The Next Day #155: Berlin Weekend Guide
Must-see events in Berlin: June 04-07, 2026
Two weeks away - family matters, São Paulo rain, the kind of cold that makes us forget what summer feels like. I'm back in Berlin just in time for my birthday, which I wasn't sure was going to happen here. This weekend has everything from a tribute to an Auschwitz survivor turned antifascist hip-hop artist, to Moodymann doing a full Prince set, to a German minimalist's unperformed scores getting their first hearing. Berlin at its most itself.
Falk Richter's In My Room closes at Gorki on Sunday. It’s the last chance to see the piece Mateus has been recommending since it opened.
Lalai
IF YOU DO TWO THINGS THIS WEEKEND
Candice Breitz: A Song for Esther [watch]
Sat–Sun 06–07.06 · 7:30 pm · HAU1, Stresemannstraße 29 · €17–29 · EN with DE surtitles
Esther Bejarano survived Auschwitz playing in the camp orchestra. She spent the next seventy years turning that same music into antifascist hip-hop, performing until she was 96. Candice Breitz's tribute brings together Peaches, Rasha Nahas and Aeham Ahmad - each asked to perform one song outside their usual range. What happens when artists surrender their voice to a memory that isn't theirs is the real subject of the night.
Moodymann plays Prince [sweat]
Sunday 07.06 · 2 pm to midnight · Haus der Visionäre, Am Flutgraben · €22-28
Detroit meets Minneapolis on a summer afternoon by the water. Moodymann is one of the few DJs who can do a tribute without it becoming a museum piece - he'll bend, fold and make Prince sound like Moodymann. With A Guy Called Gerald (live), Stella Zekri and Flo Real across the day.
THURSDAY — 04.06
The night opens with a question about what music owes to the places it comes from.
Outside the BigMac vol.3 [frequency]
Thursday 04.06 · 6 pm to midnight · Panke, Gerichtstraße 23 · €10–20
Cedrik Fermont opens with a talk on music and colonialism, then Witch ‘n’ Monk, Audrey Chen and Mitsune. Lucy Park runs a tea ceremony in the garden before the sets.
Spooky Paradise by Philippe Quesne [watch]
Thursday 04.06 · 7:30 pm · Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz · €12–45 · DE with EN surtitles (also 14.06)
Quesne builds worlds where the end has already happened and the characters haven't noticed. Here: a circus family inside an abandoned fairground - slow humour, animals, melancholy without drama. Politics enters sideways, never through the front door.
Tricky [live]
Thursday 04.06 · 8 pm · Huxleys Neue Welt, Hasenheide 107–113 · €40–50
The Bristol voice that spent thirty years rejecting the trip-hop label he helped create. A Tricky show is always a surprise, sometimes a bad one. Worth the risk. 🎧 Different When It’s Silent
MORE ON THURSDAY →
↳ Solaris: Hyperbleed: Sarah Friend, Aleksandra Cieślewicz and three more artists opening a show on AI, interfaces and the digital body. Project Space Festival at its most rigorous. 6–10 pm · Urbanstraße 127 · free [look]
↳ Rupture & Remain: Sophie Mackintosh: Conversation on Permanence, her new novel about two adulterers trapped in an impossible city. Dread, female endurance and fiction that never announces its politics. 7 pm · Chapters Bookshop · €5 [watch/gather]
↳ Sinema Transtopia Open Air: Contemporary classics and new releases on warm summer evenings, with meze and drinks from Sinema Hane. Programme varies nightly. Thu–Sun · 21:30 · Lindower Str. 20/22, Wedding · €10 [watch]
FRIDAY — 05.06
A night for architecture, voice and the body in space.
Gaze of the Ear by Jessika Kenney [frequency]
Friday, 8:30 - 10 pm · KINDL, Am Sudhaus 3 · with RSVP
Jessika Kenney with Eyvind Kang on viola and Lithuanian singer Indrė Jurgelevičiūtė on kanklė. Three decades of Kenney’s research into Javanese, Persian and minimalist vocal worlds, in a room built to carry a voice unaided.
Berlin plant. Stunde Null [look]
Opening: Friday 7 pm. Runs through 02.08. nbk, Chausseestraße 128/129. Free.
The 1946 Kollektivplan that nearly rebuilt Berlin from scratch with documents by Scharoun, Selmanagić, Herzenstein and others. Looking at what the city could have been from inside what it became.
The Continuous present w/ Objekt [sweat]
Friday 05.06 · 11 pm · Tresor / Globus, Köpenicker Straße 70 · €22
Tresor's quarterly series devoted to artists working in the now, not as a trend. Objekt, Selessa T and Radart live in the Globus; OCCA, LDS, AMORAL, KUSS and dérive in the Tresor.
MORE ON FRIDAY →
↳ Museum Island Festival: Three days of music, theatre, jazz and performances celebrating 150 years of Alte Nationalgalerie. Fri–Sun 05–07.06 · from 2 pm · Museumsinsel · €16/day [gather]
↳ Britzenale 2026: Art in a community garden in Neukölln, opening this Friday with the festival running through Sunday. Project Space Festival in its most unexpected format. 6 pm · Kleingartenanlage Zur Windmühle, Hüfnerweg 4 · free [look]
↳ Jon Rafman Screening: One of the sharpest artists working with internet culture, online identity and digital image. 7:30 pm · Julia Stoschek Foundation, Leipziger Str. 60 [look]
↳ biegungen im Ausland: Vickunaitė / Lara Jones / ZA: Sound archaeology with prehistoric tape recorders. The kind of bill Ausland exists to host. 8 pm · Ausland, Lychener Straße 60 · €10 [frequency]
↳ The Handover (album release): Aly Eissa on oud, Ayman Asfour on violin, Jonas Cambien on Korg and Farfisa. Classical Arabic and shaabi through krautrock and psychedelic improv. 8 pm · km28, Karl-Marx-Straße 28 · donation-based €10–15 [frequency]
SATURDAY — 06.06
The day Breitz closes, Macras opens, and Iturbide leaves Berlin.
*Candice Breitz: A Song for Esther: see above. 7:30 pm · HAU1
C/O Berlin Closing Weekend: Dörte Eißfeldt + Graciela Iturbide [look]
Sat–Sun 06–07.06 · C/O, Hardenbergstraße 22–24 · €12/6 · free from 8 pm on Sat
Last weekend for two exhibitions running since February. Eißfeldt treats photography as transformation, not documentation. Iturbide's retrospective is five decades of images centred on body, ritual and death - mostly women and mostly indigenous Mexico. One of the most important photographers alive, closing this weekend. Saturday ends with DJ Flashdance.
Almost Always: Ciel, Peverelist, re:ni & Biggabush [sweat]
Saturday 06.06 · 2 pm – 7 am · Fitzroy, Holzmarktstraße 15 · €20
17 hours from afternoon into the early morning with Peverelist, one of the most consistent architects of UK techno, Toronto’s Ciel and dub legacy with Biggabush (Rockers HiFi). First edition of a new Fitzroy series with a clear point of view.
Goodbye Berlin by Constanza Macras [watch]
Saturday 06.06 · 7:30 pm · Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz · €11–35 · DE and EN surtitles
A surreal cabaret between Weimar Germany and now. Macras doesn't ask whether art can resist reactionary forces; she stages the question as spectacle and leaves it unresolved.
MORE ON SATURDAY →
↳ Radio Vampiro: El Salvador Hidden Gems: Guided listening through rare Salvadoran records - folkloric, garage, cumbia, tropical psychedelia. 7 pm · Atemporal, Boxhagener Str. 96 · €10-14 [frequency/listening]
↳ Bucket List by Yael Ronen: A man wakes up on a Saturday and the world has changed beyond recognition. Ronen makes political absurdity feel inevitable. 8:30 pm · Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz · €9–48 · DE and EN surtitles [watch]
↳ PRÉSENT – 10 Jahre TROPEZ!: Ten years of Tropez, opened at a public pool. Performance by Thuy Tien Nguyen at 4 pm, curator tour at 2 pm. 2–6 pm · Sommerbad Humboldthain, Wiesenstraße 1 · €7 [look]
SUNDAY — 07.06
The longest day: Prince, Persian tombak, and a German minimalist's last unheard scores.
*Moodymann plays Prince: see above. 2 pm–midnight · Haus der Visionäre.
In My Room by Falk Richter [watch]
Sunday 07.06, 7:30 pm. Maxim-Gorki-Theater, Am Festungsgraben 2, Mitte. In DE with EN surtitles. €12-40 - last performance
Richter excavates his own archive - childhood images, family noise, political memory. Formally loose in a way theatre rarely allows itself. Last chance tonight.
Cinna Peyghamy: Music for Tombak and Synth [frequency]
Sunday 07.06 · 7:30 pm · 90mil, Lehrter Straße 18 · donation-based (€15 suggestion)
Berlin release concert of Cinna Peyghamy's debut album on Nicolas Jaar's Other People label. Five years synthesizing the Iranian tombak with modular synthesis and digital signal processing, built through improvisation, shaped by family history and the poetry of Ahmad Shamlou, read by his father. Marylou opens.
Lange Nacht für EA (Ernstalbrecht Stiebler Tribute) [frequency]
Sunday 07.06 · 7 pm · 20nine30, Paul-Lincke-Ufer 29, Kreuzberg · €15 at the door
A long night for Ernstalbrecht Stiebler, the German minimalist in the lineage of Feldman, Scelsi and La Monte Young. Voutchkova, Lane, Leistritz, Grebchenko and Kanitz premiere unperformed pieces from his estate - dedicated to them during his lifetime. Film Zeile für Zeile follows.
Breathing Concert: Adrian Kuipers & Anna-Maria Hefele [wellness/live]
Sunday, 07.06, 7:30 pm · Passionskirche, Marheinekeplatz 1 · €55 - use the code thenextday11 for 11% discount (in partnership).
Live breathwork with Adrian Kuipers and Anna-Maria Hefele, whose polyphonic overtone singing - two notes at once, one voice - fills the Passionskirche unaided. If you've been curious about breathwork and want to try it with live music in a church, this is the version to do it.
MORE ON SUNDAY →
↳ SILATURAHMI by sōydivision: Diasporic gathering through food, sound, storytelling and performance. Free, registration required. 3–8 pm · Novilla, Hasselwerderstr. 22 · free/donation [gather]
↳ Fahrradsternfahrt: Berlin's annual cycling demo across 20 routes, including two motorway sections, converging at Großer Stern and ending at the Umweltfestival at Brandenburger Tor. Expect road closures citywide from late morning. 11 am–2 pm · free [gather]
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↳ Albert Queens comes to town, directed by Public Solutions: A closed Scottish pub arrives in Berlin with performance, discussion and music on community, gentrification and what gets lost. 11.06, 7:30 pm, Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, Grüner Salon. With surtitles in DE and EN. €15.
↳ Max Cooper Live A/V: Feeling Is Structure album tour. Algorithmic music meeting visual architecture, live. 24.07 · 10 pm · Haus der Visionäre · €38
↳ Satzwechsel: Kang Han reads at the Berliner Philharmoniker, members perform chamber works in dialogue with the text. 07.09, 8 pm · Herbert-von-Karajan-Str. 1 · €18–41 [reading/live]