The Next Day #160: Berlin Weekend Guide
Must-see events in Berlin: July 09-12, 2026
I've had two really great sound experiences in the last few days. Sanctum of Sound at Mahalla with an excellent batch of experimental and ambient artists, and then Sunn O))) turned the room into pure noise, the meditative kind, like it massaged every cell in my body. Still coming down from it.
So Heroines of Sound has a lot to live up to when it opens Thursday. This year it leans hard into Japan, Kyoka’s broken electronics, Tomoko Sauvage closing Friday with her water bowls. KW runs its own arc alongside it, four nights of diasporic voices from Beirut, Gaza and Ukraine.
Saturday afternoon, I’m at Material first. Twenty seats for a tasting with the winemakers Núria Aviñó and Alicia Serres, but the terrace opens right after and stays open; no ticket needed. Good wine, good weather, and me somewhere out there with a glass.
Sunday, FRIEDA turns five, and since it’s basically my neighbor, I’ll probably wander over.
If you hear stadiums going off in the distance this weekend, that's not your imagination. The Cure and Pet Shop Boys are both in town the same four days, one gloomy and sold out for three nights straight.
See you around. Have a nice weekend.
Lalai
IF YOU DO TWO THINGS THIS WEEKEND
Heroines of Sound Festival 2026 [frequency]
Thu-Sat · Radialsystem, Holzmarktstraße 33 · €10-54
Twelve editions in, 2026 leans hard into Japan. Kyoka brings the broken, hypnotic electronics she built inside the raster-noton world; Midori Hirano moves between modular synths and piano; Miki Yui works in quadraphonic minimalism that asks for total attention, not background listening. Tomoko Sauvage closes Friday with porcelain bowls filled with water, amplified through hydrophones so the pitch shifts as the water itself moves. Saturday ends as a portrait of Iris ter Schiphorst, generations of women composers sharing the stage one last time before the festival closes.
Wine Tasting with Núria Aviñó × Alicia Serres [gather/drink]
Saturday · Wine Tasting 3.30-5 pm (€40 - 10% discount for TND readers, 20 seats) then open from 5 pm · free · Material · Schönhauser Allee, 156 - Prenzlauer Berg.
Lalai is co-hosting this event with two women running two Catalan natural wine houses from opposite ends of the region, Núria Aviñó of Clos Lentiscus on the coast, and Alicia Serres of Celler Mendall inland. Six wines to taste and bites by Pondji and Material during the tasting, everyone is welcome from 5 pm to try the new Pondji flavour.
THURSDAY 09.07
Heroines opens tonight (see above). KW starts its four-night arc inside the Kyiv Biennial with two diasporic voices from Beirut and Gaza.
Nour Sokhon ‘Beirut Birds’ + Wafaa Saied [frequency]
Thursday · 7 pm and 9 pm · KW Institute, Auguststraße 69 · €15-24 / €12-20, combined ticket for both concerts
Nour Sokhon (7 pm) builds Beirut Birds from recorded conversations with returned and departed Lebanese communities, looped with piano, field recordings and objects tied to migration. Wafaa Saied (9 pm) follows with Palestinian songs and family history, born in Gaza and rebuilding those stories from Berlin.
Corazón & Guests: Lineage [watch]
Thursday & Saturday · 8 pm · Ballhaus Ost, Pappelallee 15 · €15-25 (reduced €10)
Drag read as inheritance. Corazón hosts a stage of guests thinking through queer descent, the mothers and the daughters, the borrowed gestures and the ones stolen back. For Vaginal Davis and Justin Vivian Bond fans.
MORE ON THURSDAY
↳ Pluto x Estelle: Dining-Snack Run: a breezy 5k into bites and bubbles with Estelle Dining, fitness and food in one loop. Thursday · location on registration · €15 [gather]
↳ Berlin Beats with Low Jack moves between dancehall, sound art and industrial dub, and sofii genre-fluid across ambient, rap and trance. 7 pm · Hamburger Bahnhof garden · free [sweat]
↳ Forms of access: ezri_dax, Jingyun Li, Nguyễn + Transitory: Performance around tactile sound, listening in the body and live audio description as artistic form. 7 pm · Künstlerhaus Bethanien · Kottbusser Straße 10 · free [watch]
↳ LA CASITA presents Architectural All Night Long: Reeko in his Architectural alias for the full run. Hypnotic minimal moving through ambient into cinematic. 10 pm - 6 am · OHM, Köpenicker Str. 70 · €17 [sweat]
↳ Redlist 7 Launch Party: REDLIST is an independent magazine founded in 2024 by photographer Gerardo Vizmanos, focused on the representations of the body through photography and writing to explore artistic, political, and historical perspectives. 7-10 pm · Wrangelstr. 66 ·free [look]
FRIDAY 10.07
Heroines Day 2 with Sauvage’s water bowls (see above). KW continues with two Ukrainian composers, and Bethanien opens the group show that anchors the rest of the guide.
Katarina Gryvul SPOMYN + Ihor Tsymbrovsky [frequency]
Friday · 7 pm and 9 pm · KW Institute, Auguststraße 69 · €12-15 each concert or €20-24 the combined ticket for both concerts
Two Ukrainian composers on the same day: Katarina Gryvul’s SPOMYN is spatialised writing for voice, violin and analog synthesis, memory treated as archive; and Ihor Tsymbrovsky follows with rare live pieces from his cult 1995 album Come, Angel, and thirty years of writing for voice, piano, and organ.
After Memory [look]
Friday · Opening 5 - Reception from 7 pm · Kunstraum Kreuzberg / Bethanien, Mariannenplatz 2 · free · runs to 11.10
Group show on memory as contested territory, with reactionary movements, corporations, and algorithms writing over it at the same time. Noor Abuarafeh, Taysir Batniji, Maria Thereza Alves, Aline Motta, Rabih Mroué, Heba Y. Amin, Aram Bartholl, Zach Blas, Giselle Beiguelman, and others. Palestinian voices, Brazilian decolonial practice and AI critique in one room. The whole zeitgeist on a single free ticket.
Sabotage by Yael Ronen [watch]
Friday · 9 pm (In DE with EN Surtitles) · also on Saturday and Sunday - 11-12.07 · 6 pm (without surtitles) · Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz, Kurfürstendamm 153 · €9-48
Yael Ronen built her name on devised, tragicomic group work, and this one turns that same lens inward: people wrecking their own best chances, staged with the dark humor she brought to Common Ground.
MORE ON FRIDAY
↳ PARATEXT: Heinrich Dunst, Sophia Eisenhut, Simon Lehner: Three positions on writing as an artistic method. Dunst on language as material, Eisenhut between painting and text, Lehner on digital memory and inheritance. Opening 4 pm · KOW, Frobenstraße 1 · free [look]
↳ Tulipa Ruiz live: One of the singular voices in contemporary Brazilian music, MPB threaded with pop, rock in a stripped acoustic duo. Listen to: Habilidades Extraordinárias, her 2023 Latin Grammy nomination. 7.30 pm · Gretchen, Obentrautstr. 19-21 · €28 [live]
↳ Samba Jean-Baptiste + Static Cleaner Lost Reward: Tarquin Manek’s SCLR as a live band for the first time, dub-pop with tape decay and ghost songwriting. Samba Jean-Baptiste opens on cello. 8 pm · silent green · €18 [frequency]
↳ Your Love: Lil’ Louis, the man behind French Kiss on a Chicago house night, Tama Sumo and Lakuti holding the room, Toribio's Your Love debut folding in jazz and Afro-Latin. 10 pm · Panorama Bar · €22 [sweat]
SATURDAY 11.07
Heroines closes with the Iris ter Schiphorst portrait (see above), and KW premieres a spoken-word opera the same evening.
Nazanin Noori: A LETTER TO EUROPE [watch]
Saturday · 8 pm · KW Institute, Auguststraße 69 · €15 / €12
Berlin premiere of Noori’s spoken-word opera and the closing night of the KW arc. Athena Farrokhzad’s poem on migration and displacement, Forugh Farrokhzad fragments recurring as refrain. Score co-composed with Andrea Belfi. Two drummers, a classical Iranian singer, and the Europa myth are used to unpick how Europe receives and refuses.
Judgment and Calculation: Becker, van den Dorpel, Sonneck [look]
Saturday · Opening 6 - 9 pm · HAUNT / frontviews, Kluckstraße 23A · free · runs to 22.08
Three artists using colour systems to think the tension Weizenbaum drew in 1976 and Arendt drew a decade earlier, between judgment and calculation. Harm van den Dorpel from post-internet, Elisabeth Sonneck from painting, Carsten Becker from GDR colour standardisation.
MORE ON SATURDAY
↳ ALL NIGHT: Mobilegirl & Nico Adomako: Six-hour b2b, nothing else on the bill, both playing at home speed. Round two of Einhundert’s format. 11:59 pm - 6 am · Fitzroy · €13-20 [sweat]
SUNDAY 12.07
FRIEDA Turns Five [gather/eat]
Sunday 12.07 · 12-8 pm · FRIEDA, Lychener Straße 37 · free, RSVP
Five years in, and the kitchen goes to guests: Max Strohe of Tulus Lotrek, Copenhagen's Gasoline Grill, London's Tóu. Alicia Serres pours the day with Alanna LaGamba by her side. Senergi on vinyl, all day, no rush to leave.
Gig for Gaza V at Lark [live]
Sunday · 5 pm · Lark, Holzmarktstraße 15-18 · €15-25
Fifth edition of the Lark fundraiser for Gaza and the West Bank. Emily Intsiful, Sezou, and Jane Arnison lead a bill running folk to experimental, live acts and performance. Proceeds go to Medical Aid for Palestinians. The €25 tier is the room paying its part.
KOFFÄIN with Folamour, All Day Long [sweat]
Sunday · 2 pm to 4 am · Else, An den Treptowers 10 · €28
Folamour's annual Berlin Sunday, this year behind Movement Therapy. He plays a long set, disco into Detroit warmth, Meriem S opens the garden, Tour-Maubourg, Leroy Rey, Ana Molina, and DimSum inside as the sun drops.
MORE ON SUNDAY
↳ Yoga in the Sculpture Garden: Tana-Maria's Jivamukti class among Fujiko Nakaya's fog sculpture, dynamic, open to all levels. 9:30-10:45 am · Neue Nationalgalerie · Potsdamer Straße 50 · €20 [gather/move]
↳ FLORA Festival Session 4: Telenetica E.V curates. Avsluta and Wu Zhuoling live plus Aion, CHAERIN, monosym and Severja. DIY, free, 100% renewable, address drops on Telegram. 4-10 pm · via @ousiasound · free [frequency]
↳ Kiketi Fest Berlin: Georgian wine tastings, pop-up kitchens with dishes from the Kiketi oak forest, open-air DJs during the day, indoor at the Paradies floor once the sun drops. 3 pm to midnight · ŒL & ÆDEN Garten Schleusenufer 1, 10997 · Berlin · €7-10 [gather]
↳ Curator Tour: Wo ich wohne at Haus am Waldsee: Group show on what dwelling means now with the curator Jo Pistorius leading the tour. 3 pm · Haus am Waldsee, Argentinische Allee 30 · €6-9[look]
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SAVE THE DATE
↳ WHOLE Festival 2026: Eighth edition, already sold out. HAAi, Sherelle, Juliana Huxtable, Octo Octa live, Tama Sumo. Ferropolis turns into a temporary world for three days. 17.07-20.07 · Ferropolis, Sachsen-Anhalt · sold out, resale via Tixel [sweat]
↳ Daniela Mercury: Forty-three years into Axé’s global rise, and she is still touring new songs, full band, no victory lap. 19.07 · 7 pm · Festsaal Kreuzberg, Am Flutgraben 2 · €45-60 [live]
↳ Max Cooper | 3D/AV Live Show: A PhD in computational biology builds these shows: light, sound and generative projection running as one live system, not a DJ set with visuals bolted on. Rare stop in Berlin. 24.07 · 10 pm · Haus der Visionäre, Eichenstr. 4a · €38-44 [frequency]
↳ Gaswerk Music Days 2026: Four days across two weekends built around modular synthesis, Nyege Nyege’s Kampala sound, desert blues into soundsystem culture, then krautrock improvisation. 24.07-31.07 · Gaswerksiedlung, Blockdammweg 1 · €25 per day [frequency]
↳ Faraquet (US / Dischord Records): DC math rock legends, back on stage for the first time since 2008, marking 25 years of their cult album The View From This Tower. One of only three Central European dates. 25.07 · 8 pm · Neue Zukunft, Alt-Stralau 68 · €26 [live]
↳ wielding fissures – carving cracks in the surface of the now: Sorour Darabi’s first opera reimagines Scheherazade outside the myth that boxed her in, paired with Alice Ripoll’s Rio company Cia REC. 31.07–02.08 · Radialsystem, Holzmarktstraße 33 · €18 [watch]
↳ Tanz im August: Cloud Gate Dance Theatre brings Sounding Light; Calixto Neto’s Bruits Marrons gets its German premiere. Nineteen productions total. 13–29.08 · HAU, Radialsystem & Haus der Berliner Festspiele · €14.30–48.40 [watch]
↳ ¥ØU$UK€ ¥UK1MAT$U: Industrial collapsing into gabber into anime score into gqom, played loud and without a shirt, Errorsmith and yungfya open. Thursday 20.08 · 8 pm · Haus der Visionäre, Eichenstr. 4a · €27-37.50 [sweat]