Concerts & Live Music in Chennai

Upcoming concerts in Chennai are listed below and refreshed every day. The city's live-music calendar has two very different halves. The first is Tamil film and independent music at arena scale. The YMCA Grounds in Nandanam is the main open-air concert ground and hosted Hiphop Tamizha in March 2026 and Santhosh Narayanan in August 2026; the Jawaharlal Nehru Indoor Stadium, with about 8,000 seats, takes the biggest indoor shows; and Phoenix Marketcity's courtyard and hotel lawns on the ECR host mid-sized gigs. The second half is classical. Chennai is the capital of Carnatic music, and the Music Academy, Narada Gana Sabha, Vani Mahal, Sri Krishna Gana Sabha and Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan hold recitals in every month of the year, peaking in the December season, when hundreds of concerts are packed into a few weeks. In between are tribute and light-music nights at the Sir Mutha Venkatasubba Rao Concert Hall and Kamarajar Arangam, Western classical and choral concerts, jazz and world music at the Alliance Française and Goethe-Institut, and band nights at bars such as Hard Rock Cafe in Nungambakkam, where October 2026 gigs are listed from ₹249. Open-air shows thin out during the October–December monsoon.