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

As AI settles deeper into everyday routines and the shape of work keeps shifting, ThinkFest 2026 leans into a quieter question: what kind of life still feels worth building? Under the theme ‘Everybody Changes’, the festival turns Ari into a walkable circuit of talks, workshops, exhibitions and live performancves spread across neighbourhood venues. The format works best when you don’t overplan it. Start near Ari BTS Exit 3, follow whichever crowd of soundtrack catches your attention and let the day unfold from there. Collaborators including Loveis Entertainment, What The Duck and Pantang Artwork bring their own energy into the mix, keeping the route varied without feeling overly programmed. May 29-31. Free entry. Register via here. Across Ari. 1pm-10pm

Before anything else, a bit of homegrown pride takes centre stage. Bangkok Pride Festival returns under the theme ‘Patch the World with Pride’, with a parade stretching 4.8 kilometres from Chong Nonsi to Rama I. Expect a 300-metre rainbow flag rolling across Silom Road, longer than any previous year and impossible to miss. At Suphachalasai Stadium, Rabiab Wathasin brings mor lam to the Pride Stage, grounding the celebration in local culture while reflecting LGBTQ+ stories of resilience. Alongside it, Drag Bangkok Festival and Thailand's Drag Star raise the stakes for the city’s drag scene. Dress up if you want to be seen, but keep the history in mind. May 31. Free. Chong Nonsi Canal Park (Silom Road). 3pm

Bangkok’s picnic crowd gets a proper excuse to stretch out on the grass when Happitat teams up with GROUNDCONTROL for a laid-back lifestyle festival in the middle of Bangna’s greenery. Think picnic blankets, slow afternoons and more than 80 vendors selling crafts, fashion, snacks and drinks, all spread across a wide open lawn designed for lingering. Art workshops and interactive activities run throughout the weekend, while a towering mushroom installation rising more than four metres above the grounds is almost guaranteed to dominate everyone’s camera roll. Visitors can also wander through the flower-filled ‘Fairy Circle’ experience inside Lumis Theater Hall, with live music and pet-friendly spaces helping the whole thing settle into an easy weekend rhythm. May 30-31. Free entry. Happitat at The Forestias. 10am-7pm

MunMun Srinakarin opens MMAD Gallery with six exhibitions from the first artists selected through the MMADness is Calling project, giving emerging names space to experiment across installation, sculpture, sound and textiles. Psyche and Flesh turns suffering and memory into tactile forms, while Upper’s What Lies on Top of the Mountain pairs animation, towering canvases and atmospheric audio to unpack the awkward quiet after intimacy. Elsewhere, Jhanyar’s 24/7 Objects reframes Bangkok’s pavements and everyday clutter with a sharply observant eye for city life. Steam Stream drifts through water and rice fields, Sunburn The Kid reconstructs discarded fabric into new textile works and Fish Are Friends introduces scrap-metal fish puppets for anyone carrying around a little low-level loneliness. May 7-June 21. Free. MMAD GALLERY. 11am-7pm

Northern Thailand arrives in Bangkok for a weekend at Nerb Nerb Market, a relaxed gathering organised by craftspeople and independent makers from Phrae Province. Making its first pop-up appearance in the capital, the event brings together more than 26 vendors selling handmade goods, community products and small-batch creations shaped by the slower pace of life up north. Expect woven crafts, thoughtful design pieces and locally sourced drinks alongside comforting food from Kham Pa, the northern Thai restaurant known for hearty dishes that remind plenty of diners of home. May 29-31. Free entry. PA PRANK. 11am-8pm

An entire Akha house now stands in the middle of Bangkok, carefully dismantled from a village in northern Thailand and rebuilt piece by piece inside an art gallery. Roof panels, woven bedding, timber floors and weathered household objects all carry marks of the people who once lived among them, quietly tracing a way of life that grows more fragile with each passing generation. The Akha are an Indigenous ethnic group whose communities are spread across the mountains of northern Thailand, Myanmar, Laos and southern China, known for their intricate textiles, spiritual rituals and deep connection to land and ancestry. In recent decades, migration, tourism and rapid development have reshaped many of those traditions. Through memory, craftsmanship and personal histories, The Preservation of Fire by Busui Ajaw keeps those stories alive a little longer. May 15-November 1. Free entry. Bangkok Kunsthalle. 2pm-8pm

Bangkok Kunsthalle welcomes Brooklyn-based Thai collective Elekhlekha as its latest artists-in-residence, turning the space into a constantly shifting laboratory for sound, storytelling and live visual experimentation. Running across two months, the residency unfolds through research sessions, performances and collaborative installations. One standout arrives with Lomwong, an open-studio collaboration featuring Thai musicians and artists working inside immersive surround sound, moving floor projections and a Yamaha Disklavier piano sitting directly at the centre of the room. May 23, 31, June 13 and 20. Free. Bangkok Kunsthalle. 1pm-4pm

After winning over Thai fans at Summer Sonic 2024, Laufey confirms her first solo show here with Laufey: A Matter of Time Tour in Bangkok. A solid return, all things considered. She blends jazz, classical and contemporary pop with carefully arranged melodies and lyrics that stay with you long after the final note. The tour follows her win at the 68th Annual Grammy Awards, where A Matter of Time takes Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album. Produced by Spencer Stewart and Aaron Dessner, the record refines her sound with a sharper emotional edge. With over 4.25 billion Spotify streams, Billboard chart highs, Forbes 30 Under 30 and TIME Women of the Year, she’s clearly operating well beyond niche status. May 31. B1,800-4,300 via here. Impact Arena. 7pm

Factories, pipelines and scarred coastlines sit at the centre of this striking photography exhibition by Sukrit Patjuntadusit, which examines the environmental cost carried by Rayong Province. Human presence lingers quietly throughout the series, whether through industrial structures, contaminated water or damaged landscapes altered over time. What sets the show apart is Sukrit’s use of the ‘film soup’ technique. Wastewater gathered from real industrial sites becomes part of the film development process itself, allowing chemicals to stain, corrode and warp the negatives. Pollution doesn’t simply appear as subject matter here – it physically reshapes the photographs. A free documentary screening and discussion session also takes place on Saturday June 6 from 1pm to 3pm. Now-June 23. Free entry. 2/F, Fotoclub BKK. 11am-8pm

First staged in Cheongju Craft Biennale, this group exhibition arrives in Bangkok following a debut as the Invited Country Pavilion in Cheongju, South Korea. The project grows from an ongoing exchange between Thailand and the Republic of Korea, setting craft alongside contemporary art across Southeast and East Asia. At its core sits ‘Elastic Time’, a curatorial thread that questions how time behaves across the region. Forget neat timelines. Here, past, present and future overlap, repeat and quietly reshape one another. The Cheongju edition sets the tone as a cross-cultural conversation, where material, process and memory carry equal weight. Artists approach craft not as something fixed, but as a way to consider what unfolds now, and what might come next. Until August 16. Free. Jim Thompson Art Center. 10am-6pm