The stages of Chicago’s theatres are once again lighting up after more than a year of darkness with a slew of new performances that capture Chicago's creative spirit, including the North American tours of Come From Away, Hadestown, Moulin Rouge! The Musical, SIX, To Kill a Mockingbird and more. And, in partnership with the local dance community, Mayor Lori E. Lightfoot and Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE) Commissioner Erin Harkey have just announced the designation of 2022 as the “Year of Chicago Dance”, a yearlong collaborative initiative which will activate Chicago’s dance industry to address critical issues facing dancers and showcase dance performances, social dancing, and special events for the public in dozens of venues throughout the city. 

With careful COVID-19 protocols and social distancing in place, hybrid and live events will return to the city with the Chicago Auto Show, the largest auto show in North America, returning to McCormick Place in late February. Chicago Restaurant Week will follow soon after in late March/early April, celebrating the city’s award-winning culinary scene, and at long last, EXPO Chicago, the international exhibition of contemporary and modern art, will return to Navy Pier in early April.

Check out what’s new for Winter/Spring 2022 and find out why Chicago was once again designated by Condé Nast Traveler’s readers as the Best Big City in the U.S. in 2021, for the fifth year in a row. Visit www.ChooseChicago.com for more information.

Accolades

• U.S. News & World Report ranked Chicago #1 in Best Weekend Getaways in the Midwest and ranked Chicago #3 in the categories Best Foodie Cities in the U.S., Best Weekend Getaways and Best Summer Vacations in the USA
• The Peninsula Chicago and The Langham, Chicago were named among the top five hotels in the country according to U.S. News & World Report’s 2021 Annual Best Hotels rankings. (Chicago is the only U.S. destination to claim two spots in the top five!) 
• Nobu Chicago was named to Travel + Leisure's It List 2021, celebrating the most impressive openings of the past year

New Accommodations

The LaSalle Hotel, Autograph Collection, situated in the heart of the Financial District, offers a sophisticated experience for business and leisure travellers. World-class accommodations include spacious rooms, oversized Calacatta marble bathrooms with luxurious walk-in showers, and a window-side marble top dining table. The hotel is projected to open in March 2022. 

The St. Regis Chicago is set to debut in 2022 as the 50th St. Regis globally. The 101-story St. Regis Chicago, designed by award-winning architect Jeanne Gang, has changed Chicago’s iconic skyline. It is now the third tallest building in Chicago, the 10th tallest in the United States, and the tallest building in the world designed by a female. The hotel will comprise the first 11 floors of the building, featuring 192 luxurious guest rooms, multiple dining options, a 1,114.8 square meter (12,000 square foot) St. Regis Spa, a fitness center, indoor pool and outdoor sunken terrace with scenic views, a 464.5 square meter (5,000 square foot) ballroom and 278.7 square meter (3,000 square feet) of executive and pre-function space and the St. Regis Signature Butler Service. The hotel’s backyard is a wide open botanical green space featuring a children’s play park, dog park, and attractive ornamental and water gardens.

Restaurants + Dining

This year marks the 15th anniversary of Chicago Restaurant Week (March 25-April 10, 2022), a celebration of the city’s award-winning culinary scene bringing together hundreds of the area’s top restaurants across more than thirty Chicago neighbourhoods, including 50+ women- and minority-owned restaurants. Diners can enjoy special prix fixe menus from restaurants, with multi-course meals available at USD $25 for brunch or lunch, and USD $39 and/or USD $55 for dinner (excluding beverages, tax, gratuity, and delivery fees). This year, diners will continue to have the flexibility to experience Chicago Restaurant Week through dine-in or takeout/delivery options.

In partnership with the famous Gibsons Restaurant Group, Chef José Andrés debuted Bazaar Meat and Bar Mar in December 2021 inside Bank of America’s new Chicago headquarters. Bazaar Meat celebrates all things carnivorous, including personalized tasting menus featuring expertly dry-aged Wagyu, while Bar Mar is a true celebration of the bounty of the sea, with modern takes on iconic seafood classics.

Eric Williams, owner of The Silver Room boutique, has partnered with global hospitality design trailblazer Cecilia Cuff of The Nascent Group on his newest venture: Bronzeville Winery. Opening in 2022, guests of the winery will enjoy a rotating wine list with selections highlighting African American-owned labels paired with a seasonal menu that pays homage to the flavours of the African diaspora. The decor will feature a revolving art collection, and programming will feature wine talks, art openings, and cultural events.

Gordon Ramsay Burger, a new concept from celebrity chef and restaurateur Gordon Ramsay, opened in the city’s River North neighbourhood in December 2021. The Chicago location is the second Gordon Ramsay Burger location in the U.S - and the chef’s first restaurant in Chicago. Alongside elevated, butter-based burgers (blending different cuts of meat to impart a bolder flavour), the developing menu also plans to include milkshakes, fries, vegan, vegetarian and gluten-free options. There are also ketchup-laden hot dogs on the menu (a bold choice for a Chicago audience).

New York food hall Urbanspace will open two Chicago locations, the city's first new food hall since the pandemic. Urbanspace West Washington recently opened while a second location, inside Willis Tower, is projected to open in Winter 2022. 

Museums + Art Exhibitions

The American Writers Museum reopened May 14, 2021 with a new exhibit Ray Bradbury: Inextinguishable (May 2021- May 2022), chronicling the life of the well-known writer of Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, and The Illustrated Man, who was also a screenplay writer, a friend to Walt Disney, an amateur painter, and so much more. 

The Art Institute of Chicago has a full Winter/Spring 2022 schedule, featuring exhibits such as Senju’s Waterfall for Chicago (Until March 13, 2022); Ray Johnson ℅ (Until March 21, 2022) - “New York’s most famous unknown artist”; Morris and Company: The Business of Beauty (Until June 13, 2022); The Golden Age of Kabuki Prints (Until April 10, 2022; April 16- June 26, 2022); Life and Afterlife in Ancient Egypt (Opening February 11, 2022), and more. Most notably, CEZANNE (May 15 - September 5, 2022), is the first major retrospective of the artist’s work in the United States in more than 25 years, and the first exhibition on Cezanne organized by the Art Institute of Chicago in more than 70 years, planned in coordination with Tate Modern.

The Chicago Cultural Center’s new exhibitions include Art and Race Matters: The Career of Robert Colescott (Until March 13, 2022), the first comprehensive retrospective of one of America’s most compelling and controversial artists, Robert Colescott (1925-2009); and The Great Chicago Fire in Focus (Until Spring 2022), following the Great Chicago Fire of October 1871.

Chicago History Museum’s newest permanent exhibition, City on Fire: Chicago 1871, guides visitors through the crucial events and conditions before, during and after the fire which overwhelmed Chicago for three days. The exhibition features more than 100 artifacts from the Chicago History Museum's collection, interactive and multimedia elements, and personal stories from survivors of the fire. 

The Field Museum’s newest exhibit Wild Color (running through January 8, 2023) enables visitors to dive into the colour spectrum as they make their way through immersive rooms, each representing a colour of the rainbow. Other exhibitions include Jurassic Oceans: Monsters of the Deep, opening February 25, 2022, in which visitors will meet the underwater giants that lived 200 million years ago.

Lighthouse ArtSpace Chicago will house Frida: Immersive Dream (February 24 - May 28, 2022), which explores the Mexico-born artist’s work with monumental large-scale projections animating Frida Kahlo’s oeuvre, accompanied by a ravishing musical score. 

For a unique after-hours outing, head to the Loop’s Medieval Torture Museum, the largest interactive historical museum in the U.S. Visitors can explore immersive, hands-on recreations of torture chambers from the Middle Ages, made up of a unique collection of hundreds of objects. 

Coming in spring, the Museum of Contemporary Art will present the first career-spanning retrospective of the internationally renowned Chicagoan Nick Cave in an exhibition titled NICK CAVE: FOROTHERMORE (May 14–Oct 2, 2022). Highlights of the exhibition will include never-before-seen works and a mesmerizing, site-specific installation, Spinner Forest, composed of thousands of kinetic spinners that will hang in the museum’s two-story atrium and fourth-floor lobby.

Museum of Ice Cream (MOIC) is bringing its experiential museum to Chicago this coming summer. Located at The Shops at Tribune Tower at 435 N Michigan Ave, the one-of-its-kind space will include the rollout of new features and attractions specifically designed for Chicago including the Sprink-L, a Chicago-inspired CTA “L”; a giant dessert-themed putt putt course with a pink Chicago dog ice cream treat; and a speakeasy accessible to the general public.

At the reopened Museum of Illusions Chicago, guests can enjoy more than 80 visual and educational exhibits featuring holograms, stereograms, optical illusions, and immersive rooms that are designed to tease the senses and trick the mind. 

Museum of Science and Industry Chicago (MSI)’s popular Boeing 727, which made history during the early age of jet travel, reopened to the public with a new Take Flight exhibit that celebrates the historic United Airlines plane and explores how the airline industry connects people. 

Rise Up: Stonewall and the LGBTQ Rights Movement, the newest special exhibition at the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center running through May 8, 2022, explores the June 1969 police raid of the Stonewall Inn as the flashpoint that ignited the modern gay rights movement in the United States. 

Performances + Festivals

The Chicago Auto Show, the largest auto show in North America, is back from February 12-21, 2022 at McCormick Place. Visitors can experience the latest vehicles, participate in new and returning indoor test tracks and jump behind the wheels of brand-new vehicles for test drives.

EXPO CHICAGO will host the 9th edition in-person exposition on April 7-10, 2022 at Navy Pier. Over the next several months, EXPO CHICAGO will be actively working with global partners and Chicago’s renowned hospitality community to prepare.

The Queen's Ball: A Bridgerton Experience, an immersive Regency-era ball experience with period costumes and stunning decor based on the hit Netflix series will be coming to an as-yet undisclosed location in Chicago, starting April 2022. Tickets start at USD $49 per person and will be available for various 90-minute sessions Tuesdays-Sundays. Guests will be captivated by a dance show and music from a string quartet inspired by the iconic Bridgerton soundtrack, enjoy romantic love stories, acrobatic performances, and interactive experiences based on key moments of the show.

Neighbourhood Attractions

Art on theMART is queuing up four new projections for 2022 that will spotlight Chicago dance and the dancers, choreographers and visual artists that bring the medium to its full potential. The first projection Floe, created bychoreographer and Chicago native Carrie Hanson with her dance company, The Seldoms, is a piece that spotlights climate change, extreme weather, vanishing ice, denialism, bodies of water and, ultimately, bodies. From May 6 to June 29, 2022.  

The Pepper Family Wildlife Center, a new state-of-the-art habitat for lions and big cats, recently opened at the Lincoln Park Zoo. The Center’s Lion House features a Great Hall that can host dinners for 400 guests or receptions for up to 500. The Lion House also features a conference room, which can seat 80 guests, or 100 for a standing reception. Both the Great Hall and the conference room feature windows overlooking the inside of the exciting lion exhibit.

Skydeck Chicago at Willis Tower has reopened after completing an extensive redevelopment encompassing the attraction’s lower level. This immersive, new Chicago-themed museum features modern physical and visual displays, educating guests of all ages on Chicago history, culture, cuisine and architecture.

Meetings + Conventions

In collaboration with the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority (MPEA), Choose Chicago has launched Healthy Meetings Chicago, a digital platform now available for viewing on mobile devices as well as desktop or laptop, showcasing the health and safety advantages of hosting future meetings and events at Chicago’s McCormick Place Campus. 

Theatre + Performing Arts

This winter, Broadway In Chicago is proud to announce the following shows: Hairspray, February 1-13, 2022; Come From Away, February 22-March 6, 2022, The Simon & Garfunkel Story, February 22-27, 2022; Hadestown, March 2-13, 2022; Moulin Rouge! The Musical, March 19-May 14, 2022; SIX March 29-July 3, 2022; THE PROM April 19-24, 2022; To Kill a Mockingbird, May 17-29, 2022; Fiddler on the Roof, May 17 - 22, 2022; Good Night Oscar, March 12 - April 17, 2022, and more.

The Joffrey Ballet kicks off its first performances of 2022 with a spring double-bill featuring Cathy Marston’s world premiere adaptation of Of Mice and Men (April 27-May 8, 2022), Steinbeck’s tender tale of friendship, perseverance, and sacrifice.

Lyric Opera of Chicago’ new-to-Chicago production of Tosca by Giacomo Puccini will run March 12-April 10, 2022, followed by Fire Shut Up in My Bones, playing March 24-April 8, 2022, based on New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow’s widely acclaimed memoir of his traumatic youth growing up in Louisiana. 

The celebrated Steppenwolf Theatre Company returns after a 20-month intermission, with the opening of the USD $54 million Liz and Eric Lefkofsky Arts and Education Center. Additionally, Steppenwolf Theatre Company and Center Theatre Group will present the world premiere of the highly anticipated King James running March 3-April 10, 2022, an intimate exploration of the place that sports and athletes (like “King” LeBron James) occupy in our emotional lives and relationships.

In partnership with the local dance community, Mayor Lori E. Lightfoot and Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE) Commissioner Erin Harkey have just announced the designation of 2022 as the “Year of Chicago Dance”, a yearlong collaborative initiative with Chicago’s dance industry. Partners will include dance service organizations Chicago Black Dance Legacy Project, Chicago Dancemakers Forum, and See Chicago Dance — as well as Art on theMART, Night Out in the Parks at the Chicago Park District and many other presenters and funders.