Our picks for the best things to do in Bangkok this weekend

Bangkok welcomes 2026 with a knowing wink as Muse Anime Festival sets up at JAM SPACE, a familiar meeting point for pop culture devotees. This is less trade fair, more shared obsession. Fourteen anime titles spread across 17 photo zones turn fandom into a walk-through experience, complete with oversized sets and scenes designed for lingering rather than rushing. Expect towering inflatables of Momo and Okarun from DAN DA DAN plus Rimuru, the eternally cheerful slime, looming large for cameras. Beyond the visuals, shelves fill with officially licensed pieces and harder-to-find imports, tempting even the disciplined collector. Food gets its own moment too, thanks to a themed cafe riffing on SPY x FAMILY and That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime.    January 10-March 29. Free. 4/F, MBK Centre, 11am-9pm

The owners of Why Not are also behind the second edition of the Hua Hin Racer Marina Jazz Festival, which will be held south of Hua Hin in Pranburi on January 10. ‘It’s an amazing venue, the marina is located between the river, the mountains and sea,’ says Eliot Nielsen, who organised the festival last year with his wife Surassawadee Phumbua and Philippe Oursel. This year’s event begins at 4pm with the Swing Mother Funky Quintet and concludes with a fire show finale, finishing at 11pm. ‘I’ve worked on festivals in Nice in the south of France, where I come from, so I’m experienced at organising events. The vision is to have a community concert, with art events, games, food trucks, as well as quality wine and jazz of course,’ he says, adding, ‘Last year we had 500 people, this year we’re hoping for 700.’ January 10 2026. B500 at the door. Hua Hin Racer Marina, 4pm-11pm

Hope has a strange way of finding you when you least expect it, usually while you’re still adjusting your fringe in a mirrored wall. This exhibition leans into that feeling, pairing Vivaldi’s Four Seasons with digital worlds that nudge you towards a lighter mood. The guide is Blossom Bloo, a soft-glowing creature with its loyal Seed, both drifting through scenes that chart the rhythms of a life lived in four chapters. The route begins at The Flower Shop, where you design a tiny seed that reappears later as part of a vast installation. Summer stretches out in a field of towering blooms, autumn follows with a golden oak shedding leaves that respond to your steps, then winter quietens everything with pale light and drifting snow. Spring closes the journey with a sweep of colour that feels a bit like exhaling after holding your breath too long.   Until March 10 2026. B450-990 via here. 6/F, Iconsiam, 10.30am-9pm

Czech contemporary art gets a brief, welcome stretch in Bangkok with the return of Jan Bican. Known for treating streets, bodies and public space as his canvas, he brings new works that feel quietly confrontational without raising their voice. Light plays a central role, cutting through shadows and reflections, asking you to slow down and actually look. Bican’s pieces often sit between opposing ideas: exposure and privacy, intimacy and distance, softness and control. That tension gives the work its emotional charge. Seen far from its European context, the effect sharpens rather than softens. You notice how easily the themes travel, how little translation they need. It invites wandering, second glances and the occasional pause mid-step, which might be the point.   January 3-28. Free. Vanich House Bangkok, 10.30am-6pm

Sunday nights take a different shape when a dance floor fills with 140 to 180 bodies moving for the same reason. It starts earlier with free workshops split between beginners and open level, easing everyone onto the same rhythm before the lights drop. By the time special guests step up, the room feels loose, confident and ready to keep going. Not everyone needs to dance all evening. A free chill area sits nearby for friends, spectators and anyone catching their breath. Professional cameras quietly document the night without getting in the way, while generous fans keep things bearable when the floor heats up. Complimentary parking at the Sheraton helps too. It feels organised without being stiff, sociable without trying too hard. A weekly ritual that knows how to balance movement, rest and the pleasure of staying out later than planned.   Every Sunday. B300-400 at the door. amBar Bangkok, 8pm onwards

Salin Cheewapansri’s story bends away from the expected. Raised in Thailand, she left for North America at 20 with a suitcase and a stubborn sense of direction, landing within Canada’s jazz circles as a drummer, producer and songwriter. You might recognise her from that KEXP session, seated behind the kit in traditional Thai dress, tradition and modern rhythm sharing the same frame. Early 2025 marked a homecoming, when she stepped back onto Bangkok stages during Design Week and quietly stole attention. Since releasing her album, she has taken the music across the US and Europe, returning with Rammana, a new project folding afro-jazz, funk and Thai folk together. The result feels personal without trying too hard, which perhaps explains her nod as a CBC 2025 Revelation Artist.   January 9. B1,500-1,800 via here. Lido Connect, 7pm

(In)visible Presence opens Dib Bangkok with a quiet confidence. Think a painted gust of wind, music shaped by half-remembered summers and the soft trace of herbal medicine lingering longer than expected. The show asks how we hold on to what matters when it cannot be seen, while also nodding to the many people, some now gone, who helped turn this museum from idea to place. Drawn from a collection built across three decades and widened through fresh collaborations, the exhibition gathers 81 works by 40 contemporary artists, several new to Thailand. Sound, scent and light do much of the talking. Across three floors, everyday materials shift, memories blur and imagination fills the gaps. A special focus on Montien Boonma closes the journey, offering space for reflection, healing and a slower way of looking. December 21-August 3 2026. B150-700 via here. Dib Bangkok, 10am-6pm

At this exhibition, the first section turns its attention to Korea’s Demilitarised Zone, a strip of land that has carried the weight of an unfinished war since the armistice paused the conflict in 1953. Spread across 248km, with two narrow bands flanking the Military Demarcation Line, it has remained largely untouched for about 70 years. The exhibition doesn’t retell history as much as reframe it, pairing archival echoes with scenes shaped by nature’s quiet resilience. With people kept out, the land has healed in its own stubborn way, giving rise to wetlands, wildflowers and animals that rarely appear elsewhere. What you get is a portrait of a place suspended between past and renewal, still holding its breath yet defiantly alive.   Until February 22 2026. Free. 7/F, Bangkok Art and Culture Centre, 10am-8pm

If you should find yourself feeling all jazzed out, head over to Soi 88 for a cold beer instead. Woodstock Bar is a watering hole where you can experience another pillar of Americana roots music, the blues. Nightly jam sessions riffing on the classic 12-bar template are led by bar-owner and local guitar hero Ped Bluesman, with his band, The Blues Cats.     Everynight. Free. Woodstock Bar, 4pm-midnight 

Som Supaparinya’s latest solo exhibition, shaped with curator Gridthiya Gaweewong, feels like stepping into a quiet argument about who gets to record the past. Part of the Han Nefkens Foundation, Southeast Asian Video Art Production Grant 2024 in memory of Dinh Q Lê, the new commission sits beside a reworked version of her earlier installation Paradise of the Blind. The older piece still carries its spark, using archival fragments, censorship records and once-forbidden titles to sketch a region that edits itself as often as it remembers. Seen together, the works raise questions about the cost of progress and the uneasy conversation between power, memory and the natural world. December 4-March 29 2026. B50. Gallery 1-2, The Jim Thompson Art Center, 10am-6pm