[Oprah Winfrey is bringing a new kind of immersive experience to the Las Vegas Sphere next April. The basic details are in this story from Deadline; more information and background are in the excerpts from coverage in Variety, People and USA Today that follow below. Her press announcement is available at the Oprah website. –Matthew]

[Image: Source: Variety]

Oprah Winfrey Heads To Las Vegas Sphere With New Immersive Experience

By Jill Goldsmith, Co-Business Editor
September 14, 2026

Oprah Winfrey‘s AHA, a new live immersive experience created in collaboration with a global collective of musicians, artists and storytellers will debut at Sphere in Las Vegas for one weekend, April 2-4.

The project will see Winfrey appear live on stage alongside a variety of performances in what the announcement calls a “brand-new visual, musically immersive symphony of senses.”

Windfrey said “‘AHA’ is a dream that came to me as I sat in awe at the opening night of U2 at the Sphere, mesmerized by the possibilities of how the space could be used as a tool for creating greater awareness and understanding of ourselves and our connection to each other.”

The two-hour shows will feature performances by Grammy Award-winner Jacob Collier; poet and author Ocean Vuong; musician Ajeet; and gospel singer Wintley Phipps, among others. The show will utilize Sphere’s next-generation technologies, including the world’s highest-resolution LED display that wraps up, over, and around the audience creating a fully immersive visual environment. The venue also features the world’s most advanced concert-grade audio system, Sphere Immersive Sound.

“Creating this experience has felt like the culmination of what I’ve spoken about and worked towards my entire life,” Winfrey said in the announcement.

What organizers are calling a “journey of light, sound, music and storytelling” is designed by director Ethan Tobman and produced by Emmy-winning founder of Silent House Group, Baz Halpin.

The team includes musical direction and original music from Oscar-nominated composer Max Richter; Grammy-winning musician and vocal director Jason White; Grammy-nominated composer, producer, and electronic artist Jon Hopkins; writing from Tarell Alvin McCrane, Oscar-winning screenwriter and Artistic Director of Geffen Playhouse; and original works by artist Es Devlin and the Plum Village Monks.

Presented by Live Nation, the event is executive produced by Winfrey, along with Jennifer Rudolph Walsh, producer of The Life You Want Tour, founder of Together Live, and co-founder of Godmothers bookstore; Harpo Entertainment’s EP Tara McNally Montgomery; co-founder and partner of Fulwell Entertainment, Ben Winston; social entrepreneur Andrew Maxwell Mangino; and consulting producer and Pinterest co-founder Evan Sharp.

AHA marks a new kind of spectacle for the Sphere, which debuted in 2023 with the inaugural residency of U2 and has or will soon been host to Phish, the Eagles, Kenny Chesney, Backstreet Boys, Carín León, Metallica, Anyma and more. It branched into sporting events with the UFC in September of 2024. Its ongoing presentation of The Wizard of Oz, a 75-minute 4D immersive adaptation of the classic 1939 film, in collaboration with Warner Bros., has been extremely popular.

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[From Variety]

Oprah Winfrey to Headline Las Vegas Sphere With New Music and Arts Show ‘Aha’

By Ethan Shanfeld
September 14, 2026

[snip]

“My first time at Sphere, I was blown away by this high-tech marvel of sound and images,” Winfrey said in an announcement video. “I had a big aha moment: What if this magnificent space could take us to the edge of the universe and deep within ourselves for an immersive symphony of awe, wonder and joy? Aha! Join me for the ultimate aha moment at Sphere.”

Elaborating in a press release, Winfrey continued, “‘Aha’ is a dream that came to me as I sat in awe at the opening night of U2 at the Sphere, mesmerized by the possibilities of how the space could be used as a tool for creating greater awareness and understanding of ourselves and our connection to each other. Creating this experience has felt like the culmination of what I’ve spoken about and worked towards my entire life.”

Tickets start at $145 and will go on sale here starting on Sept. 25 at 10 a.m. PT.

[snip]

The title and concept of the show will resonate with Winfrey fans: After all, it was she who popularized the term “aha moment” in the 1990s on her daytime talk show. Winfrey is the reason the phrase was added to the dictionary in 2012 by Miriam-Webster, which describes an aha moment as “a moment of sudden realization, inspiration, insight, recognition or comprehension.”

“I always love those moments when I sit down to talk to somebody and they say things that make me look at life or a situation in a completely different way,” Winfrey has explained, adding that an aha moment is like a “lightbulb, bing bing bing” moment in which “the little hairs on your arms stand up.”

[snip to end]

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[From People]

Oprah Reveals Her Next Big Project: ‘The Culmination of Everything I’ve Been Trying to Say for Years’ (Exclusive)

Winfrey announces an upcoming, ambitious live “experience” at the Las Vegas Sphere, which she says began as a dream

By Eileen Finan
September 14, 2026

[snip]

“I feel that it is the culmination of everything I’ve tried to say for years,” Winfrey, 72, tells PEOPLE of the ambitious two-hour live show featuring music, film and sensory effects that she’s bringing to Las Vegas entertainment venue Sphere in April. “It’s an opportunity to immerse yourself in a way that allows you to feel connected to yourself, but also to everybody else who’s there.”

Winfrey says she’s been dreaming of the concept for nearly three years, since she went to see U2 open the Sphere in September 2023.

“I was mesmerized. I was enthralled. I was excited,” she recalls. “When you’re inside the Sphere, it’s like being under this dome that isn’t a dome, but it’s like a window. There are 160,000 speakers, and movement in the seats and your olfactory senses are being affected. If you’re looking at the beach, you can smell the beach. At one point I was like, ‘I don’t even know what is happening.’ ”

[snip]

This will be an immersive experience that allows the audience to be a part of the production of it,” says Winfrey, who points to Dacher Keltner’s 2023 book Awe: The Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life as another source of inspiration. “I’m calling it AHA for a reason. From the moment you come into the Sphere in Las Vegas, you will be filled with awe and wonder, and you will leave with a great sense of joy. You will leave with a very good feeling about what your life is, what it can be, and the potential for the future for you and for all of us. That’s the idea.”

[snip to end]

—

[From USA Today]

Oprah says we’re ‘numb’ to the world. She has an antidote | Exclusive

The icon is launching a first-of-its-kind experience at Sphere in Las Vegas.

By Wendy Naugle, USA TODAY

September 14, 2026; updated September 16, 2026

[snip]

You have created a television show, films, a magazine, an entire network. What is it about this experience at Sphere that allows you to do something none of those were able to do?

Oprah Winfrey: It’s the culmination of all those things. I’ve said it and said it and said it – this allows for an opportunity to say it with some of the world’s greatest collaborators who are the best in their field.

This is how it came about. I was at Sphere in Las Vegas, to see Bono and U2. Loved the concert, had a great time. And at one point I turned – I was seated next to Jim Dolan, who built the thing – and I said, “What is happening? Are we now outside? Is that the sun coming through the dome?” I couldn’t figure out what was going on, and I could smell the sea.

And he was just like, “Calm down, it’s going to be OK.” I was literally a little disoriented because I wasn’t prepared for [this] immersive experience.

[Afterward] I had this feeling as I stood there in silence, just sort of taking it all in: What if you could take people to the edge of space, and allow us to see our relationship to Earth and the stars, the galaxies, how enormous it is, and yet how small we are, and how miraculous it is that we have come from that? It was just a feeling I had.

It was very much like the first time I remember having that feeling: I was on my grandmother’s porch, watching her hang clothes on a line. She was a domestic worker, and she’d brought the clothes home from her clients to boil in the backyard because we didn’t even have a washing machine. No running water, no electricity. And I remember seeing her from through the screen door saying, “You, Oprah Gayle, you better pay attention and watch me now, because one day you’re going to have to learn to do this for yourself.”

And she’s showing me how to get the clothes, and hold it up with the clothespin. And I just watched and I had that feeling, “No, I’m not. This will not be my life.” Now that feeling also said to me, “Don’t tell her because you gonna get a whipping if you say that out loud.” [She laughs.]

That same feeling, that same calm – in a way, that’s what it felt like.

Why do you think people need a sense of wonder right now?

Because that’s how you are able to move yourself from confusion, exhaustion, being overwhelmed, being stuck.

People need wonder. They need joy to feel more alive.

And I think a lot of people are numbed. I think they’re numb from their phones. They’re numb from their work. They’re plumb numb from what’s going on in the world in the news.

Everybody’s just shut down. So this is an opportunity to bring a sense of vibrancy and aliveness – not to preach or tell you anything that you don’t already know. That’s why it’s called a-ha. Because every a-ha moment I’ve ever had or you’ve ever had has only been a reminder of what you already knew. “A-ha! I knew that, I just forgot it.” It stirs something inside you to remind you of what you already knew.

And what I’m trying to remind people is that there is a light that we all carry. That each of us has a calling to do the work that we’ve come to do, and not be overwhelmed, but to be about the business that is truly your life and not get sucked into all the things that [people tell you should be] part of your life.

[snip to end]