Jose Mari Chan and the OPM Christmas concert season

There is a date the Philippine Christmas actually starts, whatever the calendar says, and it is the first morning a radio station, a mall or a neighbour's karaoke machine plays Jose Mari Chan. His album Christmas in Our Hearts has been the season's opening note since 1990, and the singer the country calls its King of Philippine Christmas Carols is less a performer in December than a public utility. So the anchor concert of the OPM Christmas season writes itself: Chan on stage at Newport, in Pasay, with a theatre full of people who have been hearing him since September. This year it runs two nights. Here is the anchor, the season around it, and the older tradition underneath both, because in the Philippines the concerts and the dawn masses are the same season wearing two sets of clothes. Our Christmas in the Philippines guide covers the whole long season; this piece is its concert chapter.

The anchor: two nights at Newport

Jose Mari Chan: A Christmas with the OPM Icons plays the Newport Performing Arts Theater in Newport City, Pasay, on Friday 11 and Saturday 12 December 2026, both nights at 8pm. The concert was first announced for the Saturday alone, and the Friday was added as a second date, which tells you most of what you need to know about demand. Newport's own billing promises Chan joined by some of OPM's biggest stars, and the venue's ticketing page names the shape of it: Apo Hiking Society and The Company are on the bill, with more guests to be announced. That pairing is the point of the night. Chan's Christmas catalogue is the country's shared songbook, and a bill that puts him alongside Apo, whose songs carry the same decades in them, is a concert built out of memory as much as music.

Tickets sell through TicketWorld, the official channel, from PHP 3,500 for Bronze to PHP 11,000 for Platinum, and they went on general sale on 29 August after an Epic Rewards presale in the days before. There is no affiliate route for these tickets and this guide invents none: buy from TicketWorld or from Newport directly. What is worth planning early is everything around the seat. Newport City sits directly across from NAIA Terminal 3, with the resort's own hotels in the same complex, so the concert and the room can share an address on a December Friday when Pasay traffic is at its most Filipino. Event page

Stay in Pasayvia Trip.com · affiliate link

Making a night of it at Newport

Plan the Newport nights as evenings, not appointments. The theatre sits inside the Newport World Resorts complex, so dinner before the show and the walk back after it both happen under the same roofs, and on a Friday in December that is worth more than any single restaurant booking across town. Arrive with time in hand: an 8pm curtain in Pasay means leaving a Makati or BGC hotel in the early evening, not at seven, because December traffic in the metro is the one performer in this guide that never misses a show. If you are flying in for the concert, the geography is a gift. NAIA Terminal 3 is directly across from Newport City, so a concert weekend can start at arrivals and end at departures without the city in between. Dress is smart casual in practice, with plenty of families making it the dressed up night of their Christmas, and the audience is the show's second half: a Chan concert in December is a singalong with assigned seating, and nobody in the room considers that a criticism. Book the Friday if your trip is built around the concert and you want the Saturday for the city, or the Saturday if the concert is the trip's finale. Either way, the room, the catalogue and the month do the rest.

The season around it

Chan is the anchor, not the whole season. December in Metro Manila stacks OPM nights one after another, and three of them frame his weekend neatly. On Thursday 3 December, a week before Newport, The Theatre at Solaire in Parañaque stages Awitin Mo at Isasayaw Ko!, an OPM stars concert built on the classic songbook, the same tradition Chan headlines, in the metro's most polished listening room. The same night, at the Smart Araneta Coliseum in Quezon City, Cup of Joe play their Symphony show, the younger generation's version of the December concert, a full band arena night from the act younger audiences have claimed as their own. Then on Wednesday 16 December, four nights after Chan, Newport's theatre changes key again for Videoke Hits: Christmas Edition, with Ice Seguerra, Nyoy Volante, Sitti, Noel Cabangon and Bituin Escalante trading Christmas hits in the room Chan has just vacated. Read together, the three weeks are a fair map of how the Philippines sings December: the icons at Newport, the classics at Solaire, the new crowd at Araneta, and everyone welcome at all of them.

The older music: Simbang Gabi

Underneath the concert season sits the reason December sounds the way it does. Simbang Gabi, the nine dawn masses from 16 to 24 December, fills churches before sunrise across the country, and the music in those churches, carols sung by whole congregations in the dark, is the tradition every Christmas concert in this guide descends from. The Bamboo Organ Church in Las Piñas, in our hero photograph, holds its dawn masses under the only bamboo organ in the world. You do not need a ticket for any of this, and you do need an alarm clock: masses start before dawn, the churches fill, and the bibingka and puto bumbong stalls outside afterwards are as much a part of the ritual as the service. If the concerts are your December, give one morning to the source.

December days around the concerts plan themselves in this city, because the season is also peak family time. The bayfront is the natural pairing with a Pasay base: Manila Ocean Park, on the park edge behind the Quirino Grandstand, is the family anchor of a concert weekend afternoon, its all in one pass covering the oceanarium and the shows in a single ticket.

Manila Ocean Park ticketvia Klook · affiliate link

Across the bay districts in BGC, The Mind Museum's all day pass does the same job for the Solaire and Araneta side of the season, a full indoor day a short drive from either venue.

The Mind Museum all day passvia Klook · affiliate link

Booking order, if you are building the trip

Work backwards from the hardest ticket. The Chan nights come first, because they are the fixed point everything else arranges around and because a second date exists precisely because the first one filled. The Newport area room comes second, in the same complex if you can, so the concert night has no journey in it. The other concerts are the flexible layer: Solaire on the 3rd if you arrive early in the month, Araneta the same night if the younger show is yours, Videoke Hits on the 16th if you are staying through the following week. The dawn masses need no booking at all, only the alarm, and the two Klook days in this guide redeem on any date, so they slot into whichever afternoons the concerts leave free. That order, anchor, room, extras, costs nothing to follow and is the difference between a December trip that feels planned and one that feels lucky.

And then the season turns

The concert season does not end at Christmas. It runs, by way of the Metro Manila Film Festival from Christmas Day, straight into the metro's other great singing night: New Year's Eve, when Newport answers its own Christmas concert with the Grand Countdown in the Marriott Grand Ballroom and Solaire answers with VOIC3S, Martin Nievera, Jed Madela and Sofronio Vasquez in the theatre that hosted the OPM classics night. Our New Year in Metro Manila guide plans that night district by district, and our earlier New Year's Eve in Metro Manila guide goes deep on the two anchors. Book the Chan nights first. In a country that starts Christmas in September, the 11th and 12th of December are the evenings the whole season has been warming up for, and a second date added to a Jose Mari Chan concert is the market telling you, politely and in advance, not to leave it late.

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