 

Just as exciting is the debut of The Glade, a brand new cocktail lounge opening on the island that will be offering a selection of beers, wines, cocktails and mocktails to be enjoyed anywhere throughout the park.

You can learn more about Little Island's full summer programming and get advance tickets to the bigger performances on their website.

  • Things to do
  • Markets and fairs

Shop 'til you drop at FAD Market, a curated fashion, art and design pop-up marketplace, which is back for 2024. Expect to see your favorite makers plus brand new creatives to help you live smarter, gift better and support local businesses. 

FAD—which stands for Fashion, Art and Design—takes over different venues with a horde of independent vendors and creators. Admission is free and dogs are welcome!

Here's the schedule for July:

June-October (third weekend of the month): Governors Island Market
July 13-14: Summer Market at Empire Stores in Dumbo
July 27-28: Summer Market at The Invisible Dog Art Center

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  • Sports and fitness
  • Sports & Fitness

Turns out, pickleball was not just a passing fad.

Doubling down on the popularity of the sport, CityPickle's 14-court pickleball installation is back at Central Park's Wollman Rink. The experience offers players of all skill levels the chance to reserve courts or partake in open play sessions between 8am and 9pm daily. 

  • Music
  • Music

A season of incredible shows is before us at Forest Hills Stadium for its 2024 season.

Expect a variety of genres on the stage, from EDM to rock to folk and lots more. Among the performers are Pitbull, Tiesto, Kings of Leon, Neil Young & Crazy Horse, The Avett Brothers, and The National with more to be announced.

Tickets are available through AXS; head to the Forest Hills Stadium website to make your purchase and find more information.

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  • Things to do
  • City Life

Hopping on a boat and cruising New York's natural harbor is one of the best parts about summers in the city, but there is so much about the history of our waters that the majority of New Yorkers isn't aware of—including the existence of a plethora of abandoned islands dotting the East River, many of which serve as safe havens for local wildlife.

One brand new boat tour wants to teach New Yorkers about these hidden islands by actually taking them there. The Urban Naturalist Tour: Abandoned Islands of the East River is organized by Classic Harbor Line and will depart from Chelsea Pier 62 at 6:45pm on seven Sundays throughout the summer. These tours offer a chance to admire wildlife and learn about NYC's history.

Tickets to the Urban Naturalist tour start at $124 per person.

  • Classical

Public spaces come alive with free outdoor theater in New York City in the summer, and especially with the plays of William Shakespeare.

The top destination, of course, is usually the Delacorte Theater in Central Park, home to the Public Theater’s Shakespeare in the Park. That series is on hold this year for long-needed Delacorte renovations, but luckily you can still enjoy plays by Shakespeare and other classical masters elsewhere in the city: in Harlem and Brooklyn, at Battery and Riverside Parks, even in a Lower East Side parking lot. You might be surprised by the magic that can come from wonderful words, inventive actors and a mild summer breeze.

Here's our full guide to outdoor theater this summer.

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  • Music

The city’s most beloved free summer concert series is back with a stellar line-up featuring nearly 85 free and benefit shows in Central Park, plus neighborhood parks across the five boroughs.  

The 2024 SummerStage lineup includes T-Pain, Snail Mail, Madison Cunningham, Corinne Bailey Rae, The Metropolitan Opera, Counting Crows, Ghostface Killah, The Gaslight Anthem, Trixie Mattel and Amanda Lepore, and more.

This season is all about celebrating incredible music from around the world with artists like The Aussie BBQ, Colombian music star Fonseca and Spain’s captivating new flamenco singer Israel Fernández, Sidonie and the Balkan Paradise Orchestra.  

All shows are free except the benefit concerts. Here's the full schedule and ticket info.

  • Music
  • Music

TSQ Live offers a series of 80 free, open-air performances all over Times Square. It's basically a giant, free outdoor event festival with programs presented by the likes of Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Soul Summit and more. 

Expect dance workshops by Ailey Extension, weekly DJ sets, and a new series called Street Lab that will feature pop-up activations for entire families focusing on all things art. This year's full lineup can be found right here.

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  • Things to do
  • Markets and fairs

The Brooklyn Flea is undoubtedly one of the most popular flea markets to hit in NYC if you're looking for the best selection of throwback wares and records.

The Brooklyn Flea DUMBO is now underway on the cobblestone streets of Pearl Plaza, where it spotlights roughly more than 40 vendors that display their goods beneath the Manhattan Bridge. Brooklyn Flea also operates in Chelsea year-round on Saturdays and Sundays, 8am-4pm.  

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  • Things to do

Several of New York’s finest hotels offer day passes for their rooftop pools, most of which include chaises and cabanas for lounging in addition to a full-service bar. The combination of two of New York's favorite things—swimming pools and rooftop bars—creates an elevated summer oasis worth throwing down some cash for. Make sure to cross one, if not all, of these pool off your things to do in the summer bucket list.

  • Musicals
  • Midtown WestOpen run
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • Recommended

Broadway review by Adam Feldman 

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. 

One of the ironies built into Billy Wilder’s film, which he co-wrote with Charles Brackett, is that there really was an audience in the dark watching Norma: the audience of Sunset Boulevard itself, whom Norma is effectively addressing directly in her operatic final mad scene. That slippage between the real and the imaginary is even more pronounced in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 1993 musical adaptation of the story, by dint of its being performed live onstage. And Jamie Lloyd’s very meta and very smart Broadway revival of the show—which stars the utterly captivating Nicole Scherzinger as Norma and Tom Francis as Joe Gillis, the handsome sell-out screenwriter drawn into her web—pushes it even further through the prominent use of live video. The tension between the real and the imaginary is expanded to include a mediating element: the filmic, whose form can range from documentary to dreamscape. 

Thus described, Lloyd’s approach may sound academic—but in practice, it is often thrilling. The original production was famous for the lavish excess of its set and costumes. Here, by contrast, designer Soutra Gilmour’s set is mostly blank space, and she costumes the cast in basic modern black-and-white streetwear, sometimes with athletic socks pulled high. (When the ensemble performs Fabian Aloise’s sharp choreography, it looks a bit like an updated Gap ad.) Even Norma wears just a satiny black slip; this is Sunset, stripped. But you don’t miss the frills: Jack Knowles’s excellent lighting—and the video design by Nathan Amzi and Joe Ransom—fill out the scenes with ample film-noir atmospherics and help Lloyd shape the staging for maximum narrative and emotional impact. Not for nothing has the title been tightened to Sunset Blvd.

Sunset Blvd. | Photograph: Courtesy Marc Brenner

Lloyd’s combination of focus and mixed-media variety provides a dynamism that Sunset Boulevard needs. Don Black and Christopher Hampton’s libretto has been judiciously pruned and polished for this revival; the excision of two lesser songs, ”The Lady’s Paying” and “Eternal Youth Is Worth a Little Suffering,” makes Norma’s isolation more complete, and the scenes between Joe and his screenwriter friend Betty (Grace Hodgett Young, believable and grounded) are more realistic and specific. But with the major exception of Norma’s big moments, Lloyd Webber’s score is heavy on filler. Repetitive jazz leitmotifs—motifs lite—fill out the score like Hamburger Helper as we wait for Norma’s two beefy, “Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina”—style solos: ”With One Look” in the first act, “As If We Never Said Goodbye” in the second. 

Scherzinger makes these moments worth the wait, and then some. Just as Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard drew resonance from the real-life stardom of its Norma, Gloria Swanson, this one plays with Scherzinger’s musical fame as the frontwoman of the Pussycat Dolls. “Nothing’s wrong with being 40 unless you’re acting 20,” says Joe, and Scherzinger spends some of the show riffing playfully on the notion of an aging pop star on social media. This Norma twerks and does the splits; she fans her legs as she rolls across the stage. After bragging that “no one could play her like I can”—the “her” in question being the teenage Salome—she turns to an onstage camera and silently mouths the word “periodt!” Babbling about her astrologer, she slips into the California vocal fry of a Kardashian. 

In real life, before our eyes, Scherzinger is terrific-looking. But the same camera that once made Norma’s beauty eternal—“Caught inside that flickering light beam is a youth which cannot fade,” says her glowering majordomo Max (David Thaxton), depicted here as a mix of bodyguard and superfan—can be unforgiving now; when a close-up of her face is blown up on a giant screen behind her, you can see the baggage she carries under her eyes. Still,  Norma is restored to full luster when she returns to Paramount Studios for what she thinks is a meeting with the legendary director Cecil B. DeMille. (He is shown only as a head in silhouette; the truly powerful don’t need to be seen.) Bathed in warm light for what seems like the first time in this chilly and shadowy show, she is radiant—she looks the way the movies in her head make her look.  

Sunset Blvd. | Photograph: Courtesy Marc Brenner

In this scene and elsewhere, Scherzinger commands the stage with electrifying confidence. Her singing is gorgeously fluid and controlled, and she knows how to work her songs for drama; singing “I’ve come home at last,” she holds her note on “home” for more than 10 full seconds, earning thunderous claps when she wraps it up. But her silences are as important as the notes. Later in “As If We Never Said Goodbye,” she takes a long pause after singing “so much to live for,” and I heard a few actual gasps. In “With One Look,” she gets applause just for striking a pose between verses, steadfast as the figure on the mast of a ship. 

Sunset Blvd. is obsessed with reproductions. The bravura sequence that opens the second act—captured live in a single camera shot—finds Francis singing the heck out of the loungy title song, both backstage at the St. James and outside on 44th Street, where he poses in front of the lifesize photo of himself outside the theater. A related twinning happens throughout the show as Scherzinger’s Norma interacts with a dream ballet version of her younger self (played by Hannah Yun Chamberlain). Part of what makes this revival so absorbing is that you don’t always know where to look—at the actor on stage or the same actor live on screen. The giant images tug at your eye; you sometimes can’t help choosing them over the small, real person who is actually there. In this revival, itself a kind of re-production, that doesn’t feel like a gimmick or a distraction. It’s a new way to see an old dream. 

Sunset Blvd. St. James Theatre (Broadway). Music by Andrew Lloyd Webber. Book and lyrics by Don Black and Christopher Hampton. Directed by Jamie Lloyd. With Nicole Scherzinger, Tom Francis, David Thaxton, Grace Hodgett Young. Running time: 2hrs 30mins. One intermission. 

Follow Adam Feldman on X: @FeldmanAdam
Follow Time Out Theater on X: @TimeOutTheater
Keep up with the latest news and reviews on our Time Out Theater Facebook page 

Sunset Blvd. | Photograph: Courtesy Marc Brenner

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  • Health and beauty
  • Spas

It’s no secret that New Yorkers are stressed, but when it comes to unwinding, we’re pretty competitive about that too—that’s where the best spas in NYC come in. The city boasts some of the most luxurious spas in the country, but affordable spa treatments also abound. So get inspired with birthday party ideas in NYC or date night ideas in NYC and book yourself a treatment at one of our favorite New York City spas.

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