Unique venues are part of the attraction of Aspen’s cultural landscape, and Theatre Aspen’s intimate, 200-seat seasonal tent, surrounded by nature, is as charming as its summer lineup is exciting. The curtain rises first on the 1988 Pulitzer Prize winner for drama, Driving Miss Daisy (June 12–28), which tells the story of the unlikely friendship between a white widow and her Black chauffeur in the late 1940s Deep South. Next on the Hurst Theatre stage is the ultimate feel-good musical, Mamma Mia! (July 5–Aug 2), set to the music of ABBA. And rounding out the headline shows is Million Dollar Quartet (Aug 8–23), the Tony Award–winning rock musical that brings to life the night in 1956 when Johhny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and Elvis Presley came together for a jam session at Sun Records in Memphis.

Also on Theatre Aspen’s summer playbill is its annual co-production with the Aspen Music Festival and School: My Fair Lady in Concert is a one-night-only (July 15) staging of the classic musical accompanied by the AMFS Festival Orchestra in the Michael Klein Music Tent. And its Summer Cabaret Series (June 29, July 20, Aug 10) melds themed ensemble and solo performances with brunch or dinner at the Hotel Jerome’s Prospect restaurant. Rounding out the summer season, the Solo Flights festival in early September presents one-person shows in development.

What better way to spend a summer evening than enjoying quality live music, for free, in a spectacular plein air venue with a community of friends? The Snowmass Free Concert Series has been bringing people together on the gentle slope of Fanny Hill every summer Thursday for 33 years. The beloved local tradition often ups its game to provide a better experience (this year with a new stage and upgraded sound system), but for the most part it is like a trustworthy old friend in its consistency. Attendees are encouraged to bring a picnic or takeout from Snowmass restaurants, belly up to the in-venue bar, and dance, relax, and commune the night away. Highlights of this year’s musical lineup: Grammy-winning Latin-hip-hop-funk rock band Ozomatli (July 3), folk-rock/Americana band Boy Named Banjo (July 24), and bluegrass ensemble O’Connor Brothers Band (Aug 21).

One of the country’s premier epicurean events, the Aspen Food & Wine Classic kicks off Aspen’s summer season with a bang: Seventy-plus celebrity chefs and beverage experts—like Ana Castro, Mark Oldman, and Aspen’s own Mawa McQueen—leading 80 cooking demonstrations, wine seminars, panel discussions, and spirits tastings, plus five Grand Tastings with over 150 winemakers, distillers, chefs (including Food & Wine’s 2024 Best New Chefs), and more. The three-day program explores the latest trends—like sake eclipsing wine and all things Caribbean—and global flavors, from Thailand to Morocco to California. If you weren’t lucky (or influential) enough to secure all-access passes to this wildly popular event (last year it sold out in early June), consider volunteering, joining a waitlist, or attending ancillary public events happening around town.

Aspen Ideas Festival has always been popular with the summer crowd, but this year’s mind-tickler is in particularly high demand. Starting with Aspen Ideas: Health (June 22–25) and continuing with the main festival (June 25–28, June 28–July 1), this think tank in event format explores themes such as justice in society, global cooperation, the power of food, and the latest scientific breakthroughs. The hundreds of speakers this year include Brené Brown, Steve Kerr, Kelly Corrigan, Deepak Chopra, Lisa Damour, Sean Penn, a former US national security advisor, a former health and human services secretary, and two former attorneys general. If multiday passes seem too spendy (or are unavailable), consider purchasing single-event tickets, notably the blockbuster Afternoon of Conversation and an evening program featuring dinner, drinks, culinary conversations, and a panel discussion or interview.

Literary organization Aspen Words, a program of the Aspen Institute, has long focused its summer programming on Summer Words (June 23–26), a conference aimed primarily at writers who apply for workshops well in advance. For the general public, three workshops are available until they reach capacity (including the popular Reader Retreat, this year led by Oprah’s Book Club Editorial Director Leigh Newman), and a pass is being sold to afternoon craft talks and panel conversations.

This year also marks the debut of Aspen Words’ inaugural Aspen Literary Festival (Sept 26–28), a three-day celebration of books and people that drive culture in venues throughout Aspen. The festival, presented by Book of the Month (BOTM), brings together 40 authors—confirmed bestselling authors include Elin Hilderbrand, Michael Lewis, Bonnie Garmus, Jasmine Guillory, and Kevin Kwan—and features conversations, parties, family-friendly programming and other events, most of them free. BOTM Executive Chairman John Lippman, who co-chairs the festival, describes the event as “the literary love child of Sundance and South by Southwest.”

Jazz Aspen Snowmass bookends the summer with two knockout music festivals, and between sprinkles in performances by world-renowned artists in an intimate setting.

JAS June Experience (June 26–29) takes attendees through a multitude of genres—jazz, soul, funk, blues, gospel, and more—via multiple staggered shows daily across 12 venues in downtown Aspen, ranging from cafés and clubs to the Wheeler Opera House and a VIP tent in Rio Grande Park. This year’s artists include Samantha Fish, Dumpstaphunk, Tank & the Bangas, and Sasha’s Bloc.

JAS Café Summer Series (July 18–20, Aug 7–10) highlights some of the world’s best artists—Jesus Molina, Cimafunk, Judith Owen, and Monty Alexander’s Harlem Kingston Express, among others—in the up-close, open-air atmosphere of the Aspen Art Museum rooftop. (Fans can anticipate future JAS Café performances in Jazz Aspen’s permanent home, the Paul JAS Center, which opens in December.)

Labor Day Experience (Aug 29–31), is held in spectacular, mountain-ringed Snowmass Town Park. The festival kicks off on Friday with Grammy–winning band Imagine Dragons, preceded by alternative/electropop trio Cannons. Rock icon Lenny Kravitz headlines the Saturday show in his second Jazz Aspen appearance, with eight-piece soul/pop band Lawrence opening and singer/songwriter Max McNown starting the day’s program. Winding things down on Sunday is multi- platinum award-winning country music artist Luke Combs. Opening for Combs is the electrifying jam-rock Marcus King Band preceded by 18-year-old guitarist and songwriter Grace Bowers and her Hodge Podge Band.

Painters, photographers, ceramists, woodworkers, digital artists, and other creatives come from all over the country and the world to practice and hone their craft at Anderson Ranch Arts Center. And while the public is welcome year-round to wander this charming campus of studios and workspaces in refurbished ranch buildings, summer is when the creative energy spreads to the public, through a number of dialogues and other events that inspire and stimulate.

The Summer Series offers five free public conversations between renowned artists, critics, and cultural leaders, starting with painter/filmmaker Titus Kaphar (the Ranch’s 2025 International Artist Honoree) in conversation with actor André Holland (July 9) and wrapping up with a dialogue between performance artist and sculptor Miles Greenberg and curator and museum director Klaus Biesenbach (Aug 7). The annual Ranch Picnic and Auction (July 12) is a casual, all-ages fundraiser for the organization’s educational programs with food, art-based activities, and live music. And on the final day of the series, the sole Critical Dialogue of the summer, The Cultural Impact of Silencing Artists (Aug 7), features a panel of two artists and a leading art law scholar.

The OG of Aspen summer cultural events, the 76th annual Aspen Music Festival spans eight weeks with nearly 200 performances in awe-inspiring venues like the Klein Music Tent and Harris Concert Hall. The season’s theme, Concerning the Spiritual in Art, undergirds “a summer of music embodying wonder, mystery, contemplation, inwardness, and ecstasy,” according to AMFS President and CEO Alan Fletcher.

Works include the explicitly spiritual, like Handel’s Messiah (Aug 6) and the world premiere of Siddhartha, She (Aug 2), an AMFS co-commission conducted by Robert Spano. But the theme also explores the transcendent in pieces such as Holst’s The Planets (Aug 24) and Mozart’s Paris Symphony (July 11). Operatic highlights include Mozart’s comedy Cosi fan tutte (July 21) reimagined in a 1980s high school setting by director and superstar soprano Renée Fleming, and a semi-staged production of Puccini’s La Bohème (Aug 19). The season also brings performances marking the centennial of French avant-garde composer and conductor Pierre Boulez; several AMFS co-commissions and new works; and appearances by classical music notables such as pianist Jeremy Denk, conductor Jane Glover, bassist Edgar Meyer, the American Brass Quintet (performing a new piece composed by Pulitzer Prize laureate Tyshawn Sorey), classical guitarist Sharon Isbin, and violinist Gil Shaham. Alongside a wealth of solo and chamber recitals, the Aspen Festival Orchestra and Aspen Chamber Symphony together perform 15 programs this summer, featuring the works of great composers such as Wagner, Tchaikovsky, Debussy, Beethoven, Prokofiev, Strauss, and Stravinsky.

Quality over quantity is the name of the game for Aspen’s two dance organizations this summer, with fewer than 10 events between them. Local contemporary company Dance- Aspen takes to a variety of stages, starting with the Aspen Historical Society’s Holden Marolt Mine (July 9), a special event for DanceAspen’s Summit Society members. This is followed by an event pairing dance and wine (July 15), the annual Moonlit Masquerade (July 18), a free performance in Paepcke Park (July 30), and Shifting Forms (Aug 28)—a triple-bill program at the Wheeler Opera House. Aspen Santa Fe Ballet celebrates its 35th anniversary season by bringing three internationally acclaimed dance companies to the Aspen District Theater in July: Complexions Contemporary Ballet (July 10), Pilobolus (July 23), and Alonzo King Lines Ballet (July 29).

Summer programming at Aspen’s flagship contemporary art organization is at an all-time high, with four new exhibitions at the Aspen Art Museum.

Sherrie Levine: 1977-1988 (June 6–Sept 29) is devoted to the American artist’s first 11 years of practice, in which she used diverse media including photography, painting, collage, and sculpture to challenge conventional assumptions of identity around autonomy, originality, and agency. Carol Rama: The Tongue, The Eye, The Foot (June 6–Sept 7) explores the human figure and its complex, psychological associations—a major theme of the late Italian artist’s work, mostly through watercolors and bricolage. A new exhibition by Brazilian artist Solange Pessoa (July 2–Oct 26)—known for her works that intersect nature, the human body, and the forces that shape existence—encompasses four bodies of her sculptural work spanning the museum’s rooftop and lower level. Finally, this summer sees the debut of British artist Anthea Hamilton’s new outdoor sculpture—a larger-than-life cauliflower.

AIR is a year-round museum program dedicated to commissioning and artistic research, culminating each summer with gatherings that celebrate the ways art and artists connect us with our natural surroundings, expand our consciousness, and drive social change or new ways of thought. AIR 2025, titled Life As No One Knows It (July 29–Aug 1), features newly commissioned performances, interdisciplinary dialogues, and keynote lectures exploring the intersections of art and technology, taking place across unexpected locations in and around Aspen. AIR is free and open to all (although registration is required for some events with limited capacity), with the goal of having participants critically engaging in art’s role in both representing and shaping reality. The AIR public festival is preceded by a private retreat (July 26–28) and is part of Aspen Art Week, which culminates with the museum’s annual gala, ArtCrush (Aug 1).