Listen
The weekend is anchored at both ends: Jungle at MEO Arena and three days of experimental electronics in Braga. In between there is plenty of honest chamber work, from Baroque music in Graça to Shostakovich in a small Almada hall, but nothing that will define the season.
Lisbon and around
Jungle
📅 24 October, 20:00
📍 MEO Arena, Parque das Nações
💸 €45–62
Childhood friends Josh Lloyd-Watson and Tom McFarland started Jungle in London in 2013. Their sound is built from falsetto vocals and the groove of 1970s soul, disco and funk, and you recognise it within seconds. Their debut was shortlisted for the Mercury Prize. “Back On 74” from Volcano went platinum in the UK, US and Australia, and in 2024 they won the BRIT for British Group. They are known for videos in which dancers perform choreography in a single take, and the live show works the same way: a big band, vocalist Lydia Kitto (now a full member), lights and constant movement. Their fifth album, Sunshine, came out in August, and this is its Lisbon premiere. Go if you want two hours of dancing in a room that knows every chorus. Support comes from Rio Kosta, an LA duo of Mike Del Rio and Kosta Galanopoulos playing psychedelic soul with dense vocal harmonies.
Jungle performing live.
Suffocation
📅 23 October, 19:00
📍 Lisbon S.T.A.G.E. (formerly Music Station), Parque das Nações
💸 €30
This Long Island band formed in 1988 and changed death metal almost at once. The sudden tempo shifts, technical guitars and crushing breakdowns later known as “slam” grew out of their records. Effigy of the Forgotten and Pierced from Within are still studied as textbooks of the genre. On the European tour they bring Manchester’s Ingested (brutal death metal bordering on deathcore) and Rochester’s Undeath (a new generation of old-school death metal), with Swedish openers Eternal. That’s four bands for €30: a dense night for anyone who wants to see where half of modern extreme metal comes from. The venue has just been renamed; it is the same hall by Oriente station.
Júlio Resende Trio
📅 23 October, 21:30 (the night runs 18:30–02:00)
📍 Fábrica de Braço de Prata, Marvila
💸 Tickets
The Faro-born pianist was one of the first to seriously join fado and jazz. On “Amália por Júlio Resende” he arranged the songs of Amália Rodrigues (the great fado singer of the 20th century) for piano, and on “Fado & Further” he moved even further from the source. Resende worked with Salvador Sobral (the 2017 Eurovision winner) on Alexander Search, a project set to Pessoa’s poems, and joined him and Caetano Veloso (the Brazilian music legend) on the Eurovision stage in Lisbon in 2018. The concert takes place in a former munitions factory by the river, where a bookshop shares space with concert rooms, and one ticket covers three rooms. At 18:30 the soul of Jada Quest, at 21:30 Resende’s trio, at 22:00 a Brazilian forró ball (couple dances from Brazil’s northeast) by Forró Factory with singer Mari Jasca. A chance to hear fado without a voice, then dance until 2am.
Festival Lisboa Barroca
📅 23–25 October
📍 Graça and São Vicente
💸 €47 festival pass, single tickets available
Once a year this small early-music festival takes over churches, galleries and taverns in Graça. The fourth edition is about music and word, Iberian languages and women composers of the 17th and 18th centuries. Performers include the Occasus ensemble and French harpsichordist Elisabeth Joyé. The main reason to go is to hear Baroque music in the kind of rooms it was written for, a couple of metres from the players, and to wander one of the city’s loveliest neighbourhoods between concerts.
Friday, 19:30: “Amor sin pena” by the trio Noa Noa at the Portaria of Graça church. Filipe Faria sings and plays the adufe (a square frame drum), Tiago Matias plays the vihuela (an early Spanish guitar), joined by Baltazar Molina. The programme is 16th-century songs about language and memory.
Saturday: 11:00 a musical tour of the São Vicente de Fora monastery (paid separately); 14:00 a vocal workshop at Tasca das Artes; 19:00 “Autres Miscellanées” at the Arte Graça gallery; 21:00 “Dove parlano le muse” at the Portaria of Graça church.
Sunday: 15:00 “Tudo é confusão, tudo é cuidado” at Arte Graça; 16:15 a demonstration of improvised counterpoint at Tasca das Artes; 18:00 cellist Cyril Poulet plays Bach’s cello suites in the National Pantheon, under a dome with a long echo.
On Friday and Saturday from 18:00 to 19:00, “musical snacks” at the Tings bar: a chat with the musicians over petiscos (Portuguese tapas).
Festa da Burra no Coliseu
📅 24 October, 21:30
📍 Coliseu dos Recreios, Baixa
💸 €15–40
Sebastião Antunes and his band Quadrilha celebrate 15 years of “Cantiga da Burra”, a song about a donkey that grew from a village tune into a streaming hit with dozens of covers. The night brings together the new Portuguese folk scene. Karetus add electronics to the acoustics, Galandum Galundaina play bagpipe folk from Miranda do Douro, Júlio Pereira plays the cavaquinho (a small Portuguese guitar), and rock band Quinta do Bill turn up the volume. The audience ranges from children to grandmothers. A rare chance to see living Portuguese tradition in a big hall and understand why people here sing these songs together.
Nkisi and Gonçalo F. Cardoso
📅 24 October, 17:00
📍 MAC/CCB, Belém
💸 Free
Nkisi (Melika Ngombe Kolongo) was born in Congo, grew up in Belgium and lives in London. With Chino Amobi and Angel-Ho she co-founded NON Worldwide, a key platform for the African diaspora in electronic music. Her album 7 Directions came out on Lee Gamble’s UIQ label: gabber, trance and Belgian techno broken down into rhythms close to ritual percussion. Gonçalo Cardoso is a Portuguese artist who spent 17 years in London. He runs the Discrepant label and builds “sound diaries” from field recordings. They play inside the exhibition of Norwegian-Nigerian artist Frida Orupabo, opening the Discreet Music Series by the Lovers & Lollypops festival. Free entry for the museum’s third anniversary makes this a rare chance to hear serious experimental electronics in daylight and then walk through the new shows.
Pedro Melo Alves’ Omniae Large Ensemble
📅 24 October, 19:00
📍 CCB, Small Auditorium, Belém
💸 €17.50–20
Drummer and composer Pedro Melo Alves started Omniae as a septet that won the Bernardo Sassetti composition prize in 2016. It has since grown into a 17-piece orchestra with musicians from Porto, Lisbon, Berlin, New York, Bern and Amsterdam. Among them are accordionist João Barradas (a prominent name in Portuguese jazz), German vocalist Almut Kühne and American flautist Laura Cocks. Their album Lumina came out on Lisbon’s Clean Feed label. For ninety minutes written score slips into free improvisation and back, with Alves conducting from behind the kit. A good way into contemporary European jazz if it usually intimidates you: there is plenty of air, voice and drama.
Heith and Tarawangsawelas
📅 23 October, 22:00
📍 Galeria Zé dos Bois, Bairro Alto
💸 €13
Tarawangsawelas is a duo from West Java playing tarawangsa, Sundanese ritual music for two instruments, the bowed jentreng and the plucked ngek-ngek. Their album Wanci came out on Morphine, the label of Lebanese musician Rabih Beaini. Heith is Milan’s Daniele Guerrini, who has released on Haunter Records and Berlin’s PAN and builds ritual psychedelia from noise, drumming and electronics. Together they recorded the album Duori. At ZDB you can hear an ancient ceremony and European noise dissolve into each other: slow, hypnotic and long, the right choice if you want to drop out of time. Peruvian, Algarve-based musician Raúl Jardín opens. Ages 16+.
Beatriz Li Rosão Trio
📅 24 October, 21:00
📍 Teatro Municipal Joaquim Benite, Almada
💸 €13
Beatriz Li Rosão is a young violinist who won the national Vasco Barbosa competition and the Antena 2 young musicians’ prize. She studies in Amsterdam with Vera Beths, has played in the youth orchestras of the Concertgebouw and the Verbier Festival, and represented Portugal at Eurovision Young Musicians. With cellist Ester Santos and pianist Gonçalo Perdigão she plays two trios. Schubert’s First is one of his late, luminous works. Shostakovich wrote his Second in 1944 after the death of a close friend, and its finale is built on a Jewish theme. Composer Alexandre Delgado talks about the music between pieces. Seventy minutes in the small Experimental Hall: you rarely get to hear this music so close, and for so little.
Porto and around
Semibreve
📅 23–25 October (the festival starts on the 22nd)
📍 Theatro Circo, gnration and other venues, Braga (40 minutes from Porto)
💸 €10–18 per day
Braga’s festival of electronic and experimental music is in its 16th edition. Evening concerts take place in the old Theatro Circo, late-night sets in the gnration club space. At €18 a day for this concentration of names, it is worth the trip even from Lisbon.
Friday: Nuno Canavarro, whose 1988 album Plux Quba is considered one of the roots of Portuguese ambient, presents his new project Radiant Rift. Then the Swedish duo of Malcolm Pardon and Gustaf Broms with Flesh and Bones. After midnight, Swiss composer Noémi Büchi, and Peder Mannerfelt (Swedish producer of techno and experimental electronics) plays back to back with RONI.
Saturday: at 17:30, Italian sound engineer Marta Salogni, who has worked with Björk, plays tape loops in the chapel of the Seminário Menor. In the evening, Berlin producer PYUR and audiovisual artist Tarik Barri present Mass Oneiria, followed by Sam Slater (who worked on the Chernobyl soundtrack with Hildur Guðnadóttir) with Lunng. Late night brings TYGAPAW (a New York DJ), Azu Tiwaline (a Tunisian-French dub and techno producer) and Flora Yin-Wong (a London electronic artist).
Sunday: at 17:00, Qasim Naqvi (composer and co-founder of the trio Dawn of Midi) with Steven Wendt. At 18:20, Austrian Fennesz, who turned the guitar into noise and ambient (his Endless Summer is long a classic), plays with composer Oscar Jockel and the Sinfonietta de Braga orchestra.
Daniel Casares Sextet and Cuca Roseta
📅 24 October, 21:00
📍 Casa da Música, Sala Suggia
💸 €20–35
Daniel Casares was born in Estepona in 1980 and early on won the Bordón Minero, the top guitar award at the flamenco festival in La Unión. He has recorded with Dulce Pontes and Miguel Poveda, played flamenco with the Málaga Philharmonic on the album Picassares, and worked with Alejandro Sanz and Cuban pianist Chucho Valdés. His programme “El poder de lo sutil” explores the quiet, subtle side of flamenco, with six on stage: second guitar, singer, dancer, cajón and bass. The guest is fado singer Cuca Roseta, who has long looked for common ground between fado and Spanish song. If you have never seen flamenco live with a dancer on stage, Porto will not offer a better occasion this autumn.
Porto Symphony Orchestra and Remix Ensemble
📅 23 October, 21:00 and 25 October, 18:00
📍 Casa da Música, Sala Suggia
💸 €22–26: Friday, Sunday
Two evenings in which Porto’s symphony orchestra and the contemporary music ensemble Remix play together. They are led by Pierre Bleuse, music director of Ensemble intercontemporain, the Paris ensemble founded by Pierre Boulez, in his first appearance at Casa da Música.
Friday: the Adagio from Mahler’s unfinished Tenth Symphony sits between two works of our time. These are Portuguese composer Emmanuel Nunes’s “Improvisation I” and Spanish composer Hèctor Parra’s Inscape, a journey inside a black hole with electronics made at IRCAM in Paris.
Sunday: Italian composer Francesca Verunelli’s La nuda voce, set to a text from oral tradition, with soprano Johanna Vargas and mezzo Helēna Sorokina. Then Debussy’s Images, his last major orchestral work. Mahler and Debussy next to new music make an easy way into a contemporary score.
Rita Redshoes
📅 24 October, 21:30
📍 Casa da Música, Sala 2
💸 €15
Rita Redshoes started in the band Atomic Bees and in David Fonseca’s group, then released six solo albums of English- and Portuguese-language pop-folk. Her seventh, FALA, came out in late September, and every song on it was written for her by Portuguese women songwriters: Luísa Sobral (who wrote Portugal’s Eurovision-winning song), Márcia, rapper Capicua, Mafalda Veiga and Amélia Muge. Part of the concert goes to women from her nationwide residency, who sing their own songs. An intimate evening about women’s voices in Portuguese song, for €15 in one of the country’s best halls.
Dance
Lisbon’s options range from Dutch hardcore to a folk ball where you learn the mazurka on the spot. The most interesting nights are once again in Porto, where €10 buys Berlin-level techno.
Lisbon
Angerfist
📅 23 October, 21:00–04:00
📍 LAV – Lisboa ao Vivo, Marvila
💸 Tickets
Dutch DJ Danny Masseling has been releasing music since 2001, mainly on Masters of Hardcore. He is called the king of hardcore, the Dutch dance music at 170–200 beats per minute from which gabber grew. He first put on his white hockey mask, à la Jason from Friday the 13th, because of stage fright, and it has become his face. From 2011 to 2023 he never left the DJ Mag Top 100. The promoters present the night as Lisbon’s long-awaited Angerfist show; USH is also on the bill, with more names to be announced. Seven hours at full speed. Ages 18+; earplugs recommended.
Angerfist behind the DJ decks.
Shinedoe
📅 24 October, 23:00–06:00
📍 Lux Frágil, Santa Apolónia
💸 Tickets
Shinedoe (Chinedum Nwosu) is an Amsterdam DJ who has spent more than twenty years playing techno and house at the crossroads of Detroit, Chicago and Amsterdam. She runs the Intacto label and has released on Cocoon, Get Physical and BPitch. In the Disco room she is joined by Chima Isaaro, the Lisbon DJ who plays Lux more often than anyone and ranges from techno to disco and batida. In the bar upstairs, Canadian duo Flabbergast (Guillaume Coutu Dumont and Vincent Lemieux) mix house with jazz and hip-hop, alongside resident HNRQ. Lux sits right on the river, and if you last until morning you can watch the dawn over the Tagus from the terrace.
Contratempos: BOP
📅 24 October, 20:00–03:00
📍 Collect, LX Factory
💸 €10
Contratempos is a Lisbon series of deep, minimal and experimental drum & bass, jungle and breaks. Headliner BOP is a St Petersburg producer on Hospital Records (the leading British drum & bass label). He also releases on Med School and co-runs the Microfunk label. His signature is subtle, jazzy, atmospheric drum & bass, and this is his first time in Portugal. Local DJs Phorid, DJ Ki and Sabes complete the bill. It starts at eight and ends at three, handy if you would rather not wait until 2am to start dancing.
oDYSea
📅 23 October, 23:00–06:00
📍 Lux Frágil, Santa Apolónia
💸 Tickets
A night of cosmic house and techno created by Penelope, a French DJ living in Lisbon who releases on Basic Moves. Her guests are Caim from the Netherlands, who mixes trance, techno, house and breakbeat and has played Tbilisi’s Bassiani and Amsterdam’s RADION, and Pridi, a Belarus-born DJ based in Warsaw. In the upstairs bar, Lux resident Tiago and Nova Retra, who build sets from forgotten records of the 1980s and early 2000s. A calmer night than Saturday: long, hypnotic sets for people who like to dissolve on the dance floor rather than jump at the drop. A good way to start the weekend at Lux if you are heading elsewhere on Saturday.
FEST-i-BALL
📅 23 October from 22:00 and 25 October from 16:30
📍 Teatro da Luz, Carnide
💸 €22 per evening
Bal folk means European folk dances in couples and groups: mazurkas, schottisches, andros, waltzes. You don’t need to learn them beforehand; the steps are picked up on the floor with experienced dancers. The Lisbon association Tradballs is holding its 38th FEST-i-BALL, with musicians from France, Italy and Spain. Nobody stands by the wall at these dances: everyone joins the circle.
Friday: at 22:00 the Gascon duo Thouxazun (Guillaume Lopez, voice and flutes; Clément Rousse, diatonic accordion); at midnight Lisbon’s Dancing Strings (fiddle, bouzouki, hurdy-gurdy, drums), who have played Tradballs dances for twenty years.
Sunday: an afternoon ball at 16:30 with the duo Prata/Caballero; at 18:00 the Italian trio Rudemà on guitar, violin and bagpipes, blending bal folk, Irish folk and the traditions of Northern Italy.
Online sales have closed; remaining tickets are sold at the theatre box office (no Multibanco cards). Children under 13 go free.
Saturday Matiné
📅 24 October, 14:00–23:00
📍 Cavo Rooftop, cruise terminal (Jardim do Tabaco)
💸 Free with registration
A day party on the cruise terminal roof with views of the Tagus, Alfama and the 25 de Abril bridge. Local DJs play in pairs: Ramirezz with Martim Tonic, Denives with Brazilian DJ EHLLA, Rui Alves with Slim J and neApo. Expect house, micro-house, techno and acid. Arrive for lunch, catch the sunset on the dance floor and still be home before midnight. Free with registration, ages 18+.
Porto
Modwerks: Ø [Phase]
📅 24 October, 23:00–06:00
📍 Gare Porto, next to São Bento station
💸 €10
Ø [Phase] is Londoner Ashley Burchett, who has spent more than twenty years playing hypnotic, stripped-back techno with nothing superfluous. He is often compared to Jeff Mills (the Detroit techno pioneer). He is linked to the Belgian label Token, founded his own Modwerks in 2021 and plays regularly at Berlin’s Berghain and Tresor and London’s fabric. He is joined by Brazilian DJ Saag, a Modwerks artist and Gare regular who plays only vinyl. Gare is an underground club with low vaults where techno sounds as intended, and for €10 it is a Berlin night without the flight.
Spektroom
📅 24 October, 17:00–00:00
📍 Museu do Carro Eléctrico, Douro riverside
💸 Tickets
The daytime edition of this hard techno and hard groove party takes place in the tram museum on the Douro, among 20th-century carriages. The headliners are Irish DJ Luciid, a rising name in heavy techno with releases on Suara, and Fernanda Martins, a Brazilian DJ based in Spain who has been playing since 2008. Series founder Bandeira, Caldas, Aguiar and Al Pro Ci also play. The dancing starts in daylight and ends at midnight, so you can still go somewhere else or actually sleep.
AlFaer, Maria Callapez, Vivax
📅 23 October, 23:00–06:00
📍 Gare Porto
💸 Free
A Friday night at Gare with no ticket. Maria Callapez is a Lisbon DJ and producer with releases on ELBEREC, Orbitando and Rapture, playing dark, dense techno. AlFaer is a fixture of the local scene who has played Rapture nights and alongside Ancient Methods (the German industrial techno producer). Local DJ Vivax joins them. The easiest way to test the club before coming back on Saturday for Ø [Phase]. Ages 18+.
See
The busiest section of the weekend: Doclisboa closes with strong films, and MAC/CCB and Amadora BD offer their final days for free or almost. Theatre remains the weak spot: English-language productions are still scarce, and São Luiz is carrying the load almost alone.
Lisbon and around
Doclisboa: the final weekend
📅 23–25 October
📍 Culturgest, Cinema São Jorge, Cinema Ideal, Cinemateca
💸 €3.20–5
Portugal’s main documentary festival ends its 24th edition with a full weekend. Tickets are sold per screening and are cheaper at the Cinemateca. Films are shown with Portuguese and English subtitles. The Cinemateca is in the last days of its retrospective of Lino Brocka (the Filipino director who filmed Manila’s slums and the Marcos dictatorship), which closes on the 25th.
Friday: at 21:30 at São Jorge, “Cantona”, about the French footballer and 1990s Manchester United captain who remained a rebel all his life. It screens again on Sunday at 15:00 at Culturgest.
Saturday: at 17:00 at Culturgest, a talk with Basel Adra, Palestinian co-director of the Oscar-winning “No Other Land”. At 18:00 at São Jorge, Alex Gibney’s “Knife: The Attempted Murder of Salman Rushdie” (Gibney is the Oscar-winning American documentarian behind “Taxi to the Dark Side”). At 21:00 at Culturgest, the closing film “Thanks for Coming” by French master Alain Cavalier, director of “Thérèse”. At 21:45 at Cinema Ideal, “In-I In Motion”, Juliette Binoche’s film about her dance piece with choreographer Akram Khan. At 23:00, the closing party at Bar A Barraca.
Sunday: 11:00, the Cavalier repeat; 18:00 at Culturgest, a film about writer Siri Hustvedt; 18:30 at São Jorge, “Nino”, about Nino Rota, composer for Fellini and “The Godfather”. At 21:30 at Culturgest, “Douglas Gordon by Douglas Gordon”, about the Turner Prize-winning Scottish artist behind “24 Hour Psycho”.
MAC/CCB: three years
📅 23–25 October
📍 MAC/CCB, Belém
💸 Free
Belém’s contemporary art museum celebrates its third birthday with a free weekend and the opening of a major Ângela Ferreira show, “Here I Stand”. Ferreira was born in Maputo, grew up in South Africa, represented Portugal at the Venice Biennale and has long worked with colonial history and modernist architecture in Africa. Free entry to one of the country’s key 20th-century collections is reason enough to finally go.
Friday: 18:00 a talk between the artist and curator Nuria Enguita, 19:00 the opening. At 19:30 students from the Chapitô circus school activate her installation on the CCB square, which reworks unbuilt projects by Mies van der Rohe and Pancho Guedes, the Portuguese modernist from Mozambique. 20:00 DJ set by Party Smith.
Saturday: 17:00 concert by Nkisi and Gonçalo Cardoso (see Listen).
Sunday: the last day of “Multiple Eyes”, with work by Turner Prize winner Lubaina Himid. At 17:00, a lecture by essayist António Guerreiro, “The Temptation of Legibility”.
Under the Shade of a Tree I Sat and Wept
📅 23 and 24 October, 20:00; 25 October, 17:30
📍 Teatro São Luiz, Chiado
💸 €12–15
Jeton Neziraj is Kosovo’s best-known playwright, director Blerta Neziraj stages his plays across Europe, and South African playwright Greg Homann worked with them on the dramaturgy. The piece sets two attempts at reconciliation after mass violence side by side. The first is the 1990 campaign in which Kosovo Albanians forgave each other’s blood feuds en masse. The second is South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission after apartheid. Actors from Kosovo and South Africa weave in archive material and new testimony, and despite the weight of the subject there is a lot of humour. Performed in English, Albanian and South African languages with English subtitles; 70 minutes; ages 14+. It goes on to Théâtre de la Ville in Paris and La MaMa in New York, so here you can see it before Paris, for €15.
Amadora BD
📅 until 25 October, 10:00–21:00
📍 Parque da Liberdade, Damaia, Amadora
💸 €2–6
Portugal’s main comics festival (BD, bande dessinée, the Franco-Belgian term for comics) is in its 37th edition and its final weekend. There are 14 exhibitions: 80 years of Lucky Luke and Blake and Mortimer, 65 years of the Fantastic Four, 40 years of Dylan Dog, the Italian nightmare investigator. A separate retrospective covers Guy Delisle, the Canadian who draws graphic reportage from Pyongyang, Shanghai and Jerusalem. On Saturday at 15:20 Delisle gives a talk and signs books until 19:00; at 17:00 American Craig Thompson, author of “Blankets” and “Habibi”, presents his book. On Sunday both sign from 15:00 to 17:00. A good family outing where adults have as much fun as the kids.
Visitors at the Amadora BD comics festival.
Drawing Room Lisboa
📅 23 October 14:00–21:00, 24 October 11:00–21:00, 25 October 11:00–18:00
📍 SNBA, Rua Barata Salgueiro 36
💸 €9
At most art fairs, drawings hang off to the side while everyone looks at painting and sculpture. Here there is nothing but drawing. Drawing Room started in Madrid in 2016, came to Lisbon two years later and has returned every autumn since; this is its ninth Lisbon edition. Twenty-three galleries from Portugal, Spain and Peru fill the old building of the National Society of Fine Arts (SNBA). From Lisbon come Balcony, Galeria 111 and Carlos Carvalho; from Porto, Nuno Centeno and Lehmann Contemporary; from Lima, Marissi Campos. The range is wide, from figurative sheets to pure abstraction and works you would hardly call drawing in the usual sense. Among the big names, look for Pedro Cabrita Reis and José Pedro Croft (both represented Portugal at the Venice Biennale), Pedro Calapez and Diana Policarpo. Also worth remembering is Peruvian artist Lennin Vásquez, whose surreal tangles of human bodies, plants and architecture became the face of this year’s fair. At the centre is the shortlist show for the FLAD Drawing Prize, worth €20,000. The Ilídio Pinho Foundation prize and the Ana Hatherly prize (named after the Portuguese poet and artist) are also awarded here. You can catch artists, curators and museum people at the Millennium Art Talks and browse artists’ books in a dedicated room. Everything is for sale, and this is one of the few ways to buy a work by a major Portuguese artist for about the price of a good bicycle. Tickets are €6 for under-18s and over-65s.
Cine Society Halloween
📅 23–25 October
📍 Impact Hub, Penha de França
💸 €14.50: Scream, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Corpse Bride, Saw
Cine Society spent the autumn screening films on rooftops and has moved indoors to a room of deck chairs for Halloween. Music plays all evening, with a costume contest, tarot readings, “scary” food and popcorn. Friday at 20:00, Wes Craven’s “Scream”, the 1996 slasher that mocked the rules of its own genre. Saturday at 20:00, “The Rocky Horror Picture Show”, the cult musical you are supposed to attend in costume and sing along to. Sunday at 16:00, Tim Burton’s “Corpse Bride”, fine for older children, and at 20:00 “Saw”. Films are in the original language with subtitles. Saturday’s Rocky Horror is the pick: it only really works in a room full of fishnets and glitter.
Life in Lisboa
📅 24 October, 21:00 (doors 20:30)
📍 Selva Comedy Cafe, Rua Luís de Camões 112A, Alcântara
💸 Tickets
English-language stand-up about life in Lisbon from comics who were born here or moved here. The material is exactly what expats talk about at the kitchen table: rent rising faster than salaries, dating Portuguese people, queues at public offices, the endless “amanhã” and cultural oddities on both sides. Worth going to confirm that your fight with bureaucracy is a shared genre, not a personal tragedy.
Lisboa Belém Open
📅 until 25 October
📍 CIF, Estádio Pinto Basto, Belém
💸 Free
This men’s ATP Challenger tournament on clay is celebrating its tenth year. No tickets needed: you can sit a few metres from the court and watch professional tennis for free. Friday brings the quarterfinals, including Henrique Rocha, the young Portuguese player now on the edge of the top 100, against Dane Elmer Møller. The semifinals and final follow by Sunday. The CIF club sits in Belém’s greenery, a short walk from the river.
Porto
Serralves: Névoa-Nada and the autumn shows
📅 24 and 25 October, 19:00
📍 Serralves, museum auditorium
💸 Tickets
Choreographer Gustavo Ciríaco, who has long worked between Brazil and Portugal, marks thirty years on stage with the world premiere of a solo piece, with dramaturgy by Joana Levi and music by Yaw Tembe. Come to Serralves in the morning. The museum is showing Jenny Holzer (the American artist who works with text and light) in “Wrong Answers”, and Alice Neel, portraitist of 20th-century New York. A Frank Gehry exhibition looks back at the career of the architect of the Guggenheim Bilbao. In the pink villa, Casa de Serralves, are Korean artist Lee Ufan, a founder of the Japanese Mono-ha movement, and Miró. In the park, the light installation Serralves em Luz runs in the evenings until 8 November.
Para Voz: final performance
📅 24 October, 15:00
📍 Galeria Municipal do Porto, Crystal Palace gardens
💸 Free
Algerian artist Lydia Ourahmane and her sister, composer Sarah Ourahmane, made an exhibition about voice and space: the music is written for the architecture and acoustics of this particular room and could not be performed anywhere else. On Saturday at 15:00 the piece is performed live; on Sunday the exhibition closes. A short, free and unusual experience, best followed by a walk through the Crystal Palace gardens with views of the Douro.
Festa Mundial da Animação
📅 23–25 October
📍 Sala Estúdio Perpétuo, Rua de Costa Cabral 128
💸 Free
Casa da Animação marks World Animation Day for the 25th time with a three-day festival. On Saturday at 18:00 the National Animation Award is presented; on Sunday at 11:00 there is a family screening of “Arco” (see With kids), and at 15:00 the winning films. Free and unpretentious: a look at what Portuguese animators, many of whom work for international studios, are making now.
Eat / Drink
This section rests on festivals with a guaranteed crowd: beer in a former bullring, pasta in Beato and national cuisine in Santarém. No discoveries here, but Santarém is worth the drive out of town.
Lisbon and around
A Cerveja em Lisboa
📅 23 October 17:00–02:00, 24 October 12:00–02:00, 25 October 12:00–20:00
📍 Sagres Campo Pequeno
💸 Free
More than twenty beer brands under the roof of a former bullring, from Sagres, Heineken and Guinness to Belgium’s Delirium Tremens. Every day brings street food, DJ Hugo Pena and the samba circle “O Samba é 1 Só”. On Friday DEIXA ROLÁ play, on Saturday Original Bandalheira and The Invisible Tuba, on Sunday the brass band Fanfarra Camisas Negras. Entry is free; you only pay for the branded glass, €3 for 0.33 L or €5 for half a litre. The inside of Campo Pequeno is a sight in itself, and with beer and a brass band it feels more like a street party than a tasting.
Lisbon Pasta Week and World Pasta Day
📅 until 25 October; final on 25 October in Beato
📍 Italian restaurants across Lisbon; Hub Criativo do Beato
💸 €20 menus, final from €15
Lisbon’s first pasta week. Participating restaurants, including Libertà and A’paranza, serve a fixed €20 menu of a signature pasta and a drink, plus an optional €1 for children in hospital. On Sunday, World Pasta Day, the festival moves to the Beato creative hub: an Italian market, cooking shows, a DJ and two tasting tours (12:00–16:00 and 17:30–21:00). A tour ticket is €35 for adults, €15 for children aged 5–12, or €100 for a family. One Sunday, pasta from several chefs, and a look at what the former military complex by the river has become.
World Pasta Day on October 25 closes the first Lisbon Pasta Week in Beato. Photo: Lisbon Pasta Week / 3cket
Festival Nacional de Gastronomia
📅 until 1 November, from 12:00
📍 Casa do Campino, Santarém (about an hour from Lisbon)
💸 €2.50
The 45th national food festival gathers dishes from across Portugal: stone soup, Almeirim’s sweet rice, melon pastries from Alpiarça. A new area, Taberna da Casa, serves Ribatejo petiscos at the counter like an old tavern. Chefs and food bloggers cook for the public every day, and evenings bring fado, flamenco and folk music. Entry is free on Friday until 18:00, then €2.50; at weekends it is €2.50 from opening. It stays open until 2am on Fridays and Saturdays, and under-12s go free. The simplest way to tour Portugal by plate in a single day.
Oeiras Vegan Market
📅 25 October, 11:00–17:00
📍 Jardim Municipal de Oeiras
💸 Free
Vegan food, conscious fashion, cosmetics and crafts in the Oeiras municipal garden. Lunch on the grass, a couple of purchases from small brands, then a walk along the seafront to the São Julião da Barra fort.
Get active
October belongs to running, but both main 10Ks now take entries in person only, so decide before Friday. The rest is gentle fitness, from tai chi overlooking the bay to Zumba with coloured powder.
Lisbon and around
Corrida Solidariedade APAV
📅 24 October, 10:00
📍 Alameda Keil do Amaral, Monsanto
💸 Registration
The 20th charity run for APAV (an association supporting victims of violence): 10 km through Monsanto forest at 10:00, a 5 km walk at 10:05 and a 600-metre kids’ race at 9:30. Monsanto is the best trail inside the city, with shade and climbs guaranteed, and the money goes to a good cause. You can still register in person on 23 October, 10:00–20:00, at the Xistarca office during race-pack collection.
The start of the APAV charity run in Monsanto at a previous event.
Corrida CIMPOR
📅 25 October, 10:00
📍 Alhandra, Vila Franca de Xira
💸 Registration
The sixth edition of this 10K along the Tagus starts at the cement works, with a 4 km walk and a 500-metre kids’ race at 9:30. A flat riverside course and a real shot at a personal best. Last-minute registration is possible in person on race-pack collection days.
Manhã Energética
📅 25 October, 09:00–13:00
📍 Casino Estoril gardens
💸 Free
A morning of tai chi, qigong, yoga and martial arts in the open air, ending with a sound bath. Run by the LuMan traditional Chinese medicine centre with support from Cascais council; join any part of the programme. A good start to Sunday: stretch by the sea, then stay for lunch in Estoril.
Colour Party and Zumba
📅 24 October, 10:00–12:00
📍 Casa Amarela, Centro Cultural e Juvenil de Santo Amaro, Estrada dos Álamos 402, Almada
💸 Free
First an hour of Zumba, the fitness workout to Latin music where dance moves from salsa, merengue and reggaeton replace exercises, with no experience or dance skills needed. Then an explosion of coloured powder, as at the Indian festival of Holi. Come in white, bring friends, leave multicoloured. Register in advance at juventude@cm-almada.pt with each participant’s name and age.
With kids
Halloween is creeping into children’s programmes: pumpkins and bats in a Cascais nature park, and for dinosaur fans the final weekends of the animatronics in Cacém. Porto offers little choice, but both options are very good films.
Lisbon and around
Dinosauria Experience
📅 24 and 25 October, 10:30–13:00 and 14:00–20:00
📍 next to the Atlético Clube do Cacém stadium, Cacém
💸 Details
Life-size animatronic dinosaurs that move, breathe and roar, so the very youngest may find it scary. Besides walking among the beasts there is a fossil dig, a drawing area and a quiz; allow an hour to an hour and a half. Cacém is 25 minutes from Lisbon on the Sintra train. The exhibition is open on weekends only, with a lunch break, and this is its second-to-last weekend: it closes on 1 November. A must for any child in a dinosaur phase.
Halloween pumpkin painting
📅 24 October, 10:30–15:30
📍 Quinta do Pisão, Alcabideche (Cascais)
💸 Booking
In the Cascais nature park by the Rio da Mula reservoir, Cascais Ambiente ecologists run a pumpkin-painting workshop for children over 4, ready for 31 October. Easy to combine with a picnic, a walk to see the donkeys and cows, and bat night in the evening.
Children paint pumpkins for Halloween.
Bat night
📅 24 October, 19:00–20:30
📍 Quinta do Pisão, Alcabideche (Cascais)
💸 €3
An evening walk through the nature park for children aged 6+. At dusk, Cascais Ambiente ecologists find and watch bats, explaining which species live here, why the forest needs them and why there is nothing to fear. The right activity before Halloween: real creatures of the night instead of plastic ones. Book online or at atividadesnatureza@cascaisambiente.pt.
Kids’ pasta workshop
📅 25 October, 11:00
📍 Hub Criativo do Beato
💸 €20
On the final day of Lisbon Pasta Week, children aged 6–11 learn to make pasta by hand, from dough to shape; €35 for two children. While they shape farfalle, adults can make the tasting tour (see Eat / Drink).
Porto
Arco
📅 25 October, 11:00
📍 Sala Estúdio Perpétuo, Rua de Costa Cabral 128
💸 Free
Ugo Bienvenu’s French animated film won the top prize at Annecy and was nominated for an Oscar; Natalie Portman is among its producers. Ten-year-old Arco from the year 2932 borrows his sister’s time-travel cape to see the dinosaurs but lands in 2075, where he befriends a girl named Iris. A beautiful hand-drawn story about a future that can still be saved and a friendship stronger than time. The organisers have not said whether it will be dubbed or subtitled.
The Wizard of Oz
📅 25 October, 17:00
📍 Casa do Cinema Manoel de Oliveira, Serralves
💸 Tickets
Victor Fleming’s 1939 film on the big screen: a tornado carries Dorothy to a magical land where the Scarecrow, the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion join her, pursued by the Wicked Witch of the West. A perfect first classic for a child who has never seen an old film, and a chance for you to hear “Over the Rainbow” in a cinema again. Tickets for students and young people are €3.
What else
A couple of markets, a book festival and a record fair: the classic kit for a slow Saturday. FLIFA is the highlight; the rest is simply pleasant.
Lisbon
FLIFA
📅 23–25 October (Friday from 17:00)
📍 Mercado de Arroios
💸 Free
The independent book festival at Arroios market is in its fifth year. There are more than 120 publishers, bookshops and collectives, plus readings, talks and children’s workshops, including ones based on books by Planeta Tangerina, the publisher of Portugal’s most beautiful children’s books. A good place to find a gift you won’t see at Bertrand and pick up fresh vegetables from the market stalls next door.
At the Arroios Independent Book Fair (FLIFA).
The Spot Market
📅 24 and 25 October, from 10:30
📍 Jardim das Amoreiras
💸 Free
The season’s last local design market under the trees of the Amoreiras garden, beside the old aqueduct: 53 makers with autumn clothing collections, accessories and homeware. A good place to buy something made in Lisbon.
Feira do Disco
📅 24 October, 10:00–18:00
📍 Hotel Roma, Avenida de Roma
💸 Free
A fair for vinyl, CDs and cassettes: rock, jazz, hip-hop, electronic, soul and metal. Dealers bring crates you won’t find in shops, at prices worth haggling over.
Porto
Mercado do Molhe
📅 24 October, 10:00–19:00
📍 Pérgola da Foz, Av. do Brasil 694
💸 Free
Crafts, local food and live music under the seafront colonnade in Foz. Pair it with a walk along the promenade to the lighthouse and lunch with a view of the waves.
Flea Market Porto
📅 24 October, 13:00–18:00
📍 Silo Auto, 6th–7th floors
💸 Details
A flea market on the top floors of a 1960s multi-storey car park in central Porto, where people buy, sell and swap clothes, records, crockery and everything too good to throw away. The Silo Auto roof has one of the best free views of the city. Dogs welcome.
