The Next Day #164: Berlin Weekend Guide
Must-see events in Berlin: August 13-16, 2026
Look up tonight. The partial eclipse starts at 7:15, peaks at 8:08 with 85 percent of the sun covered. At the peak, the sun sits four degrees above the horizon, so an open westward view determines whether you see anything, and the glasses are not optional. Tempelhofer Feld and the Humboldthain flak tower both give you that (not the glasses). The Zeiss Großplanetarium is free from five until one, streams the eclipse from six, and brings the telescopes out at 9:30 for the Perseids and Saturn.
This Thursday marks 65 years since the city was cut in half. On Saturday, the eastern stretch of the same axis closes for Rave The Planet, which begins with a minute of silence for the CSD attack before the 34 sound systems are turned on.
The rest of the weekend went the other way. KM28 has moved its entire program to a forest near the Müritz.
Mateus and I are dividing this one. He’s taking Tanz im August; I’m in the sculpture garden for Sound in the Garden.
If you’re after an exhibition in this stretch of August when little opens, Bjørn Melhus has the Betonhalle at silent green until the 23rd.
Wherever you land, drink water.
Lalai
IF YOU DO TWO THINGS THIS WEEKEND
Sound in the Garden [live]
Wed-Sat 6:30 pm, Sun from 10 am. · Neue Nationalgalerie, Potsdamer Straße 50 · €23-30 per night, series ticket available
Gregor Quack curates with CTM, and the thinking is spatial rather than genre-led, which is how Gigi Masin opens tonight, and Michael Rother's motorik closes on Saturday, with Dopplereffekt and a Space Afrika DJ set in between. Friday is the one to move things for (us at least): Eve Matin on harp, then Hildur Guðnadóttir and Sam Slater with Slauson Malone 1 cutting jazz loops against them. Sunday the concerts stop, and the installations for Fujiko Nakaya sound inside her fog, which behaves differently after dark.
Tanz im August [watch]
13-29.08 · HAU1, HAU2, Sophiensæle, Radialsystem, Stadtbad Oderberger, Haus der Berliner Festspiele · €12-44
Opens with TRAPICANA, from Joana Tischkau, Jeremy Nedd and Sophie Yukiko with the Malpaso Dance Company. Then Mohamed Toukabri in Arabic and English, Marco da Silva Ferreira, Chara Kotsali, and Dana Michel performing inside the Stadtbad pool.
THURSDAY - 13.08
Two festivals open tonight, both worth booking (see above). If you booked nothing: KW is free from four, with a curator walking the Kyiv Biennial, and Maara plays arkaoda.
65 Years Since the Construction of the Berlin Wall [look]
Thursday to Sunday · Brandenburger Tor, Platz des 18. März, and citywide · Free
Hubertus Hamm's installation view stands on the ground the Wall ran through, and how much you see depends entirely on where you stand: from some angles it opens onto the distance, from others it shuts the view down. An open-air show of photographs from 1961 to 1990 surrounds it, and the S-Bahn ghost stations are signed along the way.
Maara Ultra Villain Album Live Debut [live]
Thursday · 8 pm · arkaoda, Karl-Marx-Platz 16 · €10
Maara was making vocal-driven music before she made dance music, so Ultra Villain reads as a return rather than a swerve. Trip-hop tempos, IDM detail and leftfield pop, built in the studio with Priori and Patrick Holland.
TRAPICANA by Tischkau / Nedd / Yukiko x Malpaso Dance Company [watch]
Thu-Sun · different times depending on the day · HAU 1, Stresemannstraße, 29 · € 14-30 · Part of Tanz im August Festival
Tischkau builds this on the Tropicana revue in Havana, with Jeremy Nedd, Sophie Yukiko and nine dancers from Malpaso moving between Afro-Cuban forms and forms invented for tourists, all of it set to trap. A floor show staged as a nightmare, which is the only honest way to stage that one.
MORE ON THURSDAY:
↳ Kyiv Biennial: A Bird That Cannot Land: The biennial's Berlin chapter across the whole building, on coloniality, imperialism and exile between Eastern Europe and Southwest Asia. Curator's tour in English at 4 pm; register by email. 4 pm to 9 pm · KW, Auguststraße 69, Mitte · Free [look]
↳ Berlin Beats: Oda Haliti: Global rhythms and archival digging in the museum garden, free and early enough to be somewhere else after. 7 pm · Hamburger Bahnhof, Invalidenstraße 50-51 · Free [frequency]
↳ Ark Welders Guild, Monty Luke: Mandingo Sound System: Dub techno and abstract ambient with live visuals from Deadbeat and Letizia Trussi, then Monty Luke on deep house. 10 pm · OHM, Köpenicker Str. 70 · €15 [frequency]
↳ weeeirdos: Queer experimental club night with Juliana Huxtable, poet and visual artist first, and TAUREAN moving hypnotic techno into breakbeat. 10 pm · Berghain, Säule, Am Wriezener Bahnhof · €14-16 [frequency]
FRIDAY - 14.08
Zahra plays the Libyan tapes at Atemporal at seven. Ferreira opens F*cking Future at Radialsystem; the Hošek opening is on a boat, and the Säälchen goes until two.
F*cking Future by Marco da Silva Ferreira [watch]
Fri-Sun · 9 pm, 8 pm (Sunday) · English with German translation · Radialsystem · Holzmarktstr. 33 · €27.50 · Part of Tanz im August Festival
Ferreira came up through Portuguese street and club dance, and he reads militarisation as choreography, something drilled into bodies rather than believed. Eight dancers in chainmail work an arena: robots beside drag queens, knights turning into clubbers, uniformity leaking individuals the whole way.
4 To The Floor: Film, Talk & Clubbing [watch]
Friday · 6 pm - 2 am · Säälchen, Holzmarkt 25 · €17
Opens with a screening of Check Your Body at the Door, on the dancers who built New York’s underground club culture. Archie Burnett, who appears in the film himself, talks with Colleen ‘Cosmo’ Murphy and Kiddy Smile. Then it becomes a club: Jana Falcon and Robin Flux, Cosmo Murphy at 10:30, Kiddy Smile at 12:30.
MORE ON FRIDAY:
↳ Listening Session: Zahra, A Selection of Music from Libyan Tapes: Libyan cassette tracks played back by the person who interviewed the artists and their families. For people who treat listening as research. 7 pm · Atemporal, Boxhagener Str. 96 · €15 [gather]
↳ Gleo (live recording): Glitched ambient recorded live, small room, very good system. 7 pm · Morphine Raum, Köpenicker Straße 147 · €10-15 [live]
↳ Marco Siciliano: Nontiscordardime: Solo show opening on the moored ship, drinks on the water. Opening: 8 - 11 pm · Hošek Contemporary, Märkisches Ufer 1z [look]
↳ Open Air Kino: The Wizard of Oz: Bjørn Melhus made WEIT WEIT WEG out of this soundtrack in 1995, so LOST IN FINITY screens the source whole. English with German subtitles. 9:15 pm · silent green, Gerichtstraße 35, Wedding · €6 [watch]
SATURDAY - 15.08
Shade before line-ups today. Yoga on the museum terrace at ten, FLORA outdoors in the afternoon, and the parade whenever you can face it.
Rave The Planet Parade 2026 [gather]
Saturday · 2 pm · Straße des 17. Juni · Free - you can check the floats here
34 floats and over three hundred artists, mostly hard techno and trance. The parade opens with a minute of silence for the victims of the July attack at CSD, and what follows is eight hours of people refusing to give up an avenue three weeks after someone attacked a parade.
Berlin Circus Festival [watch]
Until Sunday · Tempelhofer Feld, entrance at S+U Tempelhof · €18-24
The twelfth edition ends this weekend, and its theme this year is a Catalan focus, developed with the APCC and the Institut Ramon Llull. Manel Rosès plays Akri, and Cia Totapedra does Pifia twice a day, with Collective Rage closing with Rage.
YOU CANNOT CAN by Dana Michel [watch]
Sat-Mon · 5 pm · Stadtbad Oderberger in the Hotel Oderberger · Oderberger Str. 57 · €25 · Part of Tanz im August Festival
Michel's family comes from an island held between the Atlantic and the Caribbean, and she still cannot settle in water. She takes that into a working pool, improvising the way she always has, closer to drifting than to dancing, and turns it into who gets taught to swim and who never does.
MORE ON SATURDAY:
↳ Yoga & Matcha im museum: Morning session on the Berlinische Galerie terrace with a matcha after, before the museum fills up. Bring a mat, register by email. 10 am · Berlinische Galerie, Alte Jakobstraße 124 · €8-13, museum entry not included [gather]
↳ FLORA Festival ‘26, Session 8: Free, solar-powered, zero-waste, built around deep listening outdoors. Location released the day before on Telegram. 3 - 9 pm · Location TBA · Free/donation-based [gather]
↳ Climate 24 hours: Live electro and club from Bitter Babe b2b OK Williams and Reptant, running twenty-four hours on an island in Spandau. 11:59 pm · Backsteinboot, Eiswerderstraße 18 · €27 [sweat]
↳ FUTURE NOW: ni-va: Live electroacoustic improvisation, four synths and samplers from the Buenos Aires composition program. 4:30 pm · Konzerthaus, Werner-Otto-Saal, Gendarmenmarkt · €13-20 [live]
↳ rustling fermata: We have no references for the crew and are going on the proposal alone, which is seven hours on the water with ambient and electroacoustic above deck and films below. 3 pm · Saltyacid Space, Uferweg · 25 places [frequency]
↳ ✷Arkaoda’s✷: With ELAYN, Nick Klein, TAKAKO, Tangela, Temple Rat, Marylou, Kinzua, Nic Krog and YSK playing the club out. 8 pm - 6am · arkaoda, Karl-Marx-Platz 16 · €12-15 [frequency]
↳ Unkompress Saturday Session: Eritrean Anthology: Rare 1970s Eritrean records, vinyl only, natural wine, room small enough that late is too late. 10 pm · Unkompress, Fichtestraße 23 · Free [gather]
↳ Home Again x Rotkäppchen Picnic: Classic house on the Treptow riverbank with Ian Pooley, Andra and Blame Anthony. 1 pm · Secret location, Treptow · Free with RSVP [frequency]
SUNDAY - 16.08
GROOVE runs fourteen hours of electro at Sonnenraum. Lefto does seven of his own outdoors at Kaos, and Floating University opens the site at two.
GROOVE x Studio Liberté [sweat]
Sunday · 2 pm · Sonnenraum, Eichenstraße 4A · €17-22
Three Detroit names on one bill: DJ Assault and DJ Godfather on ghettotech, and Detroit In Effect, who has been putting out raw electro since 1992, first on his own M.A.P. Records and later on Clone. Danny Daze comes from Miami. SLIC Unit, Modeselektor and SALOME are local. Fourteen hours.
MORE ON SUNDAY:
↳ Ensemble Modern: Why We Play: Documentary that spends more time in rehearsal than on stage, followed by a talk with composer Heiner Goebbels and Bettina Morlock. 11 am · delphi LUX, Kantstraße 12a · €14 [watch]
↳ The Wild: BiberAmt: Cleo Wächter turns bureaucratic tools into a soft map of the site's trees, then Beavers in Paradise screens outdoors with the London team. 5 pm · Floating University, Lilienthalstraße 32 · Free [gather]
↳ Sakana: Juicy Crab Sandwich: Crab sandwiches and Japanese-Brazilian seafood at Material, with DJ Jini playing manguebeat all afternoon. Ticket books your sandwich. 2 pm until sold out · Material, Schönhauser Allee 156 · €15 [gather/drink]
↳ Endless Groove Sessions with Lefto Early Bird: Seven hours outdoors from a selector who never settled into one genre. Profits to Berliner Obdachlosenhilfe and Doucheflux. 1:30 pm · Kaos, Wilhelminenhofstraße 92 · €7-20 [frequency]
↳ AETHERNET Vinyl Market: Record fair opening with a vinyl DJ workshop and open decks. 2 pm · Crack Bellmer, Revaler Str. 99 · €5 [gather]
↳ SIP! with Coco Maria (all day long): Five hours of vinyl moving between funk, house, jazz and worldwide digging, by the water. 4 - 9 pm · ZENNER, Alt-Treptow 15 · Free [frequency]
BEYOND BERLIN
Forstfest has two lakes, Biesenthal has shade, Peitz has a millrace.
Forstfest: A Distant Report [live]
Friday-Sunday · Forsthaus Grünow, Müritz · €20/day, €40 w/camping, €100/weekend
KM28 moves its whole program to a forest house on the edge of the Müritz National Park. Jules Reidy on voice and guitar, Jessie Marino playing fiddle tuned to historic weaving patterns, Central Javanese court gamelan from Swara Bruwang, Nina Guo singing Feldman’s Three Voices against two recordings of herself, and Horse Lords closing Saturday. Three days of experimental music, camping and nature.
Sound Biesenthal 2026 [look]
Saturday-Sunday until 30.08 · 12 pm to 7 pm · Wehrmühle, Wehrmühlenweg 8, Biesenthal · €23
Domenico Positano and Tjioe Meyer Hecken use sound as a way of asking about perception, memory and how people arrange themselves around each other. On Saturday, there's a seated dinner from Vitamin Color for €85, or a picnic kit for up to three for €49 if you'd rather stay on the grass.
Jazzwerkstatt Peitz [live]
Friday-Saturday · Hüttenwerk Peitz, Am Hüttenwerk 1, Peitz · €50-150
The 63rd edition. Darius Jones and Otomo Yoshihide meet for the first time in a quintet with Nick Dunston and two kits, Gerald Cleaver and Yasuhiro Yoshigaki. Aki Takase with Landfermann and Lillinger, Mariá Portugal's Erosão septet outdoors, Conny Bauer's Konradismen. Founded in 1973, banned by the GDR in 1982, running again since 2011.
❗Stay in the loop with Berlin’s latest news in English through 20 Percent Berlin. Get a sneak peek of our weekend guide every Tuesday.
⚡︎ If you enjoy “The Next Day Berlin,” consider supporting us for just 5 euros a month to help keep the guide going, or you can also buy us a coffee. Follow us on Instagram for extra tips.
SAVE THE DATE
↳ Stian Westerhus (19.08): Norwegian guitarist who runs the instrument through enough processing that it stops being one. Neue Zukunft, Alt-Stralau 68 · €25 [live]
↳ ¥ØU$UK€ ¥UK1MAT$U (20.08): Industrial collapsing into gabber into anime score into gqom, played loud and without a shirt, Errorsmith and yungfya open. Haus der Visionäre, Eichenstr. 4a · €27-37.50 [frequency]
↳ Kraftwerk. Multimedia Tour (28-29.08): The 3D show against the Bauhaus Building, two nights, outdoors. Fifty-six years of Hütter deciding what the future sounds like. Bauhaus Dessau, Gropiusallee 38 · 8 pm · €97 [live]
↳ Pop-Kultur 2026 (24-30.08): Mostly commissioned work, so most of it exists only here. Plan around 26.08 at silent green, with Bar Italia and Avalon Emerson & the Charm, then Dis Fig, Discovery Zone and The Notwist on 29.08 at Kulturbrauerei, and múm closing at Pierre Boulez Saal on 30.08. [live]
↳ Poliça (25.08): Channy Leaneagh’s voice through layers of processing, warmer on the new record than on the early ones. Peter Edel, Berliner Allee 125 · €28 [live]