Sixteen Candles set their Bogart's holiday-season party for Dec. 18

The Chicago 80s band, a Short Vine regular, plays Bogart's on Friday, Dec. 18, with tickets from $23.59.

Every office in Cincinnati has a holiday party in the week before Christmas, and every one of them has somebody who wants to go somewhere after. For a few years now, Bogart's has given that crowd an answer. Sixteen Candles play Bogart's on Friday, Dec. 18, at 7 p.m., and tickets start at $23.59 through Ticketmaster.

The date was announced Oct. 19, which leaves about two months to round up the group chat. Bogart's holds 1,500, and Ticketmaster is also selling the usual Live Nation add-ons, Club Access and Fast Lane, for people who'd rather skip the line on Short Vine in December. Those are add-ons, not concert tickets, so buy the ticket first.

If you haven't seen them, Sixteen Candles are an 80s party band out of Chicago, playing since 2003, and they make a point of it being 100% live, with no pre-recorded backing tracks. That matters more than it sounds like it should. The 80s songbook is full of synth parts and drum machines, and a lot of tribute acts lean on tracks to fill them in. Sixteen Candles play it with the band. A recent setlist on their Ticketmaster page runs through Tears for Fears' "Head Over Heels" and The Cure's "Just Like Heaven," which gives you the range: big new wave hooks, the songs that got played at every school dance, sung back by the whole room.

That's the real draw. A Sixteen Candles show is less a concert than a group sing-along with a very good band in the middle.

Cincinnati has shown up for it more than once. Live Nation's records show the band at Bogart's on March 25, 2017, again on Dec. 27, 2024, and on Nov. 7, 2025. That's a band that has turned a Corryville club into a regular stop, and this year's date moves the holiday-week show up to the Friday before Christmas, a little earlier than the 2024 one.

Bogart's is the right size for it. The room at 2621 Short Vine has been one of the city's main rock clubs for decades, now run by Live Nation, and at 1,500 it's big enough to feel like a party and small enough that the back of the floor is still close to the stage. A 7 p.m. start on a Friday means you can make dinner on Vine and still be in the room for the first song.

Dress the part or don't. Some people go full 1985 and some just come from work. The songs do the rest. If you're putting together the after-party plan for the week before Christmas, this one's already done.

Sources: Ticketmaster: Sixteen Candles, Cincinnati, Dec 18 2026 (ticketmaster.com); Ticketmaster: Sixteen Candles artist page (ticketmaster.com); Live Nation: Bogart's events (livenation.com); Live Nation: Sixteen Candles at Bogart's, Dec 27 2024 (livenation.com); Live Nation: Sixteen Candles at Bogart's, Mar 25 2017 (livenation.com); Ticketmaster: Sixteen Candles, Cincinnati, Nov 7 2025 (ticketmaster.com); Arts DuPage: Sixteen Candles (artsdupage.org); Sixteen Candles on Bandsintown (bandsintown.com); Bogart's - Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org)