The McCallum's 2026-27 Season Already Started, and It Wasn't With Broadway

Ozomatli played the McCallum Theatre on September 12. La Santa Cecilia followed on September 16. On September 26, the night before this was written, the stage held a tribute called Dance Me the Music of Leonard Cohen. None of those three dates carried a marquee name the way October 27 will, when the touring production of & Juliet opens a six-day run. But they were the actual start of the McCallum's 2026-27 season, and anyone who assumed the year kicks off with a Broadway curtain has already missed three weeks of it.

That gap between when the season opens and when it gets loud says something about how the McCallum builds a year for a valley that empties out in summer and fills back in by winter. The theater does not spread its programming evenly across twelve months. Its six Broadway productions are scheduled from late October through early June.

The Season's First Three Weeks

The McCallum's own season materials describe its Hispanic Heritage Month programming as one of its recurring community traditions, and this year that tradition did the work of opening the season. Ozomatli and La Santa Cecilia are both acts with real national followings. Pacifico Dance Co. takes the stage October 2, one more show before the calendar turns toward the six touring Broadway productions that make up the backbone of the year.

That structure is worth noticing because it means the McCallum's real opening night, the one that actually determines how full the parking lot off Fred Waring Drive gets, isn't the same thing as its most photographed night. The 1,127-seat house next to College of the Desert has been running for three weeks before most residents start checking the Broadway dates.

The Broadway Lineup, Show by Show

Once the marquee season begins, it runs through early June with six touring productions, each landing for a five-to-seven night stand:

Layered around those six runs is a concert calendar that includes Idina Menzel, Patti LuPone, Audra McDonald, Paul Anka, and a joint appearance from David Foster and Katherine McPhee, along with a comedy slate featuring Rita Rudner, Tom Papa, and Randy Rainbow, whose satirical videos have drawn more than 201 million views online. The dance season brings back Ballet Hispanico, Alonzo King LINES Ballet, and Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo.

Why the Calendar Loads Up After Halloween

The McCallum has said plainly that its programming runs densest between October and March, and that window is not a coincidence of tour scheduling. It lines up almost exactly with when the Coachella Valley's own population swells. Visit Greater Palm Springs reported paid guest occupancy in vacation rentals at 51.6% in March 2026, a figure that reflects the same seasonal return of snowbirds and second-homeowners that fills McCallum seats during the season's back half.

What that means in practice is that the theater's calendar and the valley's own social calendar are the same calendar. A resident who waits until December to think about holiday-season tickets isn't just competing with other locals. They're competing with a town that has quietly doubled back up with the people who left in May, all reaching for the same nights.

The Seats That Are Already Moving

That competition isn't evenly spread across a single run's dates either. For & Juliet's six-day stand in late October, regional ticketing showed real spread in remaining inventory across different performances. A Sunday matinee had 138 seats left. A Tuesday evening had 294. Wednesday and Thursday evenings sat in the 250-to-290 range. The gap tracks with when people are actually free to go, which in a valley with a lot of retirees and second-homeowners still means weekend nights and matinees pull differently than a Tuesday.

Pricing follows the same pattern. Weekday evening seats for & Juliet started as low as $147, while a Friday matinee and evening pushed the entry price to $234. None of that is unusual for touring Broadway, but it does mean that a resident who wants a specific night, not just any night, is better off deciding early which performance actually fits a schedule rather than assuming availability holds steady across a six-day run.

Where $25 Still Buys a Seat

Not every night at the McCallum asks for a Broadway budget. The venue's comedy programming has historically opened its lowest price point of the season. Last year's Jon Lovitz show carried a $25 ticket price, a figure the theater has used before to draw people into the season early. This year's comedy lineup, with Rita Rudner, Tom Papa, and Randy Rainbow, occupies that same lower tier, sitting well below what a premium Broadway seat costs during the same months.

That price spread matters for anyone building a season around the McCallum rather than a single splurge night. The venue's own strategy, anchoring the calendar with recognizable names and filling around them with genre variety, means a full season of attendance doesn't have to mean six Broadway-priced nights. It can mean one or two marquee shows bracketed by comedy and dance programming that costs a fraction as much.

Building a Season Around What Actually Repeats

The touring shows change every year. What doesn't change is the McCallum's own local programming, which is where the theater's actual roots in the Coachella Valley show up. The Open Call Talent Project returns again this season as a multi-day showcase for local performers, with proceeds supporting the theater's education programs, which serve 40,000 students, teachers, and families annually according to the venue. The Palm Desert Choreography Festival is back too, giving international and local choreographers the same stage across a single weekend, with Sunday's performance built specifically around emerging dancers and high school students from the East Valley Dance Project.

Those two fixtures don't move with the touring circuit. They're the part of the season that belongs to the valley regardless of which Broadway production is routing through that year, and they're worth knowing about even for a resident who has no interest in a $234 ticket to a jukebox musical.

The season that opened quietly in September with Ozomatli and La Santa Cecilia will look completely different by the time & Juliet closes its run on November 1. Knowing that gap exists, and knowing which nights inside it are actually worth planning around, is the difference between building a season on purpose and discovering in December that the shows you wanted are already gone.

If you're mapping out which nights at the McCallum are worth the drive this year, or you're weighing whether a Palm Desert home puts you close enough to make a habit of it, Jeff Wettstein knows this stretch of the valley well enough to talk through both.