Lady Gaga has announced the premiere of her concert film 'Lady Gaga in Harlequin Live: One Night Only' on YouTube this Christmas Eve. The film captures a secret one-night performance of her 2024 album Harlequin from last September at Los Angeles' Belasco Theatre. It arrives amid Grammy nominations for the album and Gaga's broader 2026 awards slate.
Lady Gaga's Harlequin, released in 2024 as a companion album to the film Joker: Folie à Deux in which she starred as Harley Quinn, consists mostly of unique covers of jazz classics along with two original tracks. The album is nominated for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album at the 2026 Grammy Awards, a category Gaga has won twice before, in 2015 for Cheek to Cheek and in 2022 for Love for Sale, both collaborations with the late Tony Bennett. She faces seven nominations overall, including Album of the Year for her 2025 release Mayhem and Record and Song of the Year for its single “Abracadabra.”
Last September, Gaga performed Harlequin in its entirety during a secretive one-night-only show at the Belasco Theatre in Los Angeles. The event, held after midnight with a six-piece band, featured a set designed like a run-down apartment, and attendees surrendered their phones and smartwatches to preserve the mystery. The concert film, recorded that night, debuted to a smaller audience at the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles on December 18, 2025.
Announcing the wider release on Instagram, Gaga wrote: “Happy holidays to you and yours. Lady Gaga in Harlequin Live: One Night Only Coming Xmas Eve @ 4pm PT on my YouTube channel.” Speaking to Variety about the delay in sharing the footage, she explained: “It was interesting — when we first saw the footage, we said, ‘This is not the right time to put this out.’ And we collectively agreed that we would allow the lore of the Belasco performance to bloom with the fans, until it felt like time… And so this is like a Christmas present.” Gaga added: “I’m feeling like: Why not? We have this thing that’s so special to us, so we’re just really happy to share it with the fans. It’s kind of a rebellious project. And, by Harlequin standards, Christmas is the perfect time to release something rebellious.”
In a review of Harlequin, Rolling Stone's Rob Sheffield noted: “She taps into the connection between her alter ego Harley Quinn and herself, hiding her pain behind makeup and costumes so the show can go on, weeping the tears of a clown when there’s no one around.” The film premieres on December 24, 2025, at 4 p.m. PT (7 p.m. ET).
