In the crowd as the jam band heroes bring one of their biggest live experiences ever to the Las Vegas venue

Most bands spend their entire careers building a repertoire deep enough to compel an arena’s worth of fans to sing along to every lyric of their well-rehearsed, choreographed 90-minute show. Phish, who just completed a high-profile, high-stakes, nine-night residency at Sphere in Las Vegas, took it to another level without a single song repeating over the entire three-weekend affair. In total, the band played for upwards of 27 hours. The song count: 161 over nine shows, besting Dead & Company’s 121-song tally at the Sphere (over two years and 48 shows). Eagles and Backstreet Boys only performed around two dozen songs each, over their respective 50-plus show runs; the same is expected for No Doubt, who arrive at the Sphere this week.

It’s not the first time Phish walked the “no repeats” tightrope without a net. In 2017, they performed 13 consecutive no-repeat shows at Madison Square Garden (and then completed an entire no-repeat fall tour in 2019). Word of those shows seemingly challenged and encouraged other bands with rabid fanbases to offer up more setlist variety, such as Metallica, who are planning “no-repeat weekends” when it’s their turn at Sphere later this year — the band’s song pool will reset every third show.

While Phish’s feat at the Sphere is wildly impressive on multiple levels, it wasn’t even the biggest talking point among dedicated fans, who have become accustomed to the band’s deep and ever-growing catalog by attending multiple shows in a row. Their favorite tunes, as is often the case, still elude them, but they keep chasing for another chance.

What those followers got at the Sphere, however, was a fully realized vision. During the band’s maiden voyage in 2024, the Las Vegas venue still had a new-car smell. The band programmed four nights of video, using the building’s technology to present a philosophical, plotless narrative puzzle that attentive and engaged fans had to piece together themselves. After the final encore, attendees were left debating what they had experienced: four nights in which the band cycled through the four states of matter —solid, liquid, gas, and plasma — lyrically, visually, and thematically, with a couple of detours along the way.

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Tirelessly curious pioneers, creators, and curators, Phish put the building’s visual capabilities to use for their artful, delightfully absurd storytelling, with the help of their creative content partner, the Moment Factory. But during that initial run, some felt the effort fell short — like the band was beholden to the building as they tried to work with the technology. This time, they made the technology work with them: They used the Sphere as an instrument, making the building bend to the music. They created tapestries of sound, entangling the visual content and the immersive sound into their web in real time.

Phish’s front-of-house sound engineer, Garry Brown, employed Sphere’s insane spatial audio capabilities to make it sound as if the music was literally bouncing around the room, with different instruments shooting out of different areas at different times for a truly immersive experience.

This led to chicken vs. egg moments when it was tough to determine who or what was in the driver’s seat: Was Phish live-scoring a visual feast, or were we watching a movie that was being generated in the moment by the music? There were times when those lines became so blurry that everything just started blending as one; and, of course, that’s when it worked the best.

Brown had been experimenting with the venue’s astounding 167,000 speakers to create spatial effects, with the band and its team incrementally and noticeably more confident with it at every show. By the final shows during the third weekend, Phish jams such as “Ruby Waves,” “Plasma,” and “My Friend, My Friend” were significantly enhanced by the immersive, spatial mix. A couple more shows at Sphere and fans will start making GB6 stickers, shorthand for Brown’s significant impact on the music — to the point where he feels like the sixth member of the band. Lighting designer Chris Kuroda, or CK5, has already been designated the fifth member.

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Indeed, Kuroda’s light show has become so integral to the Phish experience that it was disorienting to see the band on a stripped-down stage — as mandated by the venue, it serves as a reminder to audiences that the show is up above. And Phish yielded to that directive the first time. But on the 2026 run, they were determined to do it their way. Each night, the visual content (which played like larger-than-life videos, from hot dog rocket rides to a wild trip to the dentist) was turned over to Kuroda for entire segments, who operated a cartoonish virtual light rig loosely modeled after his arena-sized Phish blueprint that allowed him to jam along. That assurance — that the lights remain spectacular and in time to the music — allowed the band to stretch and also feel at home.

Not surprisingly, these moments, when it looked like a “Phish show” again, produced many of the musical highlights from the run. There were a couple of firsts — for the band and the venue: Phish debuted “Brief Time,” an acoustic ballad from side-project Ghost of the Forest, during the first weekend. And the official tracklist for 4/23/26 notes the debut of “Dark Puddle,” a 20-minute sojourn out of the song “Fuego” that most people assumed was just an extended part of the “Fuego” jam. (A spokesperson for the band told Rolling Stone, “There is no light that can be shed on ‘Dark Puddle.’ That’s why it’s Dark.”) The run also featured the first vacuum cleaner solo ever performed inside Sphere, courtesy of drummer Jon Fishman, and the building’s first “keytar” solo as well, ably handled by keyboardist Page McConnell.

With the shows now in the rearview, fans have already moved on to ranking the jams, with spirited analysis and discussions detailed faithfully on Phish.net’s “jam chart.” It’s all serious business for a fanbase and a band that, famously, refuses to take itself too seriously.

Phish has managed to avoid most nostalgia traps over the years while still including a lot of winks and self-referential jokes, but during their final encore on the final night, the band that blasts arena rock tropes with trampoline routines, and plays their best shows while cracking each other up, turned the goodbye into a heartfelt moment when they projected crowd images from over the years onto the walls. The images, breaking apart into what looked like atoms and reforming, were a touching tribute to the Phish community as fans, some of whom have been following the band for decades, looked up to see their younger selves smiling back.

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When U2 opened Sphere with a conceptual show that featured a largely static setlist and content, the band’s guitarist, The Edge, said in interviews that every night felt like a battle between the band and the building. “And most nights,” he said, “the building wins.”

No doubt, in the battle for attention, Sphere’s 160,000-square-foot LED screen is a worthy opponent. But, in the end, Phish won all nine of their battles. That’s a big victory for the band, sure. It also feels like a victory for rock music. All of which is to say that the Sphere is a pretty incredible spaceship. But the humans are still the stars of the show.