It’s Taylor Swift’s world – we just live in it.
The 35-year-old Swift, the pop music juggernaut whose myriad Mount Olympus-size stats include becoming the highest-grossing live music artist of all time (earning $3 billion so far), has added another accolade (of sorts) to her warehouse of achievements.
To see it, just check out the home page of the website of Palm Coast’s Fitzgerald Performing Arts Center, where the venue has announced its 2025-2026 season.
Never mind that on Feb. 7, 2026, the Fitz will host Debby Boone, whose 1977 hit, “You Light Up My Life,” spent 10 weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart (a record at the time).
Never mind that on Jan. 15, 2026, the Fitz will host that Gary Puckett and the Union Gap, whose Top 5 singles “Woman Woman,” “Young Girl” and “Lady Willpower” propelled them to sell more records in 1968 than any other music artist (including the Beatles).
Never mind that twin brothers Matthew and Gunnar Nelson, sons of the late singer Ricky Nelson and grandsons of television stars Ozzie and Harriet Nelson, will honor their family heritage by bringing their nostalgic, multimedia show “Christmas with the Nelsons” to the Fitz on Dec. 7. (TV nerds will recall that the quasi-autobiographical sitcom “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet” aired on ABC from 1952 to 1966.)
Yet it’s Blank Space – The Taylor Swift Tribute that gets star billing on the Fitzgerald’s home page. All Swifites (as Taylor’s legion of fans are called) take note: It’s a tribute act, featuring singer Olivia Mojica and not Swift herself, that invades the Fitzgerald on Nov. 8.
Fitzgerald season subscriptions include 20 shows for $700, and are currently on sale through August 31. However, tickets to the Swift tribute are not included in the season subscription package. (They cost $44 to $70.) Single-show tickets go on sale Sept. 16. Tickets to the three free military band concerts presented by the Fitzgerald will be announced on the venue’s Facebook page and in its newsletter. (Note: While still known in some cases as Flagler Auditorium, and while the venue’s website is flaglerauditorium.org, the venue rebranded its performing space as the Fitzgerald several years ago.)
The Blank Space show (which gets its name from Swift’s 2014 No. 1 electro-pop hit that finds the singer clapping back to tabloid speculations about her love life), is a tribute on steroids, says Amelia Fulmer, director of the Fitzgerald Performing Arts Center. However, despite Swift’s Midas touch in the music business (see this TMZ story on Blank Space singer Olivia Mojica), bringing this particular tribute “is a big risk,” Fulmer says.
“The Blank Space tribute is coming with six dancers and a full band – it’s a very successful show,” Fulmer says. “I’m very proud of the board of directors (and its show committee, which makes decisions on what performances to book) because we talked about what can we bring for the younger people and we thought ‘Well, a Taylor Swift tribute.’ ”
While there are smaller-scale Swift tributes making the rounds, Fulmer says, “We went all the way, even though it’s outside of our target audience.”
A quick perusal of this coming season’s lineup, which mirrors past seasons, hints at what that target audience is: the Boomer generation (and older). This season’s lineup includes tributes to a number of classic rock bands and music artists from the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s: Hotel California (Eagles tribute), One Night of Queen, Ticket to the Moon (ELO), Proud Tina (Tina Turner), The Temps and the Tops (the Temptations and the Four Tops), Old Soul Motown Revival, Brass Transit (Chicago), I Am, He Said (Neil Diamond), and the Boulevards (’50s and ’60s rock ’n’ roll).
While Celebrating Celine, the tribute to Canadian singer Celine Dion, falls outside the realm of classic rock, note that Dion released “Unison,” her first English-language album, in 1990 – when Taylor Swift was just 1-year-old.
“We book tribute acts because the music is familiar and people will respond and buy tickets when they know what songs are going to be performed, and they’ll have a good time,” Fulmer says. “Kids here don’t come to a lot of shows at the auditorium because they don’t know a lot of the music.
“Half of the show committee thinks ‘Oh, we’re not going to sell any tickets to this Swift tribute,’ and the other half thinks ‘It’s going to be a sell-out.’ But they’re willing to take the risk because they know it’s the right thing to do to try to reach a new demographic.”
Even with the plethora of music tribute shows, Fulmer says, one goal of the performing arts center is to provide a variety of arts, cultural and entertainment programming. To that end, the 2025-2026 Fitz season opens with a St. Augustine Orchestra concert on Oct. 28 (and concludes on April 18 with Old Soul Motown Revival, a fundraiser for the venue).
The season also includes the one-man stage show “Steve Solomon’s From Brooklyn to Broadway” on Nov. 21, the Irish-themed “Christmas in Killarney” on Dec. 17, the classical crossover trio the Texas Tenors on Jan. 8, the illusionist Reza on Jan. 30, the ballet “Swan Lake” on March 12, and the children’s show “The Jungle Book” on March 28.
Another goal of the performing arts center is to support arts education in Flagler schools.
The 1,000-seat venue was established on the campus of Flagler Palm Coast High School in 1991 as a partnership between Flagler County Schools and the Flagler Auditorium Governing Board, and is a 501(3) c nonprofit organization.
The Fitzgerald website notes that the auditorium was created by a public bond and “functions as a host for performing arts and technical theatre classes, and is considered a teaching theatre . . . The auditorium holds fundraisers and events to support arts education in Flagler schools and provides scholarships and grants to students and teachers throughout the year.”
The Flagler Auditorium Governing Board receives grants from the State of Florida, Division of Cultural Affairs; the City of Palm Coast and the Flagler County Cultural Council (the latter is the official Local Arts Agency for Flagler County).
This year the performing arts center received a $70,000 grant from the state of Florida, making it one of 182 cultural organizations that ranked 95 or above on the state’s grant-ranking criteria, and thus received full funding of its grant request, Fulmer says. “We were fortunate enough to be in that group,” she adds.
The performing arts center “revolves around creating opportunities for our K through 12 students,” Fulmer says. “The pro shows get a lot more splash because that’s where we make revenue, but our day-to-day and the 100 events we have each year center mainly around Flagler schools, groups like the Flagler Youth Orchestra, and also community groups. We only use the school auditorium when it’s available for us, at the times that the students aren’t using it.
The Fitzgerald’s programming “is a balance of what makes money and what serves the mission,” Fulmer adds. “Sometimes you bring a Hotel California and ELO in order to pay for ‘Swan Lake.’ ”
–Rick de Yampert for FlaglerLive
Though not part of the Fitzgerald’s subscription season, the show “Circus du Canines: A Tail Wagging Celebration of the Arts” will be presented at 7 p.m. Sept. 13 at the venue. Tickets are $20 adults. Children under 12 are free, but they must have a ticket and must be accompanied by an adult. Information: 386-437-7547 (box office) or flaglerauditorium.org.
The Fitzgerald Performing Arts Center is at 5500 East Hwy. 100, Palm Coast (on the campus of Flagler Palm Coast High School). Box office hours are 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Monday-Friday, plus 5:30 p.m. on show days. Tickets also can be purchased through the website.
