Figure skater Jason Brown, a two-time Olympian who is openly gay, will be performing in May in the Chicago area. It’s a homecoming of sorts for Brown, who took home a bronze medal in 2014. He lived in Highland Park from age three through his high school graduation, and it was there that his love for skating blossomed, after watching his sister take part in an ice show.
“The fact that I get to go back to Chicago and do a show like Stars on Ice back home—that is the dream,” Brown told Windy City Times in a recent phone interview. “That is such a full-circle moment that I never take for granted.”
The 31-year-old Brown, who skated in the Olympics in 2014 and 2022, was also the U.S. national figure skating champion in 2015.
He additionally is a veteran performer on the ice-show circuit. On May 8, he performs in Rosemont with the Stars on Ice national tour, which comes to Allstate Arena with a cast that includes 2026 Olympians Alysa Liu, Ilia Malinin, Madison Chock, Evan Bates, Amber Glenn, Ellie Kam, Danny O’Shea, Isabeau Levito, Andrew Torgashev, Christina Carreira and Anthony Ponomarenko.
Featuring glamorous costumes, lighting and music, Stars on Ice allows skaters to entertain audiences without the pressure of points and medals that come with competition. The program is a mix of individual performances, including fan-favorites from recent seasons, and newly choreographed group numbers.
The Rosemont show will be the tour’s first Chicago-area stop since 2023 and comes at a time when figure skating is enjoying a post-Olympics enthusiasm bump, due in part to Alysa Liu’s gold medal-winning performance in the women’s event.
“Coming from an Olympic year, I think a lot of people that aren’t as familiar with skating are brought into the sport and come to watch for the first time,” Brown said. This year’s tour, which kicked off in Florida in mid-April, is “pure fun,” he added. “The audience is going to see our personalities. We’re all just having a great time on the ice doing what we love and getting to share that with the crowd.”
Brown enjoys connecting with people, whether fellow athletes, audience members or children staying at Ronald McDonald Houses, where he often visits to donate the stuffed animals that he receives from fans during competitions.
“What was so special, growing up in the Chicago area and skating, was just the community around me,” he said. “Those relationships I made with my peers and the other athletes were so special. … I have always felt so supported by the people around me, by the skating community in the North Shore, in Chicago, and I’m just so unbelievably grateful for that.”
The LGBTQ+ community also feels a special affinity for Brown, who came out as gay via an Instagram post in 2021. Fans often wave Pride flags during the applause after his performances—a sight that’s also common when 2026 Olympic team gold medalist and three-time U.S. champion Amber Glenn, an openly bisexual and pansexual athlete, takes to the ice.
Brown said that coming out didn’t change much about his personal experiences as an athlete, since he comes from a supportive family and community.
“I always felt very comfortable in the environments that I was in to just be unabashedly myself,” he said. “I was so fortunate to always feel so loved [and] feel so accepted.”
Brown added, “I think the biggest thing that changed was more that people could come up to me and talk to me about it. I loved being able to share more of myself.”
Throughout the ups and downs of his career, Brown has never lost his love of performing, one factor in his longevity in a sport that sees many athletes retire as early as their teens or twenties. Although he considered retirement after previous Olympic cycles, he returned to competition after the 2022 Olympics with a shift in mindset.
Over the past four years, he has split his time between performing in ice shows and competing, a combination that proved to be “a great balance and [which] really pushed me in so many different ways.”
In the 2025-26 season, Brown returned to a beloved piece of music for his short program: “Reel Around the Sun” from Riverdance composer Bill Whelan, which was the soundtrack to his viral performance at the 2014 U.S. Championships. This choice, dedicated to his longtime fans, could be interpreted as a swan song for his competitive career, but Brown has not made any announcements either way about his plans for next season.
Reflecting on his career thus far, Brown said, “I am so unbelievably proud of it. There have been, I have to say, amazing highs, really tough lows, moments that I look back at and I’m like, ‘How the heck did this kid that just fell in love with this sport after seeing an ice show create not just a career, but a life out of doing what he loves?’ The fact that I’ve gotten to travel the world and meet people all over and perform for people, move people, the experiences that I’ve had—I just still have to pinch myself.”