What to do this weekend: Berlin's best events

Friday

African Acid Is The Future

Following the hugely successful unBlock party in June, African Acid Is The Future returns to 90mil, recharged and ready to drench us in acidic sounds. For this incarnation, resident DJs Maryisonacid, Dauwd, Oscar Atanga, Leone Knight and Joe Mill are joined by two special guests from Abidjan, bringing Asna and Seny.D into the fold. Expect rich rhythms, unexpected turns and hypnotic bass that keeps bouncing well into the early hours.

90mil (check link for address) details

The World Looks Back

The ruins of a medieval abbey are a strange enough sight in the middle of Berlin, and they should make an excellent backdrop to The World Looks Back, a free short-film programme curated by Canan Turan. The featured films explore protest and resistance from black, feminist, Indigenous and diasporic perspectives, with works by Andrés Khamis and Caroline Monnet. If that wasn’t enough, it’s also totally free.

Klosterruine Berlin, Klosterstr. 73a 10179 Berlin details

What If Berlin – The Ringbahn as a Stage for 27 Forgotten Visions of the Future

For Berliner Festspiele’s 75th anniversary, Japanese artist Akira Takayama takes audiences on six guided tours around the Ringbahn, uncovering Berlin’s unrealised architectural and artistic visions. Over four weekends, 27 stations become stops on a journey through forgotten plans for the city’s future, asking what ideas from the past might still be worth making real. Tours are in German and English and start at three different S-Bahn stations.

Various start locations and times details

Saturday

Long Night of The Museums

If you’ve always had dreams of hanging out in museums after dark or get annoyed that venues close at 8pm, then this long night is your chance to enjoy Berlin’s museums in a time frame that suits you. Seventy-five museums will be open until 2am, which is perfect for any night owl. In Berlin, you can visit the Anne Frank Centre, Berlinische Galerie and the Schwules Museum, among many others.

Various locations details

MONUMENTO

Drawing on his rural upbringing in southern Chile and the displaced ways of thinking during the German colonisation of Latin America, MONUMENTO is dancer and choreographer Felipe Fizkal’s memorial to a precolonial existence. Through dance, song and an epic stage set, Fizkal interweaves materials that embody memories, knowledge and cultural perceptions. Cumbia and peasant songs will also be part of the performance in order to reflect the contemporary working class experience.

DOCK11, Kastanienallee 79, 10435 Berlin details

MELISMA – Interlude

This gathering brings performances, live music and DJs together for a night of artistic cross-pollination. Having previously created large scale events at Mahalla, the collective reconvene in Monopol for a slightly more intimate affair. Expect performances by Carmen Lafran, Marie Leone, Jean Sorg and live sets from XIVIS, Manu Ela and El Inti, plus DJs Elo and Darcy Mahady. Add an exhibition of work by Bruno Santos and you’ve got a full evening of insane artistic vision.

Monopol, Provinzstraße 40-44, 13409 Berlin details

Sunday

Arkaoda (Last call)

Tonight marks the final night of Arkaoda, bringing nearly nine years of music, culture, nightlife and community to a close. The final month has been packed with artists, DJs, collectives and friends returning for a farewell programme of music, gatherings and collaborations. So this is it. Come raise a glass, hit the dance floor and give this Berlin institution the send-off it deserves.

Arkaoda, Karl-Marx Platz 16, 12043 Berlin details

Balkan Erotic Epic – last chance

Today is the final day of Marina Abramović’s Balkan Erotic Epic: The Exhibition, a show the grande dame of performance art herself has called “the most ambitious of my career”. At 79, it could also be one of her last. So if you fancy seeing erotically charged men humping the earth, women baring their breasts to the elements and a performer recreating ‘Nude with Skeleton (2002)’, this is your last chance.

Gropius Bau, Niederkirchnerstraße 7, 10963 Berlin details

Elle & L’s Festival

The first international, women-focused music festival is landing in Berlin, bringing two days of gigs and DJ sets across three indoor and outdoor stages. Expect everything from hip-hop, R&B and Afrobeats to Amapiano, drum’n’bass, Latin and alt-pop, alongside food trucks, chill-out zones, female-founded brands and a hidden garden. It’s all about amplifying women’s artistry, bringing people together and, naturally, having a femme-tastic time.