Fire of Anatolia plays Aspendos two nights a week: Tuesday and Friday
If you are staying anywhere along the Side–Manavgat corridor, the answer is short: our Fire of Anatolia evening at Aspendos runs on Tuesday and Friday nights. Not nightly, not "most evenings" — two fixed nights a week. That single fact decides how you should plan, and the rest of this page is the timetable, the pickup times and what to do on the five nights it does not run. If you want to know what the evening itself feels like — the theatre, the seating, the atmosphere — that belongs to our first-timer's guide to the Aspendos evening show; this page only handles the schedule.
One note on who this page does not suit: if your holiday is in Alanya, Belek, Kemer or an Antalya city resort, the times below are not yours — they are the Side-corridor evening sweep. The show itself offers transfer from five resort areas, so the two nights still apply to you, but your local pickup schedule will differ from the one printed here.
The Tuesday and Friday evening sweep: zone first-pickup times
On show nights our vehicles sweep the corridor from east to west. These are the first pickup times for each zone — the earliest a guest in that zone is collected, not a promise for your individual hotel, because the exact door-to-door order depends on that evening's route:
- Kızılot — 18:40 (zone first pickup)
- Kızılağaç — 18:50
- Titreyengöl — 19:15
- Side — 19:30
- Kumköy — 19:40
- Evrenseki — 19:45
- Çolaklı — 19:50
- Gündoğdu — 19:55
The whole excursion runs about four hours door to door, and the return is late in the evening after the performance ends — plan for a lazy following morning rather than an early departure.
Why "which nights" matters more here than for any other evening out
Most evening excursions on this coast run daily, so you can postpone them without consequence. Fire of Anatolia is the exception. With only Tuesday and Friday available, a standard seven-night stay gives you exactly two chances — and if you arrive, say, on a Wednesday and leave the following Wednesday, waiting until "later in the week" can quietly cost you both of them. Our advice is mechanical: book the first show night that falls inside your stay. If weather or plans interfere, cancellation is free up to 24 hours before the performance, so an early booking risks nothing and a late one risks everything.
What you are booking, in hard facts
Everything below comes straight from the product itself, not from brochure optimism:
- Over a hundred professional dancers on the stage of a 2nd-century Roman theatre built for some 15,000 spectators — open-air, at night.
- No dialogue at all: pure dance, live rhythm and light, enjoyable in any language — which is precisely why the audience around you will be speaking five of them.
- The programme includes the Semah, a ceremonial dance of the Alevi-Bektashi tradition.
- Two ways to attend: ticket-only (you arrange your own way to Aspendos) or with round-trip hotel transfer from the Antalya, Side, Belek, Kemer or Alanya areas, in an air-conditioned vehicle with host and driver service.
- A VIP seating upgrade is available as an optional extra.
- With transfer from the Side corridor: €65 per adult, €30 per child aged 1–11, infants up to 3 free.
- Reservation is free and you pay on the day of the show; cancellation is free up to 24 hours before.
And on the other five nights?
If your dates simply refuse to line up with a Tuesday or Friday — or you have already been and want a second spectacle — the corridor has one evening show that runs every single night: the Land of Legends night show and boat parade in Belek. It is a different animal — an illuminated boat parade, choreographed fountains, lasers and projections across a 111-metre castle facade, with free time on a shopping avenue of 150-plus stores — and at €19 per adult and €13 per child aged 4–11 (under-4s free) it is the natural fallback when Aspendos is dark. Families weighing one against the other should read our comparison of attraction days versus show evenings before choosing.
Planning your week around it
A workable pattern for a Side-corridor week: put Fire of Anatolia on your first available Tuesday or Friday, keep the Land of Legends night show in reserve for any other evening, and leave the night before an early-start excursion free of both. For the full picture of what runs on which evening along the corridor, our guide to evenings in Side lays the whole week out.
The short version one more time, because it is the answer you searched for: Tuesday and Friday. Two nights, zone pickups from 18:40 in Kızılot to 19:55 in Gündoğdu, pay on the day, cancel free up to 24 hours before. Book the first one your holiday offers you.