Some of the best Milwaukee concerts and comedy shows this winter
Here are some top shows to check out in Milwaukee from December 2025 through February 2026.
It was fitting that Rascal Flatts played the first arena concert in Milwaukee in 2026.
In addition to performing country pop hits like “Life is a Highway” at Fiserv Forum Jan. 22, the band’s Gary LeVox, Jay DeMarcus and Joe Don Rooney each took a few moments on stage to praise Jesus Christ and share their Christian faith.
It’s a message that’ll be heard in Milwaukee arenas more than ever this year – and that’s being heard now on more new Milwaukee radio stations.
For each full calendar year of concerts since at least 2015, Milwaukee arenas have hosted one to two Christian music shows a year.
In 2026, there’ll be four – just through this June.
Elevation Worship is at Fiserv Forum Feb. 28, followed by TobyMac (March 13, UW-Milwaukee Panther Arena), Phil Wickham (May 14, also at the Panther Arena) and Forrest Frank (June 5, Fiserv Forum).
That arena concert surge follows a major expansion of new Christian radio stations in the city. Appleton-based Christian radio company Family Radio Network last February purchased FM translator signal W225CP, broadcasting at 92.9 FM, three months after acquiring WJTI-AM (1460) and its translator signal at 102.5 FM. Last fall, K-Love Inc., the world’s biggest Christian radio player with approximately 14 million weekly terrestrial listeners, purchased WLUM-FM (102.1) and WLDB-FM (93.3) for $4 million – turning them into their Air1 worship music station and K-Love Christian contemporary music station, respectively.
“When quality stations come up for markets within that top 50, we are very interested … and we try to have the two networks in as many places as we can,” K-Love CEO Tom Stultz said about the new Milwaukee stations. “It made a lot of sense to … serve that market and meet the needs of believers and nonbelievers looking for hope and encouragement.”
The seismic change in Milwaukee is happening as Christian music nationwide is reaching new levels of popularity.
Led by social media-savvy stars like Frank and Brandon Lake (who played a capacity Fiserv Forum concert last October), there were 30 billion streams of Christian and gospel music in the United States in 2025, according to music and entertainment data firm Luminate. That was an 18.5% increase from the year prior – a bigger jump than for any other music genre. When it comes to streaming of new songs released within the past 18 months, Christian music also saw the biggest jump in volume – a 37.9% increase in 2025 from the year prior, according to Luminate – with rock coming a distant second with a 5.3% increase year-over-year.
“I’ve listened to Christian music my whole life. I think it’s the best it’s ever been creatively right now,” said Kyle Burnside, executive vice president of global touring for Christian concert promoter TPR.
Established in 2024 as a merger of three Christian concert promotion companies (Transparent, Premiere and Rush), TPR has swiftly built up a robust tour slate with “one of the largest lists of consumer data for Christian entertainment buyers in the world,” Burnside said. The company sold 2 million tickets last year, making it the world’s 20th largest concert promoter, according to concert trade publication Pollstar. Aside from the upcoming Worship, Wickham and Frank concerts in Milwaukee, TPR is also promoting Milwaukee shows with CeCe Winans at the Riverside Theater April 29, and with Christian YouTubers Dude Perfect at Fiserv Forum July 24.
“This is a different day and age for Christian music,” Burnside said. “For probably 20 years, four or five artists could headline an arena. Now there might be double that.”
Christian music evolves for a new generation
After several years of steady declines, the Pew Research Center last year reported that the share of Americans who identified as Christian may have leveled off, to slightly above 60%. There’s optimism in some circles for an upswing: evangelical Christian polling firm Banta reported last year that Gen Z and millennial Christians – a core audience for rising stars like Frank and Lake – are attending church more frequently than other age demographics
“I didn’t see it coming…,” Stultz said. “There is a major movement of God among Gen Z right now.”
“This generation is suffering from anxiety, depression, loneliness …” Stultz continued. “These kids are hungry, they want truth, and they’re getting into scripture and studying it, and its changing lives.”
“You watch the news every morning, there’s not a whole lot of hope going on, regardless of your political party,” said John Dougherty, festival director of the annual Lifest Christian music festival in Oshkosh, which has grown from about 5,000 attendees its first year in 1999 to an anticipated 30,000 this year. “Christian music tells you there’s hope, and people are thirsty for that.”
Rising Christian artists are quenching that thirst with music and lyrics that speak to them, in these times.
“If you wanted to listen to Christian music before, the stereotype was it only included songs you may hear at a church service,” said Kate Dordick, senior vice president of booking for Fiserv Forum. Frank’s music may end up on a provided pop-leaning playlist on Spotify or Apple Music, or a Lake song could end up on a country-oriented playlist, she suggested. “There’s a stylistic diversity in how Christian music is being recorded,” she said.
“As a Christian artist for so long the radio stations only wanted to play a certain thing… ” Burnside said. “It was almost a joke. ‘I’ve got this really great album, but I need to write a couple more radio songs before I can put it out.'”
Streaming and social media have changed the game.
“It’s giving artists a lot more freedom to take some creative liberties and make music they want to make,” Burnside said. With some of those songs breaking out on streaming, YouTube, Instagram and TikTok, “radio is playing stuff that they never would have played even five years ago,” Burnside added.
That expanded mindset has stretched beyond Christian music circles, with the success making “some general market producers more willing to work with Christian artists,” Burnside said. Christian music has also expanded into typically secular music spaces, from “American Idol” hosting a Christian-themed Easter episode last year, to country superstar and rapper Jelly Roll bringing crossover appeal to Lake’s 2025 single “Hard Fought Halleljuah,” the latter’s biggest hit to date.
The success can’t solely be attributed to sound and collaborators. Through social media, Christian artists are engaging fans like never before. That’s what Frank did after breaking two vertebrae in a skateboarding accident last summer, documenting his experience and recovery along the way that inspired a hopeful new song that he wrote, “God’s Got My Back.”
“You can connect directly and release songs at record speed,” said Jim Houser, the chief radio officer for K-Love in charge of their live events team. “There’s an excitement for content on demand that audiences have a hunger for more and more. … It’s crazy compared to what it was in the ’90s and 2000s.”
There’s another big difference today from Christian hits of that era, Burnside suggested, one that’s also emerged in other secular genres: “There’s more freedom to be honest lyrically.”
“I think for a long time in Christian music there was this pressure that the lyrics had to be positive, they had to be uplifting, they always had to tie a nice bow on it and had to have a nice resolution,” Burnside said. “There couldn’t be any question of doubt or fear. … Christian artists have been willing to explore other human emotions we all feel.”
Lake and Jelly Roll’s “Hallelujah” expresses doubts – a sentiment Jelly Roll has often expressed in his own country songs of struggle and aspired redemption – with lyrics like “I’ve wrestled with the darkness” and “My head, heart and hands are feeling heavy.” And Frank’s biggest hit, “Your Way’s Better,” is distinguished by relatable lines like, “I need a place where I feel known/Can someone help me?”
“Artists in general seem to be more vulnerable in connecting with their audiences, and finding relatable topics that resonate with fans,” Dordick said. “It creates an immediate connection between an artist and fan that validates a mutual experience through personal understanding. That’s just empathy 101, and empathy is something that our world really needs now more than ever.”
Milwaukee well-positioned for the Christian music upswing
Milwaukee is well-positioned for this watershed moment.
K-Love’s Houser says it’s been a strong market for Christian music, crediting local promoters like Bob Schoenauer from Psalm 96 Promotions who have “kind of blazed the trail” with theater and church bookings. The Pabst Theater Group routinely books Christian artists, and there’s at least one Christian music headliner a year at the Wisconsin State Fair, and typically, at Summerfest. The city’s geography is an asset too, Burnside said. “You sit in a place where you can easily route between Chicago and Minneapolis, two of the biggest markets in the country for what we do,” he said.
And while Stultz said K-Love in Milwaukee “in a couple months’ time” can’t take credit for the Christian arena concert surge in town, Burnside said for TPR, K-Love in Milwaukee “probably opens some doors.”
“I do think for us definitely where we decide to route tours, we’re paying attention to where there’s a strong radio listenership,” Burnside said. “Having (K-Love) in a market enables us to take advantage of certain national type promotions or giveaways.”
Lifest’s Dougherty also said they are making a new Milwaukee marketing effort this year, through the new K-Love and Family stations in Wisconsin’s largest city.
“When you see successful sellouts or near-capacity (concerts) that begets more and more confidence…” Houser said. “Hopefully it doesn’t get to a point where there are so many shows they cannibalize each other.”
That is the risk in Milwaukee going from one to two Christian arena concerts a year to four in a five-month period in 2026. Burnside suggests, given the cyclical nature of touring, that could level off, but that Milwaukee is likely to host more Christian arena shows each year than it historically has.
“It’s not ideal to have this many shows in the first seven months,” Burnside acknowledged. “But the data might tell us otherwise. Right now (TPR’s Milwaukee shows) are all selling pretty well. The market demand seems to be there. … Right now it seems, people are telling us they want it.”
Contact Piet Levy at (414) 223-5162 or [email protected]. Follow him at facebook.com/PietLevyMJS.
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