The main event of the week in Lisbon is Web Summit and everything around it: more than 400 events are taking place across the city, the big venues are taken by the conference, so there are almost no big-name international concerts. We picked the side events where you can finally relax rather than work, and added the best of the weekend. Because of Web Summit, this guide starts on Thursday rather than Friday: the summit’s last evening brings the week’s biggest parties.
Unwind After Web Summit
The conference ends on Thursday, but side events carry on until Sunday, with less and less business talk. A party in a Chiado palace, a day of sauna and barbecue in the forest near Mafra, plov at a villa in Cascais and an evening of community networking for remote workers.
Moon Summit: WHAT IS LOVE? at Palácio Chiado
📅 12 November, 20:00–02:00
📍 Palácio Chiado, Chiado
💸 €35, group of four €120; promo code N20 for 20% off, exclusively for Xpat.Land readers
Web Summit week closes with a party in a 1781 palace on Rua do Alecrim with painted ceilings, a grand staircase and a winged lion. This is the seventh Moon Summit by Lisbon collective WHAT IS LOVE?, and all six previous editions sold out. Downstairs is the dance floor, with Brazilian electronic duo Venga Venga, DJ and curator VLADISLOVE, Vibe Insight and Ansu. Upstairs are two cocktail bars where you can talk without shouting over the music. It’s capped at 200 guests, and no Web Summit pass is needed.
A WHAT IS LOVE? party at Palácio Chiado.
Lisbon Digital Nomads After Hours
📅 12 November, 19:00–22:00
📍 Portugal Tech Week Palace, Rua Gomes Freire 98
💸 Free, registration
An evening for remote workers and digital nomads at the palace that became the Portugal Tech Week venue for summit week. No talks or pitches: just meeting people who moved to Lisbon to work remotely and swapping stories.
Websummit Decompression at DOMA
📅 13 November, from 10:00 until evening
📍 DOMA Portugal, near Mafra
💸 €140, kids’ ticket €40, by application
A full day in the countryside at DOMA, a hotel and social club in the forest, hosted by the club and the s16 community. Morning yoga, breathwork and sport, an afternoon at the Atmos steam centre, then a barbecue dinner, a tea house with live music, poker and a DJ. There’s a kids’ programme all day for children aged five and up. The organisers ask guests to leave business at the door: people come for conversations, not sales.
Plov Party at a Villa in Cascais
📅 14 November, arrive 12:00–14:00, until 23:00
📍 Private villa in Cascais, address sent to guests
💸 €140, booking closes 12 November at 18:00
Alexander Pichugin, who has worked in IT for twenty years and founded the bone-broth brand Bò, cooks plov to the Uzbek recipe his father taught him. At a villa with a garden, pool and fireplace he fills a big kazan with lamb plov, grills meat in the evening, and the day ends with tea and sweets by the fire. Up to forty guests, mostly entrepreneurs after the summit. Bring your own spirits if you want them.
Listen
No stadium shows this time, but the smaller halls have plenty. Cat Power plays her soul album “The Greatest” in full, garage festival Barreiro Rocks returns to Barreiro after six years with Billy Childish, and on Sunday Swedish metal veterans Amon Amarth play MEO Arena.
Lisbon and around
Cat Power: “The Greatest”, 20 Years On (Misty Fest)
📅 13 November, 21:00
📍 Sagres Campo Pequeno, Campo Pequeno
💸 €30–100
Chan Marshall, aka Cat Power, started out in the 1990s with quiet, almost whispered indie rock. In 2006 she recorded the soul album “The Greatest” in Memphis with veterans of Hi Records who had played with Al Green: soft horns, a warm, weary voice, songs about bars and loneliness. It is still her best-known record. In Lisbon Marshall performs it in full, from the title track to “Lived in Bars”. She tried a similar format in 2022, when she recreated Bob Dylan’s famous 1966 concert song by song.
Cat Power (Chan Marshall) performs on stage with members of her band.
Amon Amarth, Soilwork, Orbit Culture
📅 15 November, 18:30
📍 MEO Arena, Sala Tejo, Parque das Nações
💸 €50–55
For more than thirty years, Sweden’s Amon Amarth have sung about Vikings, Odin and Ragnarök. This is melodic death metal: heavy guitars and growled vocals, but with memorable melodies the crowd sings along to. There is a longship on stage, and bearded frontman Johan Hegg drinks from a horn. The tour is called “The Allfather Awakens”. Support comes from fellow Swedes Soilwork, veterans of the national metal scene, and the younger Orbit Culture. The show is in the arena’s smaller hall, Sala Tejo, not the main one.
Barreiro Rocks 2026
📅 13 and 14 November from 21:00; 15 November, daytime
📍 ADAO and Locomotiva, Barreiro
💸 €30 per night: 13 November, 14 November; free at Locomotiva on Sunday. 16+
The garage rock festival on the south bank of the Tagus is back after a six-year break. On Friday the headliners are Switzerland’s The Monsters, the band of Reverend Beat-Man, founder of the Voodoo Rhythm label. On Saturday it’s Britain’s Billy Childish — painter, poet and author of more than a hundred records with Thee Milkshakes and Thee Headcoats, often cited by The White Stripes. Also playing: Coimbra veteran Victor Torpedo & The Pop Kids and Lisbon’s The Dirty Coal Train. On Sunday afternoon Bastardos do Cardeal and Los Santeros play for free, and DJs keep going until morning every night.
Sondre Lerche: “Acrobats”
📅 12 November, 21:30
📍 Auditório da Reitoria da Universidade NOVA, Campolide
💸 €15
Norway’s Sondre Lerche released his first album, “Faces Down”, at 19 and has been writing elegant indie pop with jazz harmonies and Beatles-style melodies ever since. Many know him from his soundtrack to “Dan in Real Life” with Steve Carell. In Lisbon he presents his new album “Acrobats” in an intimate format: voice, guitar and stories between songs. He plays Aveiro the next day.
Frazey Ford (Misty Fest)
📅 14 November, 21:30
📍 LAV – Lisboa Ao Vivo, Sala 2, Marvila
💸 €26
Canada’s Frazey Ford started out in the folk trio The Be Good Tanyas and went solo towards Southern soul: she recorded the album “Indian Ocean” with Memphis’s Hi Rhythm Section, the same studio band that played with Al Green. Ford has a trembling, drawn-out voice that’s hard to mistake and songs about love, fatigue and stubbornness. Together with Friday’s Cat Power, these are two Misty Fest soul nights in a row, both rooted in the Hi Records studio.
Marina Herlop: “Dja Dja”
📅 13 November, 21:00
📍 Culturgest, Campo Pequeno
💸 €18
Marina Herlop is a classically trained Catalan pianist who turned her voice into an instrument. She slices it, multiplies it and layers it into rhythmic patterns that recall both Indian Carnatic music and electronica. Her album “Pripyat” came out on Berlin’s PAN label and made several year-end lists, and in Lisbon she presents her new work, “Dja Dja”. Strange, hypnotic music close to early Björk.
Mais Pesados da Capital: Sam The Kid, Valete, Regula and Xeg
📅 14 November, 22:00
📍 MEO Arena, Parque das Nações
💸 €25–35, balcony seats only
Four rappers who built Portuguese hip-hop from the late 1990s share a stage as a quartet for the first time. Sam The Kid is a producer from Lisbon’s Chelas district and author of the album “Praticamente”; Valete is the most political of the four; Regula writes street chronicles; Xeg is known for his rhyming technique. The occasion is their 2010 track “Os Mais Pesados da Capital” (“The Capital’s Heavyweights”), which became an anthem of the local scene. The show is in Portuguese, and it says a lot about what Lisbon’s young people grew up on.
Porto and around
Keiyaa
📅 12 November, 22:00
📍 Radioclube Agramonte, Boavista
💸 €12
Keiyaa is a Chicago singer and producer who writes, records and mixes her own songs. Her album “Forever, Ya Girl” takes R&B and soul apart and reassembles them: jazz chords, a husky voice, broken beats and noise. Close to Solange and Erykah Badu, but noticeably more experimental.
Listen: Classical and Jazz
Jazz and classical fans get the richest weekend of all. Guimarães Jazz opens with the New York sextet Artemis, CCB marks the Miles Davis centenary on Thursday, and on Sunday the Orquestra Metropolitana plays Ravel’s “Boléro”. One caveat in the north: Casa da Música staff are on strike from 12 to 14 November.
Lisbon and around
100 Miles: Miles Davis at 100
📅 12 November, 20:00
📍 CCB, Grande Auditório, Belém
💸 €20–57
Miles Davis would have turned 100 this year, and the musicians coming to Lisbon knew him from the studio. Keyboardist Jason Miles programmed synths on Davis’s late albums “Tutu” and “Amandla”; trumpeter Randy Brecker was a central figure of 1970s jazz fusion. They are joined by saxophonist Ada Rovatti, bassist Federico Malaman and drummer Gene Lake, with Portuguese guests Rita Guerra (a pop singer who represented the country at Eurovision) and Rui Veloso (the songwriter who launched Portuguese rock in the 1980s). The programme covers every period of Davis, from modal jazz to 1980s funk.
Ravel’s “Boléro”: Orquestra Metropolitana de Lisboa
📅 15 November, 17:00 (pre-concert talk at 16:30)
📍 CCB, Grande Auditório, Belém
💸 €8–40
A Sunday programme on French Impressionism and its Portuguese echo. First, “Paraísos Artificiais” (“Artificial Paradises”) by Luís de Freitas Branco, the first Portuguese composer to take in Debussy, then Debussy’s own “La Mer”, three symphonic sketches of water and wind. After the interval comes the second suite from Ravel’s ballet “Daphnis et Chloé” and “Boléro”, which grows for fifteen minutes from a single drum pattern to a deafening finale. Chinese conductor Yue Bao leads the orchestra. Balcony seats cost €8.
Orquestra Metropolitana de Lisboa performing under the direction of its conductor.
Mário Laginha: “Retorno”, Solo Piano
📅 13 November, 21:00
📍 Centro Cultural Olga Cadaval, Sintra
💸 €10–15
Mário Laginha is a jazz pianist who has shaped the sound of Portuguese jazz for thirty years: he played in a duo with singer Maria João for decades, wrote for orchestras and worked with fado singers. “Retorno” (“Return”) is his second solo album in 19 years: his own pieces and improvisations recorded straight in the studio. After his recent work with fadista Camané, you can clearly hear fado in them.
“Cancioneiro de Elvas”: Sete Lágrimas
📅 13 November, 20:00 (talk with a musicologist at 19:30)
📍 CCB, Pequeno Auditório, Belém
💸 €20–25
The “Cancioneiro de Elvas” is a 16th-century songbook manuscript kept in the library of the border town of Elvas: love villancicos, pastorals and laments from the Age of Discovery. The early-music ensemble Sete Lágrimas (“Seven Tears”) sings them to the adufe (a square frame drum from Beira), harp, vihuela and viola da gamba. Alongside them are new songs by the ensemble’s founders, Filipe Faria and Sérgio Peixoto, set to verses from the same manuscript.
Haydn’s “Lo speziale” (“The Apothecary”): São Carlos Opera Studio
📅 13 November, 20:00; 15 November, 17:30
📍 Teatro São Luiz, Sala Luis Miguel Cintra, Chiado
💸 Free, tickets handed out at the box office one hour before, up to four per person
A comic opera by Haydn with a libretto by Goldoni: an old apothecary wants to marry his ward, and two young rivals disguise themselves as notaries and Turks to outwit him. Young soloists from the Opera Studio of the São Carlos National Theatre sing, directed by Jorge Vaz de Carvalho. It runs about an hour and a half, in Italian with Portuguese subtitles, and the plot is easy to follow without translation.
Alexei Eremine: Beethoven Sonatas
📅 14 November, 17:00
📍 Museu da Música Portuguesa – Casa Verdades de Faria, Monte Estoril
💸 Free, booking at mmp@cm-cascais.pt
Pianist Alexei Eremine, who has lived in Portugal for many years and teaches at the Metropolitana orchestra academy, has been playing all 32 Beethoven sonatas since last year; the cycle ends in 2027, the bicentenary of the composer’s death. Saturday’s concert is called “The New Path”: Sonata No. 15 (“Pastoral”), No. 16 and No. 18 (“The Hunt”), written in 1801–1802, when Beethoven was searching for a new language. It takes place in an early 20th-century mansion that houses the museum of Portuguese music, in a room with only 60 seats.
Porto and around
Guimarães Jazz 2026
📅 12–15 November (festival runs until 21 November)
📍 Centro Cultural Vila Flor, Guimarães
💸 Opening on 12 November: €20; other main-hall concerts €15: Beyond Miles, Artemis; 50% off for under-30s and over-65s
The November jazz festival in Guimarães is in its 35th edition. Thursday’s opening features Brazilian guitarist Toninho Horta with the Guimarães orchestra: Horta played on Milton Nascimento’s “Clube da Esquina”, and his soft chords are one of the signature sounds of 1970s Brazilian music. On Friday pianist Pedro Emanuel Pereira plays “Beyond Miles”, a programme for the Miles Davis centenary. On Saturday afternoon the Chicago free-jazz trio Rempis / Adasiewicz / Corsano (sax, vibraphone, drums) performs, and in the evening comes the main concert of the weekend: Artemis, a sextet of New York stars led by pianist Renee Rosnes and signed to Blue Note. Jam sessions run until 2am after the concerts.
Floresta Amazónica at Casa da Música
📅 12–15 November (festival runs until 28 November)
📍 Casa da Música, Boavista
💸 14 November: €36–40; 15 November: €26–30; talks free
Casa da Música dedicates November to the music of the Amazon. The weekend’s highlight is Saturday’s concert in the main hall, Sala Suggia: the Porto Symphony Orchestra under Michael Wendeberg plays the programme “Amazónia” with soprano Camila Mandillo and visuals by artist Bianca Dacosta. On Sunday Fafá de Belém, a Brazilian singer from Belém who has sung samba and bolero with a powerful voice since the 1970s, takes the stage, with young Zaynara opening with an electronic take on the local brega genre. Note: the Casa da Música workers’ union is on strike from 12 to 14 November, so check the venue’s website before you go.
Dance
The big night is Saturday’s Hungry4 at LX Factory: Eris Drew and Octo Octa play together, and their joint sets are known for leaving the dance floor smiling. The night before, the same venue hosts the hard techno of Berlin’s BCCO. In Porto on Saturday, Boston 168 bring acid techno to Gare.
Lisbon and around
Hungry4: Eris Drew b2b Octo Octa
📅 14 November, 20:00–04:00
📍 LX Factory, Alcântara
💸 Tickets
Eris Drew and Octo Octa are a couple from the New Hampshire woods who play together like a single organism: breakbeats, 1990s vocal house samples and rave piano, mixed with obvious joy. Both are trans artists who release on their own label, T4T LUV NRG, and their joint sets have become a symbol of queer rave. Octo Octa is known for the album “Resonant Body”, Eris Drew for “Quivering in Time”. Also playing: Ogazón, Nicolle Velcro, Octa Push and the duo Miguel Nery b2b Yen Sung. 21+.
Eris Drew and Octo Octa performing together at Intercell in Amsterdam.
BCCO: Überkikz, Mac Declos, Ketarina
📅 13 November, 20:00–04:00
📍 LX Factory, Alcântara
💸 Tickets
Berlin label and party BCCO bring their signature sound: hard, fast, functional techno with no frills. Überkikz is a French producer and co-owner of the label; Mac Declos is a Spaniard valued for sets that nod to early Chicago and Detroit. Also playing: Ketarina and Meibi b2b Taxsh. 21+.
Dorisburg (live) at Collect
📅 14 November, 17:00–02:00
📍 Collect, LX Factory, Alcântara
💸 €10
Swedish producer Dorisburg (Alexander Berkman) makes warm deep house with ambient pauses and plays it live on synths and drum machines. Benn and Amulador join him. Collect is a small club inside LX Factory with good sound; the party starts as early as 17:00.
Manfredas, Laimonas and Tiago
📅 13 November, 23:59–08:00
📍 Ministerium Club, Praça do Comércio
💸 Tickets
Lithuanian DJs Manfredas and Laimonas are known for sets where Italo disco can be followed by Indian funk and then electro. They are joined by Tiago, a long-time Lux Frágil resident. Ministerium is a club in the basement of a government ministry on Lisbon’s main square.
Loke Rahbek and Frederik Valentin
📅 14 November, 22:00 (Lisbon); 15 November, 19:00 (Porto)
📍 Galeria Zé dos Bois (ZDB), Bairro Alto; Radioclube Agramonte, Porto
💸 Lisbon €12; Porto €10
Two Danes from the Copenhagen label Posh Isolation. Loke Rahbek, known as Croatian Amor, builds music out of ambient, fragments of pop songs and noise; Frederik Valentin produced albums for Swedish rapper Yung Lean. They have recorded together since 2017, and their shows are more for listening than dancing. In Lisbon, DJs merely and Niko Demus carry on the night.
Porto and around
Boston 168 (live), 1000A, Tiago Fragateiro
📅 14 November, 23:00–06:00
📍 Gare Porto, Baixa
💸 €10
Italian duo Boston 168 brought acid techno back into fashion: their tracks, with the squealing bassline of a Roland TB-303 and a heavy kick, are played at big European techno festivals. At Gare they perform live. Gare is a techno club in the vaults by São Bento station and the genre’s main venue in Porto. 18+.
Ogazón at Plano B
📅 13 November, 23:59–06:00
📍 Plano B, Rua Cândido dos Reis 30
💸 €10
The Luxembourg-born, Berlin-based DJ plays the whole night in Porto and is on the Hungry4 line-up in Lisbon the following evening. Plano B is a multi-room club in an old building near the Clérigos tower and one of the key venues of Porto’s nightlife. 18+.
See
The highlight is the final days of LEFFEST: Kore-eda’s new film, Kelly Reichardt presenting her own work, and Buñuel’s “L’Âge d’Or” with live music. Lisbon also opens Alkantara, its festival of contemporary theatre and dance. In Porto, Serralves hosts talks on world architecture with Elizabeth Diller, co-designer of New York’s High Line.
Lisbon and around
LEFFEST 2026: Final Days
📅 12–15 November
📍 Cinema São Jorge, Medeia Nimas, NOS Vasco da Gama and other venues
💸 €3–10; São Jorge tickets on BOL, other venues on the cinemas’ websites
Producer Paulo Branco’s twentieth Lisbon Film Festival ends with directors in the room. On Thursday Kelly Reichardt presents her thriller “Night Moves”, and in the evening São Jorge screens Buñuel’s “L’Âge d’Or” with live music by saxophonist Rodrigo Amado. On Friday Reichardt is back at Nimas with “Certain Women”. On Saturday morning São Jorge shows seven Lars von Trier shorts for free, and in the evening there’s the premiere of Hirokazu Kore-eda’s new film “Sheep in the Box” and Jesse Eisenberg’s “The Debut”. On Sunday Mike Leigh talks by video link about his new film “Tender Loving Care”. Full schedule in the festival programme.
: A filmmaker Q&A with the audience at the LEFFEST Lisbon Film Festival.
Alkantara Festival: Opening Weekend
📅 14–15 November (festival runs until 29 November)
📍 Teatro Nacional D. Maria II, Rossio; CCB, Belém
💸 “Menos”: €10–18; “Save the Last Dance for Me”: €7
Lisbon’s main festival of contemporary theatre and dance opens with a farewell. The company Cão Solteiro and director André Godinho close 29 years of work with the party-performance “Menos” (“Less”): a film is shot live on stage, then, to a DJ set, all the equipment and sets are taken apart until the stage is bare (14 November at 19:00, 15 November at 16:00; in Portuguese and English with subtitles). On Saturday at 15:00 and 17:00 in the CCB foyer, Italian choreographer Alessandro Sciarroni, winner of the Venice Biennale’s Golden Lion, presents “Save the Last Dance for Me”: two men in a tight embrace dance an almost forgotten Bolognese polka. No words, 20 minutes.
Life Is the Game: A Mixed-Reality Film
📅 until 15 February 2027; MAAT open daily except Tuesday, 10:00–19:00
📍 MAAT, Belém
💸 Museum ticket plus free session booking
Paulo Furtado, who performs as The Legendary Tigerman — a blues one-man band with guitar and kick drum — has made an immersive “film poem”. Viewers put on a mixed-reality headset and travel from death to rebirth through soundscapes and spaces that shift their usual sense of self. Furtado is both director and sound designer. A session lasts about 19 minutes, groups are capped at six, minimum age 12.
Porto and around
Siza Talks: Architects from Around the World at Serralves
📅 12 November, 19:00; 13 and 14 November, 16:00–20:00
📍 Auditório do Museu de Serralves, Porto
💸 €5 per day
Annual talks on architecture in honour of Álvaro Siza, the Portuguese Pritzker Prize winner who designed the museum itself. This year’s theme is how architecture changes when it crosses borders. On Thursday Kjetil Thorsen, co-founder of Snøhetta, the firm behind the Oslo Opera House, speaks. Friday evening belongs to American Elizabeth Diller, co-designer of New York’s High Line and The Broad in Los Angeles, preceded by Spanish minimalist Alberto Campo Baeza. On Saturday, Britain’s Tony Fretton, France’s Anouk Legendre and Palestinian brothers Elias and Yousef Anastas. The talks are in English.
Dzudza: Idio Chichava
📅 13 November, 19:30
📍 Teatro Rivoli, Baixa
💸 €12
Mozambican choreographer Idio Chichava puts twelve dancers on stage. Dzudza draws on Xiquelene, Maputo’s huge street market: its noise, crush, haggling and rhythm become a collective dance in which bodies move as one crowd. No words, 1 hour 15 minutes.
Inaugurações Simultâneas: New Shows on Miguel Bombarda
📅 14 November, 16:00–20:00
📍 Rua de Miguel Bombarda, Porto
💸 Free
Several times a year, the galleries of the Miguel Bombarda quarter open new exhibitions on the same day and at the same hours. The street turns into a walk from gallery to gallery, where you can meet the artists at the openings. In one evening you can see what is happening in Porto’s contemporary art right now.
Chaplin with Live Music at Cinema Trindade
📅 12 November, 21:45
📍 Cinema Trindade, Baixa
💸 Free
Porto’s first film screening took place 130 years ago, and to mark it Cinema Trindade shows three 1917 Charlie Chaplin shorts: “The Immigrant”, “The Cure” and “Easy Street”. As in the silent era, pianist Jorge da Rocha accompanies them live. Silent film needs no translation, for children too.
Eat & Drink
Magusto season continues: roast chestnuts in Almada, on the Santos waterfront and at a Marvila brewery. For wine lovers, there’s a free festival in Vila Franca de Xira and a day of amphora wines in the Alentejo.
Lisbon and around
Xira Wine Fest 2026
📅 13 November, 18:00–24:00; 14 November, 15:00–24:00; 15 November, 15:00–20:00
📍 Pavilhão Multiusos de Vila Franca de Xira, Vila Franca de Xira
💸 Free, tasting glass €5
For the fourth time, wineries from all over Portugal, from small family estates to big producers, gather in Vila Franca’s pavilion. Entry is free: buy a glass for €5 and walk between the stands tasting wines from different regions, with the producers explaining them themselves. There’s music in the evenings.
Visitors at Xira Wine Fest wearing traditional costumes decorated with grape clusters.
Magusto in Lisbon: Musa and the Santos Waterfront
📅 13 November, 21:00 (Musa); all weekend (Santos)
📍 Musa, Marvila; Terrapleno de Santos, Santos
💸 Free: Maugusto da Musa, Magusto Fest
On Friday the Musa brewery in Marvila throws its own “Maugusto” (a pun on “mau”, “bad”): chestnuts, beer, jeropiga (a sweet fortified young wine) and karaoke hosted by rapper Mike el Nite. On the Santos waterfront, the Estrela parish runs Magusto Fest all weekend (and until 22 November): chestnuts, jeropiga, farturas (Portuguese fried dough sticks) and a small bumper-car ride for kids by the river.
Magusto no Solar
📅 14 November, 15:00–20:00
📍 Solar dos Zagallos, Sobreda, Almada
💸 Free
A municipal magusto at an 18th-century manor on the south bank of the Tagus. From 15:00 there are workshops: ceramics, nature exploration, biscuit baking; some need booking by email at solar@cm-almada.pt. Local choirs and folk groups perform into the evening, with traditional games, a charity market and roasting chestnuts.
Beyond the big cities
Amphora Wine Day 2026
📅 14 November, 14:00–19:00
📍 Herdade do Rocim, Cuba, Alentejo
💸 €28, €30.50 on the day
The Herdade do Rocim winery brings together winemakers who ferment in clay amphorae called “talha”, as the Alentejo has done since Roman times. You rarely find these wines in supermarkets. The programme includes tastings, conversations with the winemakers and Alentejo food. 18+.
Get Active
Not much, but varied: a night walk through Sintra on Friday the 13th and a chestnut run through Monsanto.
Lisbon and around
Friday the 13th: A Night Walk in Sintra
📅 13 November, 20:30
📍 Palácio Nacional de Sintra, Sintra
💸 €15
An eight-kilometre route through the town at night starts from Sintra’s National Palace: past Quinta da Regaleira with its initiation well and Seteais Palace, up to the Moorish Castle and back. The walk takes about three hours. Bring comfortable shoes, a warm jacket and a torch. 13+.
Corrida das Castanhas (Chestnut Run)
📅 14 November, 9:30 (kids’ race), 10:00 (10 and 6 km)
📍 Alameda Keil do Amaral, Monsanto
💸 Registration
An autumn race by Xistarca: the start is in Monsanto forest park, the finish at Largo da Torre do Galo in Ajuda. Choose a 10 or 6 km run or a 6 km walk; kids have a 400-metre race. At the finish there are roast chestnuts and água-pé (a light wine made from grape pomace). You can still register on race day from 8:00 to 9:00.
Participants in the 2022 Corrida das Castanhas running race on a forest trail in Monsanto Park, Lisbon.
With Kids
Two ice shows at Campo Pequeno — “The Nutcracker” and “Frozen” — a nearly wordless puppet show at the Puppet Museum, and in Porto a rock concert and an opera for the very youngest.
Lisbon and around
“The Nutcracker on Ice”
📅 14 November, 19:30
📍 Sagres Campo Pequeno, Campo Pequeno
💸 €29–89, 30% off for children under 12
Tchaikovsky’s Christmas tale is staged on ice in Portugal for the first time. Dancers from the Vienna City Ballet (Wiener Stadtballett) perform with German figure skaters and circus acrobats from Cuba and Mexico against large LED sets. The ice is synthetic, so the cast can skate, dance ballet steps and do somersaults on it. No words. It’s repeated in Estoril on 16 November.
“Frozen” on Ice
📅 14 November, 15:00 (Lisbon); 15 November, 16:00 (Porto)
📍 Sagres Campo Pequeno, Lisbon; Super Bock Arena – Pavilhão Rosa Mota, Porto
💸 Lisbon: €29–89; Porto: from €29; 30% off for children under 12
Anna, Elsa, Olaf and Kristoff move from the cartoon to the ice rink. Skaters, gymnasts, jugglers and balancing acts from the circuses of Cuba and Mexico act out both “Frozen” films, with the songs sung live in Portuguese. Kids who know the films by heart will recognise every scene.
“Zorbas”: A Puppet Show After Sepúlveda
📅 14 November, 16:00; 15 November, 11:30
📍 Museu da Marioneta, Madragoa
💸 €7.50
Based on Chilean writer Luis Sepúlveda’s “The Story of a Seagull and the Cat Who Taught Her to Fly”: the harbour cat Zorbas promises a dying seagull to raise her chick. The puppets are made from recycled materials, and the show is almost wordless, so it works in any language. 45 minutes, 6+. The Puppet Museum is in a 17th-century former convent, and its collection of puppets from around the world is worth a look before or after the show.
Porto and around
World Rock Bebé: “Rock me baby”
📅 15 November, 10:00 and 11:30
📍 Auditório Municipal de Gaia, Vila Nova de Gaia
💸 From €15 per adult with child
A sensory show for babies from six months to four years about Rocky, who grows up with rock music: each stage of his life sounds different, from rock’n’roll to hard rock. 35 minutes of light, sound and movement, during which kids can dance, crawl and make noise. A cushion by the stage costs €25, a seat €15.
Ópera para Bebés (Opera for Babies)
📅 15 November, 10:00 and 15:00
📍 Clube Fenianos Portuenses, Porto
💸 €9 per adult with child, +€5 for each additional child
An interactive opera concert for children from four months to six years at the FIATO festival. The singers perform up close, and little ones can crawl over, touch and sing along. 45 minutes in the intimate hall of an old club on Praça da Liberdade. Few places left.
What Else
Lisbon lights its first Christmas lights of the season, and museums open for free for the Ibero-American Museum Night. In the north, opera is sung right in Bolhão market, and the Golegã horse fair comes to an end.
Lisbon and around
Ibero-American Museum Night
📅 13 November, evening
📍 Museu das Comunicações, Santos; Museu Nacional da Música, Mafra; Museu Nacional do Traje, Lumiar
💸 Free
More than 80 museums in 14 countries across Spain, Portugal and Latin America have extended their hours for a week with free entry; it’s the first time Portugal takes part, and Friday is the final evening. Lisbon’s Communications Museum is open until 23:00 with tours and an audiovisual piece made with Mexico. At the National Music Museum in Mafra Palace, Brazilian duo Rudá Porang play at 21:00, and the National Costume Museum shows the installation “A Fabric That Unites Us”.
Armazéns do Chiado Christmas Lights
📅 14 November, 19:00
📍 Armazéns do Chiado, Chiado
💸 Free
The first Christmas lights in central Lisbon. The shopping centre in the former Chiado department stores, rebuilt under architect Álvaro Siza after the 1988 fire, opens the season every year with a light show on its façade. The ceremony is short; afterwards you can walk down Rua Garrett to Rossio, where the streets are starting to be decorated too.
Pensão Amor Turns 15
📅 14 and 15 November, from 17:00
📍 Pensão Amor, Cais do Sodré
💸 Free, workshops by registration
Fifteen years ago, this bar in a former brothel on Cais do Sodré’s “pink street” became a symbol of the neighbourhood’s revival. For its birthday it throws two free burlesque nights: on Saturday Charlie Bouquet performs “Madame Deficit”, on Sunday Stelios Ladas and the cabaret troupe Voix de Ville take the stage, while Inga Salomé and Tânia G perform both nights. The bar’s red velvet and frescoes are part of the show.
Porto and around
FIATO: Opera at Bolhão Market
📅 13 November, 11:00 and 16:00 (Bolhão); 14 November, 11:00 and 16:00 (ViaCatarina)
📍 Mercado do Bolhão, Baixa
💸 Free
The FIATO festival takes opera where nobody expects it. “Ópera à Moda do Porto” (“Opera, Porto-Style”) puts operatic numbers right between the stalls of the restored Bolhão market, with arias ringing out among the fish and vegetable stands and vendors and shoppers becoming part of the show. On Saturday the numbers move to the ViaCatarina shopping centre on the next street.
Beyond the big cities
Feira Nacional do Cavalo in Golegã: Finale
📅 until 15 November
📍 Golegã, Ribatejo
💸 Fair programme
The National Horse Fair in the “horse capital”: a town of three thousand people welcomes about a million visitors and three thousand horses, mostly Lusitanos, over ten days. Friday has the working equitation final and an evening honouring cavaleiro (mounted bullfighter) Vítor Ribeiro, who has performed for 58 years. Saturday brings the driving (carriage) finals and the fair’s awards. The fair closes on Sunday. Chestnuts are roasting and água-pé is poured on every corner.
