Debbie Gibson Brings Five-Show Holiday Residency to The Strat This December

Debbie Gibson is bringing her holiday show home to the Strip. The singer behind “Shake Your Love” will headline five performances of Winterlicious Holiday and Hits at the Strat Showroom, running Thursday, December 17 through Sunday, December 20, 2026, with a 3 p.m. matinee added on the final day.

The residency marks the next step for a Christmas show Gibson has been road-testing around the country for years, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Gibson said she wanted to build toward this particular engagement with new music and a new show, and tickets go on sale Friday, August 28, 2026 at 10 a.m. through thestrat.com or the hotel box office, starting at $91.56.

Gibson, who has called Las Vegas home since 2009, entered the Strat Theater with her manager Heather Moore for a meeting with SPI Entertainment officials Adam Steck, Alex Schechter and Jeremy Fayne, the outlet reports. During that meeting, SPI displayed LED screens showing Winterlicious, and Gibson said landing the show at the Strat was her dream.

New Songs Join the Holiday Set List

The show will blend Gibson's hits with new material from her upcoming Winterlicious D'Luxe album — a reissue of her original 2022 holiday record that adds five new songs, per the Review-Journal's reporting. Among the new additions is the Spanish-language song “El Regalo,” which translates to “The Gift,” along with a rendition of “It's a Small World” and a piano ballad called “Angels in the Snow.”

Gibson will also perform a mashup of her breakout hit “Out of the Blue” with “Blue Christmas,” blending her pop catalog with holiday standards. The set list includes signature 1980s hits “Shake Your Love,” “Foolish Beat” and “Lost in Your Eyes” alongside the new seasonal tracks, giving longtime fans a mix of nostalgia and fresh material.

Gibson previously held back her Christmas show in 2025, choosing instead to save the full production for this Strat engagement. Her original Winterlicious album, released in October 2022 on her independent StarGirl Records label, reached No. 91 on Billboard's Top Current Album Sales chart and featured the Joey McIntyre co-write “Heartbreak Holiday,” a duet of “White Christmas” with her father Joe Gibson, and an original Hanukkah song called “Illuminate,” according to Niagara Frontier Publications.

Real Musicians, Not AI, Behind New Single

Gibson said she sought to record with real musicians rather than lean on AI tools for her new material. That approach led her to trumpeter David Perrico and members of the Raiders House Band, who convened with Gibson in late June 2026 at the Tone Factory in Las Vegas to record a new song called “Lit Up.” Perrico's 19-piece ensemble performs live at Allegiant Stadium for Las Vegas Raiders games and includes trombonist Steve Meyer, tenor saxophonist Andrew Freidlander and baritone saxophonist Adam Schroeder, according to David Perrico Music.

The collaboration reflects Gibson's deepening ties to the local Las Vegas music scene since making the city her home. She said she wants to create authentic entertainment that reaches many people, a philosophy that has also carried into her community work: Gibson performed with Nevada Ballet Theatre's youth dancers at the company's 2025 gala and was honored as the organization's Woman of the Year that same year.

A Strip Tradition of Intimate Showrooms

The 600-seat Strat Theater has been exclusively programmed by SPI Entertainment since May 2021, part of a $100 million transformation of the resort under founder Adam Steck, per the Las Vegas Sun. Mid-sized venues like it represent a broader Strip trend, giving legacy performers a lower-risk, up-close alternative to the city's massive casino arenas. Gibson has experience with that format already: in August and September 2021, she co-headlined an eight-show mini-residency with New Kids on the Block's Joey McIntyre at The Sands Showroom inside The Venetian Resort.

Gibson's career has long combined chart success with creative independence. In June 1988, at age 17, she became the youngest artist in history to write, produce and perform a Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 single with “Foolish Beat,” a Guinness World Record she still holds among female artists. Her 1987 debut album, Out of the Blue, was certified triple-platinum by the RIAA and produced five Top 10 Hot 100 singles, with Gibson credited as the sole songwriter on all of her Top 20 hits, according to Wikipedia. In August 2021, she released The Body Remembers, her first studio album of original pop material in 20 years, which reached No. 2 on the Apple Pop Sales Charts and surpassed 1 million streams in its first month.

A Benefit for a Fellow Vegas Entertainer

Separately, the Las Vegas entertainment community is rallying around tribute artist E'Casanova Evans, who has been diagnosed with stage 4 metastatic prostate cancer. A benefit performance called MJ the Evolution is scheduled for Monday at 7 p.m. at the Orleans Showroom to help Evans defray medical costs. Evans, who has performed as a Michael Jackson tribute artist for more than 25 years, was endorsed by Jackson himself as his official photo double and appeared in Jackson's 1992 “Who Is It” music video, according to a fundraising page.