1. Shakira in Madrid: Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran World Tour
Shakira opens her European stadium residency this weekend at a venue built purely for her: a temporary 50,000-capacity stadium inside Iberdrola Music, renamed Macondo Park after the fictional town in Gabriel García Márquez's novel. The accompanying Es Latina programme runs food, art and family activities tied to Latin American culture alongside the shows, including a dedicated children's zone called Macondito.
🚩 Music & Concerts
🏛️ Estadio Shakira – Iberdrola Music (Villaverde, 28021, Madrid)
🎟️ From €73.50
📅 18 Sep–11 Oct
⏰ Show at 20:30
2. The Addams Family – The Musical
Wednesday Addams falls for an ordinary boy from a conventional family in this musical comedy opening at Teatro Calderón, plunging her cheerfully macabre household into chaos over a single disastrous dinner. Built around big ensemble numbers and elaborate staging, the show plays the Addams family's devotion to the gruesome for laughs while sending up the showbusiness tropes the family rejects outright.
🚩 Shows & Dance
🏛️ Teatro Calderón (Calle de Atocha, 18, 28012, Madrid)
🎟️ From €25
📅 From 18 Sep
⏰ Thu 19:00, Fri 17:00 & 21:00, Sat 16:30 & 20:30, Sun 16:00 & 19:30
3. Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Madrid
Madrid's biggest fashion event wraps its September edition this weekend, with six days of runway shows spread across three venues for the first time, including a debut slot at Universidad Nebrija. The closing weekend brings Palomo's 10th-anniversary show, a lifetime achievement award for Hannibal Laguna, and EGO, the platform reserved for emerging Spanish designers making their runway debut.
🚩 Other Events
🏛️ Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Madrid (Multiple venues)
🎟️ Check website
📅 Until 19 Sep
⏰ Various times
4. Water Lantern Festival
Personalise a floating paper lantern with a wish, memory or message, then release it onto the north lake of Parque Juan Carlos I at sunset. The Water Lantern Festival has run in more than 50 cities worldwide and drawn over 500,000 participants since launching eight years ago, with live music and food stalls by the water before the collective release and an open-mic slot for sharing a story first.
🚩 Nature & Outdoors
🏛️ Parque Juan Carlos I (Glorieta S.A.R. Don Juan de Borbón y Battemberg, 5, 28042, Madrid)
🎟️ Free park access / From €20.90 for the lantern ceremony
📅 18–19 Sep
⏰ 16:00–20:00
5. SIX the Musical in Madrid
SIX turns Henry VIII's six wives into a rival girl band for a concert-style show at Teatro Gran Vía, with each queen taking her turn at the microphone to argue her marriage was the worst of the lot. Tony winners Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss created the format, backed by an all-female live band, and the 80-minute show has picked up more than 35 international awards since it premiered, performed here in Spanish.
🚩 Shows & Dance
🏛️ Teatro Gran Vía (Calle de Gran Vía, 66, 28013, Madrid)
🎟️ From €29
📅 Until 8 Nov
⏰ Tue–Fri 20:00, Sat 17:00 & 20:00, Sun 12:30 & 17:00
6. Brava Madrid 2026: Pop-centric music and culture festival
Brava Madrid returns to Caja Mágica for its fourth edition, built around 90s and 2000s pop and dance hits across two days and two stages. Sugababes headlines Friday alongside Inna, while Natalie Imbruglia and Fangoria close Saturday with Vengaboys, on a bill that also runs a second dance floor, Brava Inferno, with DJ sets running parallel to the live performances, after the 2025 edition sold out with over 50,000 attendees.
🚩 Music & Concerts
🏛️ Caja Mágica (Camino de Perales, 23, 28041, Madrid)
🎟️ From €40
📅 18–19 Sep
⏰ Fri–Sat, doors from afternoon into night
7. Annie Leibovitz Exhibition: México 86
Thirteen photographs Annie Leibovitz shot for the 1986 Mexico World Cup hang free at Fundación Casa de México, the first time a World Cup's visual identity was built entirely around photography rather than illustration. Leibovitz spent nearly a year travelling Mexico for the campaign, placing footballers against Chichén Itzá, Teotihuacán and other landmarks so the sport shares the frame with the country's history.
🚩 Exhibitions & Art
🏛️ Fundación Casa de México en España (Calle de Alberto Aguilera, 20, 28015, Madrid)
🎟️ Free
📅 Until 20 Sep
⏰ Mon 10:00–19:00, Tue–Sat 10:00–21:00, Sun 10:00–14:00
8. The Odyssey: The Immersive Journey at MAD
Homer's Odyssey becomes a 90-minute immersive journey at MAD Madrid Artes Digitales this weekend, moving through five zones that each lean on a different technology: live actors, an interactive metaverse, virtual reality and a 360-degree film covering eight trials including the Cyclops and the Sirens. The team behind MAD's Tutankhamun and Titanic shows built this one, narrated in Spanish and English for the first time.
🚩 Tours & Experiences
🏛️ MAD Madrid Artes Digitales (Plaza de Legazpi, 8, 28045, Madrid)
🎟️ From €19.90
📅 From 18 Sep
⏰ Check website
9. Carmen Laffón: Variaciones
Carmen Laffón spent over sixty years painting the same subjects: wicker baskets, sewing machines, wardrobes, the Doñana marshes. The Thyssen-Bornemisza's Carmen Laffón: Variaciones, its first major show dedicated to the Seville-born painter and sculptor since her death in 2021, gathers roughly 80 oils, pastels and sculptures organised by theme rather than chronology, closing this month after over three months on show.
🚩 Exhibitions & Art
🏛️ Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza (Paseo del Prado, 8, 28014, Madrid)
🎟️ €14
📅 Until 27 Sep
⏰ Tue–Sun 10:00–19:00 (extended hours in summer)
10. Nostalgia / Utopía: Ana Locking's fashion retrospective
Inside a converted 1911 water tank in Chamberí, a retrospective traces two decades of work by Spanish designer Ana Locking, winner of the National Fashion Design Award. Nostalgia / Utopía brings together more than 160 garments and archive pieces across the building's cylindrical floors, treating fashion as a language for memory and identity rather than as spectacle, in its final week before closing.
🚩 Exhibitions & Art
🏛️ Sala Canal de Isabel II (Calle de Santa Engracia, 125, 28003, Madrid)
🎟️ Free
📅 Until 27 Sep
⏰ Tue–Sat 11:00–20:30, Sun 11:00–14:00
11. Human Universe: the human body experience
Human Universe: The Experience opens at Espacio Delicias with an immersive route through six themed rooms exploring the arteries, the brain and the immune system from the inside, using virtual reality headsets and 3D projection mapping instead of static panels. Set inside a fictional research base called Genesis Base, the roughly 70-minute route marks the show's world premiere before it tours other Spanish cities.
🚩 Tours & Experiences
🏛️ Espacio Delicias (Calle del Párroco Eusebio Cuenca, 63, 28045, Madrid)
🎟️ From €14–19.50
📅 Until 7 Jan 2027
⏰ Wed-Thu 16:00–19:30, Fri 16:00–20:00, Sat-Sun & holidays 11:00–13:30 & 16:00–20:00
12. Continentes como semillas: sound, sculpture and performance
Continentes como semillas gathers three artists working across sound, sculpture and performance to explore how colonial histories still shape bodies, objects and contemporary culture at La Casa Encendida. Niño de Elche and Pedro G. Romero present Sadopítna, a sound piece tracing embroidered Manila shawls along the historic Manila Galleon trade route, alongside La Chola Poblete's drawing and performance work.
🚩 Exhibitions & Art
🏛️ La Casa Encendida (Ronda de Valencia, 2, 28012, Madrid)
🎟️ Free
📅 Until 10 Jan 2027
⏰ Tue–Sat 10:00–21:00, Sun 10:00–16:00
13. Madrid en construcción, 1940-1985
Madrid en construcción, 1940-1985 traces how the capital was rebuilt between the end of the Civil War and the mid-1980s through archive photographs from four institutional collections, shown free at Sala Cristóbal Portillo. Images by Juan Pando Barrero, Otto Wunderlich and Martín Santos Yubero span postwar rubble and rationing through to landmarks like the Santiago Bernabéu stadium, closing this week.
🚩 Exhibitions & Art
🏛️ Sala Cristóbal Portillo de El Águila (Calle Ramírez de Prado, 3, 28045, Madrid)
🎟️ Free
📅 Until 22 Sep
⏰ Mon-Sat 10:00-14:00 & 16:00-20:00, Sun 10:00-14:00
14. Hotel Tapa Tour Madrid 2026
Twenty-five of Madrid's five-star hotels swap their usual lobby bars for a city-wide tapas trail this week, in the eleventh edition of Hotel Tapa Tour. Each participating hotel serves up to four competition tapas paired with wine, cava or cocktails, with six suggested routes grouping venues by neighbourhood and guided tours at some hotels, including Rosewood Villa Magna, weaving in the building's own history.
🚩 Food & Drinks
🏛️ Various luxury hotels across Madrid (Multiple hotel venues, Madrid)
🎟️ €8–14 per tapa
📅 17–27 Sep
⏰ Varies by hotel; most serve tapas midday to late evening
15. Emotions in Peril: Tim Flach's portraits of endangered species
Forty-five portraits of endangered species by British photographer Tim Flach line the main paths of Parque del Retiro free of charge, each shot studio-style against a neutral background rather than in the animal's habitat. Every image carries the species' scientific name, natural range and conservation status, turning a regular walk through the park into a species-by-species look at what is actually at risk.
🚩 Exhibitions & Art
🏛️ Parque del Retiro (Plaza de la Independencia, 7, 28001, Madrid)
🎟️ Free
📅 Until 25 Sep
⏰ Open 24 hours (outdoor exhibition)
