New York City / Burlesque
Best Burlesque
Shows in NYC
Free on a Thursday, three hundred dollars for a champagne couch, and a whole scene that only surfaces once a month.
Most curtains go up between 8 and 9pm — Thursday is the best free night in the city.
- 17 verified rooms
- from free
- 6 weekly
- 9 monthly
The best burlesque in New York right now is Company XIV in Bushwick, where Petite Rouge runs Thursday to Sunday and standing room starts at $49. The Slipper Room on Orchard Street is the scene’s home room — four sets a night on Fridays and Saturdays, $35 general admission. Bathtub Gin sells the cheapest ticket in Manhattan at $5 standing, Tuesdays and Sundays. And Nurse Bettie has run a free weekly burlesque show on the Lower East Side since 2006: Thursdays at 9pm, no cover, no minimum. Seventeen rooms below, every one verified in August 2026, with what each actually costs.
The short version
- Best overallCompany XIV — Petite Rouge through Halloween, from $49 standing.
- Best freeNurse Bettie — Thursdays at 9pm, no cover, since 2006.
- Cheapest seatBathtub Gin — $5 standing, Tuesdays and Sundays.
- Best splurgeDuane Park — four courses and a floor show, $89 to $175.
- Skip itRed Velvet Burlesque — not a venue, two addresses on its own site, no dates on sale.
At a glance
Sorted by how reliably you can actually see a show. Tap a number on the map to place it.
| Room | The show | Days | Time | $ |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Company XIV | Petite Rouge, $49 standing to $300 couches | Thu–Sun | 8pm (Sun 6pm) | $$$ |
| The Slipper Room | $35 GA, $80 reserved; Sundays $30 | Fri–Sun | doors 8pm | $$$ |
| Nurse Bettie | Free burlesque, no cover, no minimum | Thu | 9–10pm | $$$ |
| Bathtub Gin | $5 standing, $20 seated, one-item minimum | Tue & Sun | not published | $$$ |
| House of Yes | Dirty Circus $36.75–$52.50; Hot & Fresh from free | Fri, Sat + 3rd Thu | 6:30pm | $$$ |
| Freddy’s Bar | Weekly back-room burlesque, rotating residencies | Thu | 8–10:30pm | $$$ |
| Club Cumming | $25 cash at the door, 21+ | Sun | 9–11pm | $$$ |
| Coney Island USA | $25, curated bills, summer season only | Sat | 9–11pm | $$$ |
| Duane Park | $120 Thu, $159 Fri, $175 Sat, $89 Sun brunch | Thu–Sun | 7:30pm (Sun 2pm) | $$$ |
| The Box | No published price; reservations required | Wed–Sat | late | $$$ |
| Lucky 13 Saloon | $10 advance, $12 door | Monthly, Sun | 10pm | $$$ |
| Uptown Stripdown at Harlem Nights | $15, held flat since 2021 | Monthly | 8pm | $$$ |
| Once Bitten at Grace and Ruby’s | $15, themed bill every month | Monthly, Thu | 8pm | $$$ |
| Switch n’ Play at Littlefield | Price varies; 21+ unless noted | Monthly, Sat | 8–10pm | $$$ |
| The Laurie Beechman Theatre | $25–$35, booked rather than resident | By date | 9:30pm | $$$ |
| Under St. Marks | $25; Nightcap series $15 with a glass of wine | Mondays | 7pm | $$$ |
| Diamond Delights at The Broadway | $10 open stage | Monthly | 8pm | $$$ |
Map: where these 17 rooms are
Coney Island to Harlem. The densest cluster is the Lower East Side, where the Slipper Room, Nurse Bettie and The Box sit within eight minutes of each other on foot.
Pins are numbered to match the table above — tap any pin for the show and directions.
Weekly shows you can plan around
Eight rooms with a real, repeating schedule. Everything else in this city is monthly. For the drinking half of the evening, see our Lower East Side happy hour guide.
Company XIV On now
The best burlesque in the city, and it is not close. Company XIV turns 20 this season, and Petite Rouge — their Little Red Riding Hood, told in feathers, opera and aerial silk — has been extended through Halloween. The room is a 164-seat gilded sanctum with a speakeasy bar tucked behind it, and pricing runs from $49 standing to $300 for a champagne couch. The local move: buy standing room and get there early. The rail behind the last row has a better sightline than half the seated tickets, and it is the only way to see this show for double digits. The honest caveat: a service fee is added on top, all sales are final, and it is strictly 21+ with ID. Nutcracker Rouge returns in November for twelve weeks; presale opens Labor Day. Worth knowing through October: the code LADYINRED adds a free champagne upgrade to new Thursday bookings, and SUNROUGE gets you a free cocktail on Sunday single seats — neither works on standing room.
The Slipper Room On now
If burlesque in New York has a headquarters, it is the two-level room on Orchard Street with the door around the corner on Stanton. The Slipper Room Show runs Fridays, Mr. Choade’s Upstairs Downstairs runs Saturdays, and both do four sets a night at 8:30, 9:45, 11 and 12:15. Sundays are the looser, cheaper Slippery Sundays at $30. The local move: skip the $80 reserved seat, take general admission and stand at the rail. The room is small enough that nowhere in it is bad. The honest caveat: their own shows page still advertises a $20 drink minimum on some nights; every current event page says there is none, and the $20 is a card minimum. Monday to Thursday the room goes to guest producers, which is where Hotsy Totsy and Nerdlesque land.
Nurse Bettie On now
The best free hour of entertainment in New York, and it has been running since 2006. Miss Frankie Eleanor hosts a full bill every Thursday at 9pm in the back of a small pin-up bar on Norfolk, and the RSVP costs nothing. Worth it because there is no cover, no ticket tier and no minimum — you buy a drink because you want one. The local move: be there by 8:30. The stage is barely raised and the room is narrow, so past the third row you are watching the back of someone’s head. There is a daily happy hour until 7pm, which turns this into a whole evening for the price of two drinks. One correction: this used to run Wednesdays and Thursdays. The venue’s own calendar now lists Thursdays only.
Bathtub Gin
Five dollars is the cheapest way to watch burlesque in Manhattan, and the room is a proper speakeasy — in through a working coffee shop on Ninth Avenue, out the other side into a low-lit bar with a copper tub in the middle of it. Live burlesque runs Tuesdays and Sundays: $20 for a seat, $5 to stand, one-item minimum either way. Worth it because the night has real lineage. Wasabassco built this residency here more than a decade ago and it has outlived the producer, which is more than most burlesque nights in this city can say. The honest caveat: the venue publishes the nights but not the showtimes, so call before you build an evening around it.
House of Yes
The most produced show on this list and the one most likely to involve somebody on a trapeze above your table. Dirty Circus runs Friday and Saturday at 6:30pm and folds burlesque into aerial, drag and circus; the dance party that takes the room at 10pm is a separate ticket. The one worth knowing about is Hot & Fresh, a monthly night for first-timers and emerging performers — usually the third Thursday, 6:30 to 9:30, free to RSVP, $10 for a donation ticket, $45 if you want a guaranteed chair. The honest caveat: House of Yes enforces its costume-and-consent door policy harder than anywhere else in the city, and it is 21+. Dress for it or you will be the only person who did not get the memo.
houseofyes.org · See our Bushwick happy hour guide
Freddy’s Bar On now
The most active burlesque room in the outer boroughs, and almost nobody outside Brooklyn writes about it. Burlesque in the Back runs every Thursday, 8 to 10:30, in the back room of the bar that got evicted for the Barclays Center and rebuilt itself on Fifth Avenue. The residencies rotate monthly: That’s Camp on second Thursdays, Garden Party on thirds, then Queens Court, Vaudeville on the Rocks, Glamourmess. Worth it because it is weekly, and because it is a neighborhood bar rather than a venue — the front room stays open until 4am if the show ends before you are ready to. The honest caveat: Freddy’s does not publish a ticket price on its own event pages. The listings quoting $10 to $15 are third-party, so bring cash and do not be shocked either way.
freddysbar.com · See our Park Slope happy hour guide
Club Cumming On now
An open stage in a bar roughly the size of a subway car, hosted by Tallulah Talons every Sunday from 9 to 11. Open stage means the bill swings: a seasoned headliner, then someone doing their fourth-ever number. That unevenness is the point. Worth it if you want to see the scene rather than a production — this is where performers try material before it goes anywhere else. The honest caveat: $25, cash at the door, 21+, and the room fills. Get there before 9 or you are watching from the doorway. The local move: Tuesdays are a different proposition entirely, 6 to 8pm, no cover, two-drink minimum.
Coney Island USA On now
The only burlesque on this list where you can ride the Wonder Wheel first. Burlesque at the Beach runs Saturdays at 9pm through the summer in the Sideshows by the Seashore theater — the same 1917 building as the Coney Island Museum and the Freak Bar — produced by Bambi the Mermaid. Twenty-five dollars. Worth it because the bills are curated rather than open-stage: Switch n’ Play, the New York School of Burlesque showcase, Tigger’s boylesque revue. The date to circle is the 23rd Annual Miss Coney Island Pageant, Saturday September 26 at 8pm, $20 to $45. The honest caveat: this is a season, not a year-round room, and it is an hour on the Q from Midtown. Check the calendar before you commit to the trip.
coneyisland.com · See our all of Brooklyn
Dinner, tables and door policies
The expensive end: one dinner-theater and one room that will not tell you what it costs. More in our best cocktail bars in NYC guide.
Duane Park
The dinner-theater option, and the only room here where the show comes with a tablecloth. Thursday through Sunday a multi-course meal is served around a burlesque bill that plays out between courses: $120 for Thursday’s Le Petit Tease, $159 Friday, $175 Saturday, and $89 for the Sunday burlesque brunch at 2pm, all before tax, tip and drinks. Worth it if you are marking an occasion — the format does the entire job of planning an evening for you. The honest caveat: the cancellation policy is brutal. Twenty-four hours out your table becomes non-refundable and non-transferable, and they will not seat anyone more than fifteen minutes late. And one correction: this is not in Tribeca. It left the original Duane Street room for the Bowery in 2013 and half the internet still has not noticed.
The Box
Twenty years on, still the room people mean when they say they saw something they cannot describe at a dinner party. The Box runs Wednesday through Saturday and is dark Sunday to Tuesday, and the acts are variety-as-provocation rather than classic burlesque. The honest caveat is the whole story: the venue publishes no ticket price, no cover and no table minimum anywhere. Reservations are required for entry, third-party listings put the door at 11pm and the show near 1am, and the practical route in is bottle service. Go here instead: if you want a real burlesque bill for a known price, the Slipper Room is an eight-minute walk away and tells you what it costs. The Box is a night you gamble on, not a show you buy a ticket to.
Monthly and indie, where the scene actually lives
Ten to twenty-five dollars, once a month, and this is where the performers you will see downtown next year are working now. Also see our best dive bars in NYC guide.
Lucky 13 Saloon
Burlesque set to doom riffs in a black-painted metal bar. Ten dollars in advance, twelve at the door, usually the last Sunday of the month at 10pm. Worth it because it is the least precious version of this on the entire list — no velvet, no four courses, just a dive that happens to book a genuinely good monthly. August’s edition is Misfits and Mavens on the 31st. The local move: Lucky 13 also runs a Heavy Metal Drink and Draw and a Marilyn Manson tribute peep show, so read the whole calendar rather than just the burlesque date. The honest caveat: 10pm on a Sunday is a real commitment, and Gowanus at that hour is a car home.
lucky13saloon.com · See our best dive bars in NYC
Uptown Stripdown at Harlem Nights
Fifteen dollars, monthly, and the only burlesque happening above 96th Street. The Nova Experiment has produced Uptown Stripdown at Harlem Nights since at least 2021 and has held the price flat that entire time, which on this list counts as an achievement in itself. Worth it because everything else on this page is downtown or Bushwick — different room, different crowd, different bill. August’s edition is The Cookout on the 13th at 8pm. The honest caveat: the bar does not run its own website, so the show lives on ticketing pages and social. Search the series name rather than the venue, and buy ahead, because a monthly at this price sells out.
See our Harlem happy hour guide
Once Bitten at Grace and Ruby’s
A fifteen-dollar monthly that has quietly run for over a year on Kingsland Avenue, where Greenpoint stops pretending it is not East Williamsburg. Once Bitten books a themed bill every time — Monstrous Touch, Slumber Party, Eat Your Heart Out, and this month’s Drawn This Way on the 13th. Worth it because monthlies at this price are how you actually meet the scene rather than watch it from a $175 table. The honest caveat: the listings for this address are a mess. Some directories file the same room as Mary’s Bar and at least one tags it Lower East Side, which it emphatically is not. Buy from the series’ own ticket page and check the address on your confirmation.
See our Greenpoint happy hour guide
Switch n’ Play at Littlefield
Switch n’ Play is the most decorated drag-and-burlesque collective in Brooklyn, and after years of bouncing between bars they now land at Littlefield — an actual venue, with a sound system and sightlines, roughly monthly on a Saturday at 8. Worth it because the collective’s format sits exactly between drag and burlesque and does both better than most rooms manage either. The honest caveat: it is intermittent. There is nothing on the August or September calendar as things stand, so this is a check-before-you-go, not a standing plan. If you are working off an older list: they are no longer at Branded Saloon, and Branded’s burlesque has ended entirely.
The Laurie Beechman Theatre
The comeback story on this list. The Beechman went dark with West Bank Cafe in August 2024 and reopened under new ownership that December: 90 seats, a David Rockwell room, a full bar and a dinner menu, tucked under the Manhattan Plaza complex. Burlesque here is booked rather than resident — Nerdlesque NYC brings Anime After Dark for the Anime NYC weekend, August 21 and 22 at 9:30pm, $25 to $35. Worth it because 90 seats with real production values is a completely different night from a bar with a stage at one end. The honest caveat: the site publishes no food or drink minimum, and nobody has confirmed whether the old West Bank two-item rule survived the ownership change. Ask when you book. What is gone: Le Scandal Cabaret ran in this room for a decade and closed in March 2020. It never came back.
Under St. Marks
The cheap seats of the indie circuit. FRIGID New York programs Under St. Marks as a monthlies house, and the burlesque slate rotates through Sins & Stardust on alternating Mondays at 7pm, Electric Moon Cabaret, a Filipinx burlesque showcase and Pickled Punk’s freak show. Twenty-five dollars for Sins & Stardust; the Nightcap series is $15 in person and comes with a glass of wine. Worth it because a 7pm Monday curtain is the most civilised start time in burlesque and you are home by nine. The honest caveat: this calendar moves. Electric Moon’s ticket page still shows 2024 dates, so treat anything without a dated listing as unconfirmed and check FRIGID’s monthlies page first.
frigid.nyc · See our East Village happy hour guide
Diamond Delights at The Broadway
Ten dollars, monthly, open stage — the entry tier of the whole scene, and worth knowing about precisely because it is where people start. Shake it for a Good Thing runs Diamond Delights on the Bushwick–Bed-Stuy line at 8pm; August’s date is the 18th. Worth it if you want the unfiltered version and you accept the trade: on an open stage the distance between the best number and the worst one is enormous. Go here instead: if $49 standing room at Company XIV is not the night you had in mind, this and Lucky 13 are the two cheapest live burlesque tickets in Brooklyn, and both are better company than a $175 tablecloth.
See our Bushwick happy hour guide
NYC burlesque: FAQ
What is the best burlesque show in NYC right now?
Company XIV in Bushwick. Petite Rouge, their baroque-burlesque Little Red Riding Hood, has been extended through Halloween, runs Thursday to Sunday, and starts at $49 for standing room in a 164-seat theatre. Nutcracker Rouge returns in November for twelve weeks, with presale from Labor Day. If you want the classic New York variety format rather than a produced show, The Slipper Room on Orchard Street is the scene’s home room: four sets a night on Fridays and Saturdays, $35 general admission.
Where can you see burlesque in NYC for free or cheap?
Nurse Bettie on Norfolk Street runs a free burlesque show every Thursday at 9pm and has done since 2006 — no cover, no minimum. After that the cheapest tickets in the city are Bathtub Gin at $5 standing on Tuesdays and Sundays, then $10 at Lucky 13 Saloon in Gowanus and The Broadway in Bushwick, and $15 at Once Bitten in Greenpoint and Uptown Stripdown in Harlem. You do not need to spend $175 to see good burlesque in New York.
How much do burlesque tickets cost in NYC?
Free to $300, and that spread is the whole story. Free at Nurse Bettie. $5 standing to $20 seated at Bathtub Gin. $10 to $15 for the monthly indie nights. $25 at Club Cumming and Coney Island USA. $30 to $35 general admission at The Slipper Room, $80 for a reserved seat. $36.75 to $52.50 at House of Yes. $49 to $300 at Company XIV. $89 to $175 for dinner and a show at Duane Park. The Box publishes no price at all, and in practice the way in is bottle service.
Which nights of the week have burlesque in NYC?
Thursday is the strongest night: free at Nurse Bettie, weekly at Freddy’s Bar in South Slope, and every third Thursday it is Hot & Fresh at House of Yes. Friday and Saturday are Company XIV and The Slipper Room’s core nights plus Dirty Circus at House of Yes, and Saturday adds Coney Island USA at 9pm through the summer season. Sunday is quietly excellent: Bathtub Gin, Club Cumming’s open stage, Slippery Sundays and Duane Park’s 2pm burlesque brunch. Monday and Wednesday are the dead nights.
Is Red Velvet Burlesque a real NYC venue?
No, and it is worth being direct about this. Red Velvet Burlesque is a touring production that plays more than eighty cities and rents rooms in each one; in New York it books Harbor NYC Rooftop at 621 W 46th Street, which is not its venue. Its own website gives two different New York addresses and two different door times, and at the time of writing no New York dates were on sale on Fever, Eventbrite or Vivid Seats. If you do find a date: 18+, a two-drink minimum, cash only. We removed it from this guide for those reasons.
Which NYC burlesque venues and shows have closed?
Le Scandal Cabaret ran ten years at the Laurie Beechman and closed in March 2020; it never came back. Wasabassco, once the city’s most prolific burlesque producer, is gone — its domain is now a parked for-sale page and its Yelp listing points at Nashville. Sleep No More and the Manderley Bar played their final New York performance on 5 January 2025. Our Wicked Lady closed in July 2025, the week of its tenth anniversary. Also gone or dormant: Bizarre in Bushwick, The Way Station, Room 69 at Hotel Chantelle, D20 Burlesque at Parkside Lounge, the Highline Ballroom, the Metropolitan Room and Bar Nine. Branded Saloon is still open but no longer books burlesque. And bur.nyc, the directory that still ranks for these searches, has not published anything since 2018.
Last updated: August 2026. Showtimes, prices and entire rooms change fast in this scene — confirm with the venue before you go. Spot something out of date? Let us know.
