From Jerry Seinfeld to the Great Outdoors Comedy Festival, here are five comedy events coming to Vancouver in 2025 to put on your calendar.
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Now, we’re NOT going to introduce this list by saying that what everyone can use going into 2025 is the prospect of a good laugh, but — OK, we are saying that.
Fortunately, some of the biggest names in streaming comedy specials are coming to town to ensure that next year will provide at least a little merriment.
And while we’re on the subject, be sure and support your local comics by checking out shows at Comedy After Dark, Little Mountain Gallery, China Cloud, the Underground Comedy Club or wherever laughs are sold along with a side of wings.
Iliza Shlesinger: The Get Ready Tour
When: Jan. 17, 2025, at 7 p.m.
Where: Queen Elizabeth Theatre, 630 Hamilton St., Vancouver
Author, podcast host, mom and self-proclaimed “elder millennial,” Shlesinger has six Netflix specials to her credit including most recently, 2022’s Hot Forever, with another slated for Prime in early 2025.
“It’s a super-energetic, hard-hitting, take no prisoners funny hour and it’s my favourite one yet,” she told The Winnipeg Free Press of her current tour. “I talk a little bit about, not so much my kids, but the insanity that is having a baby right up top, and then we kind of move away from the motherhood stuff, and we just get into advice and things I wish I knew when I was younger.”
Jerry Seinfeld
When and where: Feb. 23, 2025, 6:30 and 9 p.m. at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre, and April 25 at the Abbotsford Centre, 33800 King Rd.
Other laugh-getters performing at the ninth edition of JFL Vancouver include Kumail Nanjiani, Pete Holmes, Tim Dillon and many more.
Nikki Glaser: Alive and Unwell Tour
When: March 1, 2025, at 7 and 9:30 p.m.
Where: Queen Elizabeth Theatre
Two-thousand-twenty-four was a big year for Glaser, with the American comic receiving rave reviews for her second HBO comedy special Someday You’ll Die and many singling out her performance on The Greatest Roast of All Time: Tom Brady as best-in-show.
In the midst of her Alive and Unwell Tour, on Jan. 5, she’ll host the Golden Globes — and she may make people long for the days of a comparatively kind and gentle Ricky Gervais.
Jim Gaffigan: Everything is Wonderful!
When: April 3, 4, 2025, at 7 p.m. and April 5 at 8 p.m.
Where: Queen Elizabeth Theatre
Jim Gaffigan as Tim Walz (remember him?) was a match made in SNL heaven. His impression of the former vice-presidential candidate isn’t called for much these days, but fortunately for the standup comic he’s got a wealth of jokes about family and food to draw upon.
Lately, Gaffigan has been talking about his medication-fuelled weight loss, so expect his new bod to be part of his Everything is Wonderful! tour dates.
Great Outdoors Comedy Festival
When: Sept. 12-14, 2025
Where: Stanley Park
The Great Outdoors Comedy Festival returns to Brockton Point in Stanley Park.
This year features Bert Kreischer, Whitney Cummings and Derrick Stroup on Friday, Sept. 12, and John Mulaney, Mike Birbiglia, Nick Kroll and Fred Armisen on Saturday, Sept. 13, with the Sept. 14 lineup TBA at time of publication.
Kreischer, known for his 2023 Netflix special Razzle Dazzle, regularly packs arenas.
Cummings is on her Big Baby tour, delivering zingers about new parenthood and aging gracefully in show business.
Originally from Alabama, Stroup is an up-and-coming comic and self-proclaimed “Waffle House enthusiast.”
Saturday’s lineup is the real killer, though, with four big-name comics whose combined credits could fill, well, at least a Waffle House menu.