Stand-up is everywhere in Las Vegas across the first nine nights of December. Four of those headliners are split between two rooms, and the rooms tell you most of what you need to choose. The Palazzo Theatre seats about eighteen hundred and takes Mark Normand and Kathleen Madigan on back-to-back nights. The MGM Grand Theater seats about seven hundred and forty and runs late shows for Derrick Stroup and Steve Treviño. Same format, very different rooms. They're below in date order.
Friday December 4: Mark Normand at the Palazzo
Mark Normand writes for density: short setups, sharp turns, a laugh every few seconds, all of it about the small humiliations of talking to other people. He came up in New Orleans, where he started doing stand-up in 2006, and he's worked out of New York ever since. His newest Netflix hour, None Too Pleased, arrived in March 2026, so this tour is the material after that. Fans of the podcasts, Tuesdays with Stories alongside Joe List and We Might Be Drunk with Sam Morril, will know the rhythm. Everyone else catches up fast. The Palazzo opened this theater in 2008 with Jersey Boys.
When: Friday December 4. Where: Palazzo Theatre, The Palazzo at The Venetian. Style: rapid-fire one-liners about awkwardness. Ages: sixteen and over.
Saturday December 5: Kathleen Madigan at the Palazzo
Kathleen Madigan takes the same stage the next night with a completely different engine: slow build, dry delivery, and an Irish Catholic family from Florissant, outside St. Louis, who supply most of the plot. She started at St. Louis open mics, won the American Comedy Award as the funniest female stand-up in 1996, and hasn't slowed down. Bothering Jesus went to Netflix in 2016, Hunting Bigfoot to Prime Video in 2023, and The Family Thread followed on Prime Video in November 2025. She's the comic you can take your parents to. They'll laugh hardest at the bits about their own generation.
When: Saturday December 5. Where: Palazzo Theatre, The Palazzo at The Venetian. Style: dry Midwestern storytelling. Ages: thirteen and over.
Check Kathleen Madigan tickets
Sunday December 6: Derrick Stroup at MGM Grand
Derrick Stroup is the newest name of the four and the one moving fastest. He's from Alabama, made his Tonight Show debut in November 2023, was a Just For Laughs New Face the same year, and has toured with Nate Bargatze. His first full special, Nostalgic, came out on Netflix in March 2026, filmed in front of a home crowd at the Lyric Theatre in Alabama. The stories come quickly and the accent does half the work. MGM Grand gives him the room David Copperfield played for twenty-five years until this spring, now simply the MGM Grand Theater, and at that size you'll see every face he pulls.
When: Sunday December 6, late show. Where: MGM Grand Theater, MGM Grand. Style: fast Southern storytelling. Ages: sixteen and over, under eighteen with an adult.
December 10 to 12: Steve Treviño at MGM Grand
Steve Treviño takes three straight nights to close the stretch, and most of his act is marriage. He grew up in Portland, Texas, bills himself as America's Favorite Husband, and since 2020 has co-hosted a podcast with his wife Renae, known to listeners as Captain Evil, which means the person he's joking about has her own microphone and uses it. Simple Man, his 2024 Netflix hour, is the most recent of a long run of specials that goes back to Grandpa Joe's Son in 2012. Couples laugh at this one twice. Once at the joke, then at each other.
When: Thursday December 10 to Saturday December 12, late shows. Where: MGM Grand Theater, MGM Grand. Style: marriage and family, told against himself. Ages: sixteen and over, under eighteen with an adult.
Which night to book
Want the most jokes per minute: Normand. Bringing parents, or anyone who flinches at crowd work: Madigan, who also has the lowest age limit of the four. In town for the National Finals Rodeo: the MGM Grand pair, because they run late and MGM Grand sits at the Strip end of Tropicana Avenue, the same road as the Thomas and Mack Center. That makes Stroup on the rodeo's first Sunday or Treviño on its closing weekend the rare comedy tickets you can actually add after an evening at the arena. For nights without a headliner, the city's comedy clubs run sets all week.
