Atlantic City Comedy Festival

From a boardwalk experiment to a holiday-weekend habit

The festival's own paper trail puts its beginnings around 2010. A venue announcement issued in 2016 billed that year's event as the seventh, staged on 8 and 9 October over Columbus Day weekend, and said more than 50,000 people had come through in the six years before it. The same announcement described past editions as sold out and named the catchment the organisers were working: New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Washington DC. That regional pull — a drive or a chartered bus rather than a flight — is still what the weekend runs on.

The venue has not moved. Jim Whelan Boardwalk Hall sits at 2301 Boardwalk, a few minutes' walk from the casino floors, and the festival's 2026 date is listed at a capacity of 10,500. The building was under Spectra by Comcast Spectacor management at the time of the 2016 announcement. Booking an arena that size for stand-up is a different proposition from a club run: the bill has to be broad enough to sell thousands of seats a night, twice, on a holiday weekend when Atlantic City is already competing for the same visitors.

The promoter behind it is North American Entertainment Group, an independent company that sells its shows under the Platinum Shows banner and describes itself as working in more than a hundred markets across a quarter-century in the business. That matters to the shape of the event. This is not a curated showcase of emerging acts with panels and late shows attached; it is a promoter assembling a package of established touring headliners, putting them on one stage in sequence, and doing it again the following night with a different set of names.

The bill is the work

For a festival of this kind, the discography is the billing. The 2016 edition — the one with the fullest surviving press material — lined up Mike Epps, Rickey Smiley, Sheryl Underwood, Gary Owen, Bruce Bruce, Arnez J, Jay Pharoah, Tony Rock, Joe Clair and Buck Wild, with tickets going on sale at 10am on 17 June that year. It is a useful snapshot, because most of those names are still in the festival's orbit a decade later.

By 2023 the promoter's own listing had Sommore, Bill Bellamy and Earthquake among the headliners, split across a Saturday show at 8pm and a Sunday show at 7pm, with tickets starting at $59 plus taxes and fees and running up to $350. That price spread is the other constant: an arena stand-up bill priced to fill the upper tiers as well as the floor.

What has emerged over the years is a repertory company rather than a rotating cast. Sheryl Underwood, Tommy Davidson, Bruce Bruce, Don DC Curry, Lavell Crawford, Tony Rock and Arnez J recur across editions, and the compère slots are filled by radio and television personalities — Special K, Buck Wild, Joe Clair, Talent, Capone — who know the audience because they broadcast to it. The effect is closer to a touring revue that reconvenes each autumn than to a festival in the Edinburgh or Montreal sense.

The 2025 edition

Last year's festival ran on 11 and 12 October 2025, again at Boardwalk Hall. The Saturday had doors at 7pm and a show at 8pm; the Sunday moved earlier, doors at 6pm and the show at 7pm, a concession to an audience that mostly has to get home.

Saturday 11 October was built around Sommore, Lavell Crawford, Don DC Curry and Arnez J. Sunday 12 October put up Earthquake, Gary Owen, Tommy Davidson and Sheryl Underwood. Talent, Junior and Skeet Carter were also billed across the weekend, filling the opening and hosting duties. Four or five names a night, in other words, rather than a single headliner with support — the structure the festival has used consistently.

The announcement for that edition went out in early September 2025, about five weeks before the shows, which is a tighter runway than the June on-sale the 2016 festival used. The 2026 dates, by contrast, have been on sale since roughly July.

Where it stands in September 2026

The 2026 festival returns to Jim Whelan Boardwalk Hall on Friday 9 and Saturday 10 October, both nights at 8pm. Two dates are on sale, ticketed separately through Ticketmaster, with the festival's own site pointing at each night's link rather than selling a weekend pass.

The announced roster runs to ten names: Sheryl Underwood, DeRay Davis, Bruce Bruce, Tommy Davidson, Mark Curry, Lavell Crawford, Tony Rock, Don DC Curry, Adele Givens and Special K. The Friday night is billed with Bruce Bruce, Sheryl Underwood, Tommy Davidson, Tony Rock, Mark Curry, Special K and Buck Wild. The Saturday listing carries DeRay Davis and Adele Givens with Capone on hosting duty, the remaining names not yet publicly split between the two shows.

The notable change is the calendar. The festival has historically leaned on Saturday and Sunday of the Columbus Day weekend — 8 and 9 October in 2016, 11 and 12 October in 2025 — and this year it shifts to Friday and Saturday, with Columbus Day itself falling on 12 October 2026. Both 2026 nights carry the same 8pm start, dropping the earlier Sunday curtain the festival has used in previous years.

Mark Curry and Adele Givens are the freshest additions to the recurring core; DeRay Davis, absent from the 2025 weekend, returns as one of the two Saturday draws.

The room, the rules and what people say afterwards

Boardwalk Hall runs the festival as a straight arena show. There is no re-entry once inside, no outside food or drink, no smoking, and professional cameras and recording devices are barred — a meaningful restriction for comics working new material in front of ten thousand phones. Bags are capped at 14 by 14 by 6 inches. On-site parking is $40 with advance reservation through ParkMobile, and Lyft is the official rideshare partner, dropping at Florida Avenue and the Boardwalk.

Feedback from ticket buyers after the 2025 weekend singled out Gary Owen and Earthquake as the standouts of the Sunday show and rated Sheryl Underwood well as host, which tracks with how the festival is constructed: the MC carries the room between sets, and the closing headliner takes the longest slot. There is no staging beyond a microphone, a stool and a screen relay for the back of the hall, and no music support act — the whole evening is stand-up, back to back.