John Banister charged a shilling at the door of his London house in 1672, and Britannica credits him with the first public concerts. May 5 goes to the artists, tour crews and venue staff who stage live shows now.
Live Nation Entertainment announced on April 30, 2015 that May 5 would be the first ever National Concert Day, and marked it with a concert and media event at Irving Plaza in New York City. The company later folded the observance into an annual ticket-sale week.
Live Nation's summer ticket promotion ran in 2026 under the name Summer of Live. Its public sale window closed on May 5. That is National Concert Day, the date the same company named in 2015, and the campaign did not carry the name at all.
The announcement that created the day contains no cut-price ticket offer of any kind. The discounted sale the day is now remembered for did not appear until the following year.
Eleven years separate those two announcements. In between, the day picked up a discount, expanded into a week, and dropped out of the campaign that made it.
DEALS & OFFERS
National Concert Day ran on May 5. Here’s who celebrated with offers this year.
In December 1672 a London violinist started charging people to come into his house and listen. John Banister asked a shilling at the door, and Encyclopaedia Britannica credits him as the organizer of the first public concerts in England.
Before him, music arrived bundled with something else: a church service, a play, a patron's hospitality. Banister sold the listening itself. The paid public concert is just over 350 years old.
Live Nation Entertainment now sits at the center of that business. The company counted 159 million fans at its shows. Concerts alone brought in $20.9 billion.
The press release that created the day landed in the spring of 2015. It named May 5 as the first ever National Concert Day.
The event Live Nation staged for it was not in a stadium. It was Irving Plaza, a Manhattan room that holds 1,200 people.
The building dates to 1860. It has been a concert venue since 1978. Kid Rock and Florida Georgia Line performed, and Hoda Kotb of The TODAY Show hosted.
The release did more than announce a day. It also listed the season's tour roster and named the event's four sponsors, which places the day squarely inside a summer sales calendar.
The cut-price sale arrived the next year. Live Nation attached a Kickoff to Summer offer to the second annual day, covering nearly a thousand summer concerts.
Then the day became a week. Live Nation launched National Concert Week in April 2018, and that announcement does not mention National Concert Day once.
The company still counts the run from the beginning. Its 2024 edition was billed as ten years of Concert Week.
TIMELINE
WHY THIS DAY MATTERS
Stadiums grew 19%. The smallest rooms shrank.
The average stadium concert grossed $7.11 million in 2025, by Pollstar's count, a rise of 19% on the year. Venues seating 750 or fewer went the other way, averaging $10,627 a night.
On April 15, 2026 a New York jury found that Ticketmaster unlawfully maintains a monopoly in ticketing at major concert venues, and that Live Nation ties its amphitheaters to its promotion services. The jury put the overcharge at $1.72 a ticket, the company denies wrongdoing, and a judge has yet to set any remedy.
Since 1914 Congress has authorized 47 patriotic and national observances, all of them codified in federal law. National Concert Day is not among them, and no resolution or presidential proclamation for it appears in the federal record.
BY THE NUMBERS
a day to recognize not only fans but also music artists, live music industry leaders, tour managers and their teams as well as all the hard working employees at venues across the country
Today a jury in New York found Live Nation and Ticketmaster operated as an illegal monopoly.
GET INVOLVED
EDITOR'S PICK
READ
CREDIT
CHECK
TRACE
Test your knowledge
No. It is an unofficial observance created by a company, not a federal or public holiday, so businesses and schools stay open.
COLOPHON
National Tourist Appreciation Day is for the visitors a place lives on and the people who look after them. Thank someone at a hotel desk or a museum door, then spend an afternoon playing tourist where you live.
America's first high school band was formed in 1857, after a superintendent overheard students playing tissue paper combs. May 20 is when US schools and ensembles thank the people who run band programs now.
Get ready to rock and roll on National Day of Rock ‘n’ Roll - crank up the music, put on your leather jacket, and let loose!
