About this event
The Essentials
- Date: Saturday, May 16, 2026
- Time: 6:00 PM to 9:00 PM
- Place: The Metropolitan, 67th floor of Willis Tower, 233 South Wacker Drive, Chicago, IL 60606
- Cost: $200 per general-admission ticket. Sponsor tables run from $1,000 (Bronze, two seats) up to $10,000 (Platinum, eight seats). Because Care for Albania is a 501(c)(3), the ticket counts as a tax-deductible donation.
- What's included: Dinner, drinks, a full program, and a silent auction.
This is a seated evening gala, not a daytime festival. You buy a ticket, you get dinner and an auction, and the proceeds fund a charity. The price is the price, and it's stated up front: $200 for a single seat, more if you want a sponsor table with your name on it.
Getting There, and the Loop Parking Math
The Metropolitan sits on the 67th floor of Willis Tower at 233 South Wacker Drive. Take the elevators up; the views over the Loop are the venue's whole pitch.
By train, the closest stop is Quincy/Wells, one block east of the tower and about a two-minute walk. The Brown, Orange, Pink, and Purple lines all stop there. If you're coming from O'Hare or the Northwest Side, the Blue Line's LaSalle and Clinton stops are a slightly longer walk west.
Driving downtown on a Saturday night means paying for a garage. The iParkit garages at 211 West Adams and 241 South Franklin are both a two-to-five-minute walk from the tower entrance; reserving online ahead of time is cheaper than the drive-up rate. Street parking in the Loop after 6 PM exists but is scarce, so don't count on it.
What to Expect
The evening is built around three things: a dinner, a program, and a silent auction. Doors open at 6, and the three hours move from a reception into the seated portion.
Care for Albania uses the gala as its main fundraiser of the year. Past galas have featured the organization's leadership on the program, including President and Founder Dr. Sonila Sejdaras, a clinical psychologist who started the group, alongside other board members who are physicians and psychologists. Expect remarks about the year's work, a few stories from the people the programs reach, and the auction running alongside the meal.
The silent auction is where most of the room's giving happens. Bidding is open through the evening, so plan to walk the auction tables early, note what you want, and check back before bids close. The 67th-floor setting is formal; dress for an evening event downtown.
The Food
Dinner and drinks come with the ticket, served at the venue rather than from a buffet of home cooking. This is a catered gala, so the menu is the venue's, not a spread of Albanian dishes brought from home.
That said, the room is full of Albanian Americans, and the conversation, the music, and the spirit of the night are Albanian. If you've been to a community fundraiser before, you know the rhythm: long tables, people moving between them, and a meal that's the backdrop to the talking rather than the point of it.
Chicago's Albanian Community and Why This Gala Matters
Chicago holds one of the older and larger Albanian populations in the United States. The community supports its own institutions across the metro, from cultural groups like the Albanian-American Community of Illinois to religious congregations on the Northwest Side. Care for Albania, founded in 2022 and based on Irving Park Road, grew out of that community to focus on something it doesn't always talk about openly: mental health, trauma, and the strain of immigration.
The U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey records about 224,000 Albanian Americans nationwide. Community organizations put the real number closer to a million, in the range of 800,000 to 1.2 million, once you count the second and third generation, people with one Albanian parent, and families from Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, and the Çam regions who don't always show up in the official tally.
A gala like this one is part of how that gap gets closed. People gather, the community becomes visible, and an organization gets the resources to keep working. The National Albanian Registry runs alongside the Census, not against it. The Census stays essential; the Registry is a parallel count that lets Albanian Americans add their own names to the record. Registering takes about 2 minutes, it's free, and it doesn't ask for citizenship or proof of anything. A night like this is the community in one room. The Registry is the same community on the record.
What to Bring
- Your ticket, on your phone or printed, plus a card for the silent auction.
- A phone or wallet for auction bids and any add-on donations on the night.
- A coat, since a Chicago evening in mid-May can still turn cold, and the elevator ride down deposits you back on Wacker Drive.
- Your transit card or a parking reservation, sorted before you leave home.
- Patience for the elevators, because 67 floors up in Willis Tower means a wait at the start and the end of the night.
