Twenty years of jazz in Monaco's most beautiful auditorium

November isn’t the month anyone thinks of for Monaco, and that’s exactly why I like this festival. There are fewer people about, the Riviera air is still kind and for twelve days the Monte-Carlo Opera’s auditorium fills with jazz, soul and gospel. In 2026 it turns twenty, with a line-up worth the trip. Here’s the programme and how I’d plan it.

Twenty years at the Salle Garnier

The Monte-Carlo Jazz Festival was launched in 2006 by Jean-René Palacio. The organiser these days is Monte-Carlo SBM, the company behind the Casino and the grand hotels, and its artistic director Alfonso Ciulla has put together a 20th-anniversary programme the organisers describe as generous, bold and open to the world. After two decades of big French and international voices, the festival mixes generations and styles in a setting with no equal on the Riviera.

That setting is the Salle Garnier, the gilded hall that shares a roof with the gaming rooms on Casino Square. Nobody tours it by day, so the only way to sit under that ceiling is to buy a seat for something, and a jazz concert strikes me as the least formal excuse. The building’s story, Charles Garnier included, is told in the Monte-Carlo Opera.

The 2026 programme, night by night

The festival opens on 18 November with the traditional concert by young musicians from the Académie Rainier III, a nod to those starting out. On the 20th comes the night I’d circle in red, with Youn Sun Nah, one of the great voices of contemporary jazz, and Gregory Porter, a two-time Grammy winner for best jazz vocal album. On the 21st, the Thanda Choir, fifteen South African artists on their first international tour, and Melody Gardot, who marked twenty years in music in 2024.

The 22nd is jazz and cinema with the Audiovisual Institute of Monaco, screening Otto Preminger’s 1955 ‘The Man with the Golden Arm’, with Frank Sinatra as a would-be jazz drummer. On the 25th Tyreek McDole, Selah Sue and the duo The Gallands share a bill. On the 26th, the electronic jazz of Manchester trio GoGo Penguin and the acid jazz of The Brand New Heavies. The 27th takes a rock turn with Marillion, the British band founded in 1979, and on the 28th Lila-May and Thomas Dutronc, who premieres a show drawing on Chet Baker, Django Reinhardt and the American songbook. The Soweto Gospel Choir closes on the 29th with ‘JOY’. It’s all in the table.

Before and after in the Casino

The organisers also announce sessions before and after the concerts at the Café de la Rotonde, inside Monte-Carlo Casino. It’s the kind of touch that makes a small festival special, stretching the evening without leaving the square. Remember the Casino’s gaming rooms have their own age and dress rules, as I explain in visiting Monte-Carlo Casino.

Jazz and National Day on one trip

Here’s my most practical tip. The festival overlaps with National Day on 19 November, which starts with fireworks above the harbour on the evening of the 18th and carries on with the Prince at the cathedral and troops parading outside the palace. A trip from the 18th to the 21st would let you catch the fireworks, soak up the festivities and finish with two of the festival’s best nights. I explain it all in Monaco National Day.

Other autumn dates in Monaco

Jazz isn’t alone in those weeks. Just before, from 29 October to 1 November, Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo celebrate 30 years of their ‘Romeo and Juliet’ in the same Salle Garnier, so a music lover could link the two in a couple of short breaks or one long one. And on Port Hercule the town hall’s funfair fills the harbour from 16 October to 19 November 2026, with a very family feel. The dance season is covered in Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo.

For a British visitor, a late-November trip has another bonus I rate highly. You get Monaco at its most local, with residents rather than summer crowds filling the streets, and with National Day in the mix you see the country celebrating itself.

Tickets and where to stay

Tickets are sold by the SBM and each night is priced separately. On 25 September 2026 its site listed seats from €100 for the 20th and 21st, €80 for the 25th, €70 for the 26th and €15 for the cinema evening, so I’d book the two big vocal nights first. Monte-Carlo is the obvious place to stay, a walk from the square, and November, outside National Day, is one of the calmest months of the year. Everything else happening in the Principality month by month sits in Monaco’s events calendar, and the festival’s square in Casino Square.