Amazing things to do in Madrid in August

Madrid is immense, even when it is in the opposite direction. While many are packing their luggage to escape to coastal Spain, the city is finalizing the details to welcome the month of leisure in its own right: August. For 31 days, Madrid exudes a purer air, an exceptional silence, a halo of tranquility and, above all, because the summer inactivity is just a mirage: the August plans in Madrid are a refreshing reality and for all audiences. We have come here to have a (very) good time.

KALORAMA Madrid (from August 29 to 31)

If we like to premiere an outfit, how can we not like to premiere a whole festival in the capital. KALORAMA Madrid lands this August for the first time with a lineup that shines. Names like Massive Attack, Peggy Gou, LCD Soundsystem, Postal Service, Death Cab For Cutie, The Prodigy, Nation of Language, Jungle, The Kills, Yves Tumor, Yard Act headline billboards and banners.

It will be held at the IFEMA Madrid Fairgrounds, closing the month of August as who puts the icing on the banana split.

📍 IFEMA Madrid. Av. del Partenón, 5 (Barajas)

💸 155 € voucher. Day ticket 75 €. 

Exhibition Berlin Wall. A divided world.  (all month)

20 meters from the Berlin Wall and hundreds of original objects are exhibited at the Canal Foundation as unpublished testimonies of what happened on both sides of the wall.

This is the first major traveling exhibition to explore the history of the wall, an immersive experience that takes visitors on an immersive tour that explains this symbol of the Cold War from its construction to its demolition.

📍 Sala Castellana 214 (Fundación Canal), Paseo de la Castellana 214.

💸 General admission ticket 15,80 €

Hidden Spain (through August 18)

The real hidden Spain has little to do with Marian apparitions, paranormal phenomena and other ghosts. It has to do with the omitted reality, for decades, of the Spanish countryside. An atavistic, hard, tough reality , full of traditions and rituals (some of which are still preserved today) that this exhibition summarizes in 145 photographs by the great Cristina García Rodero.

An exhibition that portrays the religious and folkloric celebrations of the forgotten Spain, full of mythical characters, rituals, ceremonies but, above all, lifestyles. Rodero herself said about this year of work, road and blanket that resulted in  Hidden Spain: “I tried to photograph the mysterious, true and magical soul of popular Spain, with its passion, love, humor, tenderness, anger, pain, with its truth; and the most intense and full moments in the lives of the characters, as simple as irresistible, with all their inner strength, in a personal challenge that gave me strength and understanding and in which I invested all my heart.”

📍 Círculo de Bellas Artes: Calle de Alcalá, 42 (Downtown)

The popular festivities in August (all month)

Prepare the carnation, the sandal and the sprayer, we are going to a popular festival. August gives no rest: there are many saints to honor, many hens to taste.

We start celebrating San Cayetano in Lavapiés, from 6 to 9, with shawls decorating the streets and activities that will invade the neighborhood being the Vara del Rey square the epicenter where concerts will be held. We continue in the same neighborhood to dance for San Lorenzo (from August 10 to 13) in the squares of Nelson Mandela, Cabestreros and Arturo Barea. And the popular festivities end with the Virgen de la Paloma from August 14 to 17 in the Carrera de San Francisco and in the Plaza de los Carros (with concerts in the Vistillas, as usual).

📍 Different locations in Lavapiés and La Latina.

Field Rationalism (all month)

Perhaps, in some trip through the peninsula, you have passed through whitewashed villages, with low houses, with its church of visible bell tower formed in a very high tower that stands out from any point of the village. Perhaps, as you pass through these locations you will notice that they seem to be diluted with each other as they are so similar…

Villafranco de Guadalhorce, Valdelacalzada, Torrefresneda, Sotogordo. .. are some of those almost 300 villages, the so-called “colonization villages” built between 1945 and 1970 with the aim of repopulating places close to the Spanish watersheds. This exhibition (located in the COAM, which can be visited from Monday to Friday from 09.00 to 20.00h) is a tour of these villages through the photographic work of José Manuel Juan Soto, the hunter of the rationalist style of our country.

📍 Mercadal Hall of COAM: Hortaleza, 63 (Chueca)

San Lorenzo Festival (all month)

Thirteen dance, flamenco and opera performances will take place at the Teatro Auditorio de San Lorenzo del Escorial and at the Teatro La Antigua Mina de Zarzalejo: throughout the month, the soundtrack of this town in Madrid will mutate from the celebration of the 200th anniversary of Beethoven’ s Ninth Symphony to the flamenco piano (exactly, flamenco piano) of Dorantes or an evening of zarzuela by the Atlántida Chamber Orchestra. Check here the complete Program.

Theater Auditorium of San Lorenzo de El Escorial and the Theater La Antigua Mina de Zarzalejo (San Lorenzo del Escorial)

Janus. Half a century of posters and illustration (all month)

Francisco Fernández-Zarza Pérez, better known as Jano, was one of the great Spanish illustrators of the second half of the 20th century. Now, an exhibition compiles the most striking of his career (the posters for films such as ¡Bienvenido, Mister Marshall!, Esa pareja feliz, Atraco a las 3 or the incredible versions of Gilda, with Rita Hayworth and Glenn Ford or Mogambo).

This exhibition also collects book covers, illustrations, vignettes… many of them about the Madrid of his childhood. You will find it in the Complejo el Águila, inside the exhibition hall of the Regional Library of Madrid ‘Joaquín Leguina’.

Ramírez de Prado Street, 3 (Delicias)

Wet Sounds – PlutonOvarian + Suso Saiz (August 8 & 9)

We have a pool, we have music: we have Liquid Sounds. This project, as part of the very intense and spectacular Program of Veranos de la Villa will turn the swimming pool of the Casa de Campo Municipal Sports Center into an artistic performance.

Thanks to a submerged sound equipment, PlutonOvarian (specialized in experimental sounds) and Suso Saiz (great national exponent in ambient music) will generate an artistic space underwater. Snorkel and goggles are recommended.

Paseo de la Puerta del Ángel (Casa de Campo)

Madrid 1960s. Alcoba’s look (throughout the month)

This free exhibition is a photographic portrait of Madrid in the 1960s. A city captured with the camera of the visual chronicler Antonio Alcoba who, from the Museum of History of Madrid, captures moments of streets full of life and in full transformation.

78 Fuencarral Street, Malasaña (Malasaña)

On the table. Semiotics of food (all month)

Exacerbated consumption, the desire for speed and immediacy, characteristic of the times in which we live, also affect food and nutrition. This is a major issue that affects the household but also the city and, in a macroeconomic way, the distribution of poverty. This is what popularizers such as Carolyn Steel study, who in her books Hungry Cities y Sitopia asks how the food industry has changed our cities or whether we take food for granted in industrialized countries, among many other unknowns.

This is also what we will see in this exhibition at the Queen Sofia of the artist Martha Rosler (which we can enjoy until September 20). This exhibition reflects on a “productive scheme that prioritizes the exploitation of the land and living beings, subordinating technological development to the capitalist system, without considering the equitable distribution of what is produced or its environmental impact”.

Calle de Santa Isabel, 52 (Embajadores)

San Lorenzo Festival (all month)

The Perseids, also known as “tears of San Lorenzo”, are the leitmotiv of this Festival held in San Lorenzo de El Escorial throughout the month of August: a rain of stars, literally, of the Spanish artistic scene that come to the Auditorio Teatro de San Lorenzo de El Escorial.  You can check here for the complete Program.

Felipe II Park (San Lorenzo de El Escorial)

Good Night 2024 (until August 24)

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The Cervantes Square in the town of Hoyo de Manzanares becomes a great stage during the month of August. Its performing arts festival, which kicked off on July 13, will continue until July 24 with dance, opera, humor, theater and even tango! You can consult here the complete Program.

Cervantes Square (Hoyo de Manzanares)

Visit the gardens of the Palacio de Liria (all month)

August, empty city, barren streets, fan in the living room and the calm… It’s the perfect time to do all that, which normally requires a lot of forethought or patience waiting in a long line. The Liria Palace opens during the summer its doors to the gardens, with visits lasting about 90 minutes from  Tuesday to Sunday the month of August (in selected shifts throughout the day).

Calle de la Princesa, 20 (Plaza de España)

Refuge in culture (August 8 and 27)

A la fresca, yes. But inside the city’s large cultural containers. Take refuge in culture is an initiative of the Community of Madrid for this summer 2024 with a series of interventions in museums, galleries and art spaces in the city.

Thus, the Museum of the History of Madrid, in addition to its usual exhibitions on the urban life of the city (from the sixteenth century to the early twentieth century), will host on August 8 and 27 and in the warmer hours (from 16.00 to 17.0h) a live humor show (a monologue by actor and comedian Sergio Pazos).

Calle de Fuencarral, 78 (Malasaña)

The Veranos de la Villa’s surprise concert (August 18)

A classic of Madrid’s summers: the cultural activities of the Veranos de la Villa that fill the city’s neighborhoods, institutions and museums with a lot of life and fun in the face of the crushing heat. Exhibitions, summer cinemas, concerts, workshops…

The Program is intense and does not stop in August. Among so many dates, we are left with the live musical performances held at the Centro Cultural Conde Duque or the Cine Caliente del Parque de la Bombilla .

However. As has become a tradition, the Veranos de la Villa generate great expectation on a day… It will be next Sunday, August 18, when the name of the protagonist, the protagonist or protagonists of the highly anticipated secret concert will be known. A magical and WOW effect way to end the summer. Tickets can be purchased at free download from August 12 at 12:00 noon onwards and we will only get to know the artist once he makes his appearance on stage…

📍 Calle del Conde Duque, 11 (Conde Duque)

why we do what we do (all month long)

Why? Seriously, why? What automatisms are installed in our brains so that we don’t think about what we do, why we do it, driven by what inner demon? The artist Filip Custic intervenes on the walls of the Cerralbo Museum.

He does it with his “neo-baroque compositions, detailed and full of data that intoxicate the rooms while respectfully camouflaged among the story of the space”, as indicated by PHotoESPAÑA. The custic works will intermingle with the baroque mansion taking it into the future from an architecture of the past.

Ventura Rodríguez, 17 (Plaza de España)

Madrid on the screen (all month)

That Madrid is a great stage is known to everyone who thinks of Carmen Maura’s gushing and “laugh at me” in Conde Duque; or that Santiago Segura (“You’re satanic, right?” “Yes, sir, and from Carabanchel!”) clutching the Schweppes sign. And taking advantage of the summer, the Community launches a series  “Madrid on the screen” for moviegoers to indulge in the most Madrid movies walking through the scenarios in which they were filmed. Five guided routes through Concha Velasco’s Madrid, Almodóvar’s Madrid, the Landscape of Light, Spanish Hollywood or the series. Check here for days and times.

Various locations.

Faunia Shines (all month)

This August, the nature park Faunia opens in the evenings (from 21.00h) showing the magic hidden in nature in the form of glowing figures with LED lights.

More than 200 structures (made of metal and paper with a millenary technique) show splendorous bright colors in peacocks, octopuses, crocodiles, flamingos… that flood the park turning it into a magical environment. In addition, the sound environment will lead us to discover the secrets of the nights among howls, the hooting of owls…

It will also open its terrace at night to rest and have a drink between strolls through its more than 16 hectares.

Avenida de las Comunidades, 28 (Vicálvaro)

General admission ticket (from 8 years old), 19,90 €; reduced ticket, 15,90 €. 

Consuelo Kanaga. Catch the spirit (until August 25)

Among all the photography exhibitions that flood the city on the occasion of PHotoESPAÑA, we highlight the last days of Consuelo Kanaga’s retrospective exhibition, which will close its doors at the end of August. Kanaga’s photographs challenge us and propose, in more than 180 pieces, the harshness of racial harassment and inequality of the African-American population in the United States.

Paseo de Recoletos, 23 (Jerónimos)

Cinema thinks cinema (different dates)

did you know that the Reina Sofia Museum of Contemporary Art has its own summer cinema? In the garden of the Sabatini building you will find this great little space for movie buffs. During the summer, the museum coordinates the film series “cinema thinks cinema”, that is, a compendium of titles that reflect on the film medium itself. Here you can view the Program.

Calle Santa Isabel, 52 (Atocha)

Summer in the park (all month)

In July, the Community of Madrid launched another free summer cultural initiative: Veranos en el parque. And with the success of the new initiative, in August the Santander park will continue to program film screenings in its open-air cinema as well as theatrical performances.

Santander Park (Paseo de San Francisco de Sales, 39)

Summer Scenes Festival (all month)

Because in the summer, the best thing to do is to take a good nap during the hottest hours of the day and then wake up and wake up with the help of culture. And in any corner of Madrid, not only in the city. That is why the Summer Scenes Festival comes to occupy the squares of the region with dance, theater, cinema, circus…

The Casa Museo Lope de Vega, the Sala Alcalá 31 (among others) but also Nuevo Baztán, Alcalá de Henares, Manzanares El Real. .. present workshops, shows and art in abundance. Check here for the complete Program. We recommend the comedy ‘OhLimpiadas’ by the company La Sincro or the guided visits to the Picasso Museum in Buitrago de Lozoya.

📍 Different locations

Summers of the Village 2024 (all month)

The Veranos de la Villa are the unmissable event of the summer in the capital. With workshops, concerts, exhibitions and screenings, Madrid stays alive and awake, ready to survive the heat.

Most of the activities are free or with prices starting at 6€ and for all audiences. Theater at Circo Price, open-air concerts at Conde Duque, ‘Cine Caliente’ cycles at Parque de la Bombilla… Don’t miss anything by consulting the program on its website.

In addition, this year Madrid and Japan, as guest country, converge in the Veranos de la Villa 2024, celebrating cultural diversity with several exhibitions such as Kimono: Changing identity, Exkopon or Kinpaku: Nature, power and imagination in Japanese art  at Espacio Cultural Serrería Belga.

Different locations

More pools (natural)

That we love the swimming pools in the Community of Madrid is a fact: so necessary, so refreshing, so neighborhood. But we are passionate about natural pools. .. that’s a fact. Fortunately, the prevailing nature on the outskirts of Madrid, leaves room for a number of oases of peace and bathing as Las Presillas, the well-known reservoir of San Juan, the natural pools of Cercedilla or Hoya Encavera de Lozoya. You choose.

📍 Different locations

Candlelight, candlelight concerts (all month)

August is lived in the evenings, when the sun goes down, the breeze appears more or less timidly and the Candlelight candles light up the air the city’s most amazing scenery (from the Círculo de Bellas Artes to the Wellington Hotel and from the German-speaking evangelical church to the Four Seasons). In August, the music will range from Vivaldi to Mozart, Coldplay, Bad Bunny or The Beatles, Hans Zimmer’s soundtracks and flamenco Tributes to Camarón, Morente and Lola Flores.

Different locations

Tickets: starting at 15 €

Riosequillo: one of the largest swimming pools in Spain

The Riosequillo pool is located in Buitrago de Lozoya (just 70 kilometers from the center of Madrid) and is one of the largest pools in the country. It can hold up to 2000 people and will be open all month long from Tuesday to Sunday with a price of 9€ for adults and 6€ for children. On weekends it costs 13€ for adults and 9€ for children.

📍 A1, Km. 74, Buitrago del Lozoya

St. Lawrence Night Perseids (with more activity around August 12th)

The tears of San Lorenzo are one of the astronomical milestones of the year. This is the most important meteor shower of the year, since under excellent visibility conditions and without light pollution, between 50 and 100 meteors can be observed per hour. This year, the maximum, the peak (according to calculations by the National Astronomical Observatory) will be on August 12 between 15:00 and 18:00 hours.

📍 Location: Madrid skyline

The most refreshing waterfalls in Madrid

From the Chorrera de los Litueros in Somosierra (which tops the list of the coolest villages in Madrid) to the Purgatorio waterfall in Rascafría or the beautiful Pradillo reservoir. August looks like the perfect month to escape to nature and look for those places that make us happy after a short walk or trek. Do you dare?

📍 Different locations

Summer Cinemas (all month)

To (over)live the Madrid summer, who does not have a pool or, failing that, friends with a pool, it is best to wait for nightfall and go out in search of the stars of the best summer cinemas in Madrid. This year, the open-air screens are back to refresh the sultry nights, from the alternative sessions of CinePlaza Matadero to the big hits of Parque de la Bombilla and its Fescinal or the Cine Caliente (commented by different personalities) to the vintage experience of Autocine Madrid with a program prepared for the whole family. And much more.

📍 Different locations 

Madrid’s sky: its best rooftops

Rooftops, rooftops, terraces… It doesn’t matter what you call them: they are the desire of Madrid as they allow us to brush with the tips of our fingers those sunsets of which we boast so much the neighbors of Madrid. In addition, in many of them, parties, concerts, brunches, cocktail evenings with live music… are held.  And you, which one will you sign up for?

📍 Various locations