St. Louis

Sports & music

Cardinals, Blues, CITY SC — and the city that raised Chuck Berry.

St. Louis is a sports town in transition. The Cardinals — with 11 World Series titles, most in the National League — have seen attendance fall nearly 1 million since 2023, though the 2026 decline slowed to roughly 16,000, with the team posting 2.23 million fans. ESPN · Fansided The Blues won their first Stanley Cup in 2019 but missed the playoffs in 2025–26 with a 37–33–12 record. NHL.com

St. Louis CITY SC, meanwhile, sells out every match at 22,423-seat Energizer Park — though the small stadium capacity makes sellouts easier than in larger markets — despite on-field volatility: the club went from first-place expansion darlings in 2023 to near the bottom of the league in 2025 before rebounding to near the top of the conference in 2026. FBref · SeatGeek The stadium district has catalyzed $1.4 billion in regional economic impact since 2020. STL CITY SC

On the music front, the Muny — America's oldest and largest outdoor musical theatre — just won a Regional Theatre Tony Award and drew 344,000 patrons in 2025, offering roughly 1,500 free first-come, first-served seats every night. The Muny Powell Hall reopened in September 2025 after a $140 million transformation, adding 64,000 square feet of patron space while preserving its legendary acoustics. SLSO

St. Louis's music heritage is formidable: Chuck Berry, Miles Davis, and Tina Turner all launched their careers here. Berry played 209 consecutive monthly shows in the Duck Room at Blueberry Hill. Blueberry Hill · Explore St. Louis Live music venues include The Pageant (2,000-capacity) and Delmar Hall (750) in the Loop, Broadway Oyster Bar (live music seven nights a week), and Off Broadway in Historic Cherokee. The Pageant · Broadway Oyster Bar

Caveats: The National Blues Museum closed in early 2026, unable to recover from post-pandemic foot-traffic declines and the loss of federal arts grants — a significant cultural loss for a city with unparalleled blues heritage. St. Louis Business Journal, 2026 Evolution Festival is on pause for 2026; St. Louis lacks a large-scale, recurring multi-genre music festival since LouFest's 2018 collapse. KSDK BB's Jazz, Blues & Soups has announced a late-2026 reopening but the venue has been dark since January 2023. KSDK