Iconic Mirage Casino on Vegas Strip to Officially Shut Down in July

The iconic Mirage Hotel & Casino will officially close for good in mid-July to make way for the new Hard Rock hotel.

Hard Rock International will cease operations of The Mirage as of July 17, 2024. The last day of hotel occupancy will be July 14, 2024.

The volcano is set for demolition, but no official date yet has been announced.

Hard Rock Las Vegas will start building its guitar-shaped hotel on the site. The existing hotel tower will stay open during construction.

The new hotel tower and buildings will take up almost 1.44 million square feet of new space, have 600 hotel rooms, and over 37 floors. The giant guitar-shaped hotel will be nearly 700-feet tall. 

As of right now, Hard Rock Las Vegas is expected to open in spring of 2027.

It will be the second time this year that a Strip casino shutters. The Tropicana Las Vegas  to make room for a $1.5 billion baseball stadium planned as the future home of the relocating Oakland A's.

Developed by former casino mogul Steve Wynn, the Mirage opened with a Polynesian theme as the Strip's first megaresort in 1989, spurring a building boom on the famous boulevard through the 1990s.

Hard Rock International said Wednesday that more than 3,000 employees will be laid off and it expects to pay them $80 million in severance.

The Mirage became the first Strip property to be run by a Native American tribe in 2022, after Hard Rock International, which is owned by the Seminole Tribe of Florida, purchased it from MGM Resorts in a cash deal worth nearly $1.1 billion.

Hard Rock said at the time that the property would remain open and operate under the Mirage brand for several years while it finalized renovation plans.