The best things to do in Bangkok this September

Bangkok does not drink coffee so much as perform it, and this September Icomsiam is turning that ritual into theatre. The beans arrive first – prized, judged, paraded like jewels – before baristas step in as choreographers, pulling espressos with the precision of surgeons and the flair of stage actors. Every cup is both ordinary and elevated, bitter and sweet, a small experiment in what caffeine can mean. The gathering folds in favourites from across Thailand, but it is the competitions that sharpen the edges. At the Thailand Iconic Coffee and Creativity Championship 2025, judges with global credentials will decide who can translate beans into brilliance. Elsewhere, workshops delve into the rituals of faraway coffee cultures.,

Until September 7. Free. Iconsiam, 10am-10pm

Choral music rarely makes headlines, yet the Philippine Madrigal Singers seem determined to prove it can. Returning to Bangkok in partnership with the Philippine Embassy and the Thailand Choral Association, the ensemble – founded in 1963 by Andrea O. Veneracion and now under Mark Anthony Carpio – has long blurred the line between performance and history. Their accolades read like an archive of firsts: the only choir to win the European Grand Prix twice, the first Asian group awarded the BrandLaureate Premiere Award, and champions of Arezzo’s Grand Prix in 2016. But perhaps what lingers most is not the trophies, but their audiences – popes, presidents, monarchs and, once, a Thai king who listened to his own compositions refracted through their voices. To hear them sing is to watch diplomacy become harmony.

September 1. B600 via here. Thailand Cultural Centre, 7.30pm-9.30pm

Bangkok rarely takes a breath, yet the 43-metre passage at Samyan MRT insists we slow down. Tent Katchakul has drenched the tunnel in his sprawling linework, a mural where skyscrapers collide with daydreams and the city’s daily grind feels suddenly negotiable.Though the point is less about talent and more about togetherness. Anyone can pick up a brush, trace a thought or scribble a memory and watch it join the chorus of colour already spilling across the walls. The result is neither gallery nor graffiti but something stranger, softer, communal. From morning until evening the tunnel opens, a reminder that sometimes the act of making is itself the masterpiece.

Until September 20. Free. Samyan MRT Tunnel, 10am-10pm

Routine has a way of swallowing us whole. Hua Hin, with its quiet horizon and salt-laced breeze, offers an escape that feels almost medicinal. From September 19-21, Avani+ Hua Hin Resort is hosting a three-day retreat that treats wellness not as a checklist but as a conversation between body and mind. The programme reads like a rhythm of contrasts: sunrise tai chi by the sea, plunges into ice-cold water, sound baths that blur into silence and therapies that coax tired muscles back into alignment. Between sessions, Chef Gibb designs meals that honour local produce and turn zero-waste cooking into something quietly radical. It’s less about transformation than remembering balance – a sanctuary where movement, rest and nourishment are woven together. For bookings and more information, please visit the link here, email reserveavani@avanihotels.com or call 032-898-989

September 19-21. Starts at B23,000 or B45,000 per couple in a Deluxe Room. Avani+ Hua Hin Resort.

Nostalgia has always been a currency, but the 1990s have become a market in themselves. At this flea fair, the decade is not just remembered, it is resurrected – band tees stacked beside Carhartt jackets, leather rubbing shoulders with Levi’s, fragments of old subcultures stitched into new stories. The thrill lies partly in the chaos: a Ralph Lauren polo for the price of dinner, a Harley tee you never knew you needed until it stared back from the pile. Curated by Hia Jump, the event feels less like retail and more like theatre, a warehouse transformed into a time capsule where second-hand goods become relics of attitude. Whether you’re hunting for treasures or simply loitering in memory, the rule is simple: first to spot, first to claim.

September 5-7. Free. Lido Connect Siam, 11am-9.30pm

75 years after Charles Schulz first drew a small dog with improbable dreams, Snoopy is still everywhere – dancing on T-shirts, perched on mugs, drifting across the cultural imagination with the ease of someone who never grew up. This anniversary exhibition, arriving in Bangkok for the first time, asks what it means for a cartoon beagle to outlast presidents, wars and changing fashions. More than 100 works are on display, gathered across four zones that slip between art, couture, pop culture and nostalgia. Contributions from Thai and international artists sit beside collaborations with major fashion houses, while archival strips remind us that friendship and humour are never dated. 

September 6-December 7. B350-890 via here. RCB Galleria 1-2, River City Bangkok, 10am-8pm

Paper has always carried its own quiet rebellion. At GalileOasis, in collaboration with Tumm of Wuthipol Designs, that defiance takes the form of a picnic-market devoted to small publishers and handmade books. Here, zines are not simply stapled pages but declarations of intent, stitched together by those who believe in stories too unruly for the mainstream. The event draws writers, illustrators, printers and collectors into one open space, where every table is a manifesto disguised as paper. Conversations drift between binding methods and ink choices, yet the undercurrent is connection – a recognition that publishing can be communal, not corporate.

September 6-7. Free. GalileOasis, 11am-6pm

Summer Sult, the American indie-pop outfit, all hazy guitars and wistful refrains, return to Bangkok with the promise of songs that sound like diary entries whispered into the night. Their tracks – ‘Candy Wrappers’, ‘One Last Time’, ‘Sweet to Me’ – carry the same kind of intimacy that makes adolescence feel both endless and fleeting. This visit carries an added allure: a new piece, unreleased and unheard, to be performed live for the first time. It is the sort of moment fans mythologise, when music exists only in the room before it calcifies into streaming history. For one evening, Summer Salt offer not nostalgia, but the rare thrill of discovery.

September 7. B2,400 via here. 5/F, The Street Hall, 8pm

Tyler, The Creator has never been content with convention. Chromakopia, released last October, confirmed that restlessness: a record written, produced and arranged entirely by him, which opened to over 200 million streams in its first week. The tour now arrives in Bangkok, a city still remembering the absence of Playboi Carti at Rolling Loud, who here appears as one of Tyler’s collaborators alongside Doechii, GloRilla, Lil Wayne, LaToiya Williams and Childish Gambino. Tracks like ‘Noid, St. Chroma’ and ‘Sticky’ pushed his vision into stranger, sharper territory, extending his reign as hip-hop’s great innovator. Two Grammys and five nominations later, Tyler is no longer the enfant terrible but a fully fledged auteur – one whose concerts feel less like shows than chapters in an unfolding mythology.

September 16. Tickets are sold out. Impact Arena, Muang Thong Thani, 8pm

Some artists belong to late nights and dim rooms, but Lost Frequencies has always written for wide skies. His return to Bangkok this time is not a club slot but a full concert, a set designed less for dancefloors than for collective release. The Belgian producer has built a career out of songs that seem to soundtrack memory itself – ‘Are You With Me’, ‘Where Are You Now’ – tracks stitched into the fabric of sunsets, long drives, holidays that blurred into one another. With billions of plays behind him, he occupies a curious place: a DJ whose work feels both intimate and universal, a reminder that electronic music can still move with tenderness. To hear him live is to watch nostalgia fold into euphoria.

September 19. B1,800-3,000 via here. UOB Live, 8pm

The Magicians arrive in Bangkok as if the city itself had conjured them. The theatre becomes a labyrinth of neon streets and impossible corners, inhabited by five illusionists from Spain, South Korea, China and Japan – young magicians whose tricks feel less like sleight of hand and more like bending reality. For the first time in Thailand, their worlds collide, guided by VK.Vich, whose BMC World Performing Arts Award hints at the precision and theatricality he brings to the stage. Produced by Get Live Management in collaboration with VICH Production. Each illusion spins not only wonder but a fleeting sense that the impossible might be waiting just around the corner.

September 20-21. B1,200-3,000 via here. M Theatre, 2pm and 6pm

Sting returns to Bangkok, not as a relic of the past but as a restless architect of sound. The ‘STING 3.0’ World Tour distills decades of innovation into a lean three-piece ensemble. From The Police’s anthems to his solo explorations, his work has always existed in the tension between intimacy and spectacle, and now that tension is tighter, more urgent. The tour introduces ‘I Wrote Your Name (Upon My Heart)’, a song mixed by four-time Grammy winner Robert Orton, a quiet reminder that even in reinvention, craftsmanship matters. Managed by Martin Kierszenbaum of Cherrytree Music Company, Sting proves that reinvention is not a marketing tactic but a lived practice, one that transforms catalogue into living, breathing performance.

September 25. B2,800-6,500 via here. UOB Live, 6pm

The launch of TEA Art Hub unfolds like a conversation between worlds – Japan and East Asia on one hand, Thailand’s restless creative energy on the other. Across its halls, art, film, animation and live performance blur into something that feels like dreamscape. At its core is Poetic Machines & Paper Heroes: From Quiet Determination to Daring Dreams, an exhibition that recasts the calm resolve of Japanese makers through paper robots, imagined heroes, mechanical fantasies and moving images. Around it spins a constellation of rare film screenings, shorts, video art, theatre and music performed live alongside the cinema’s glow. A Mini Art Fair gathers artists, galleries and brands in a jumble of cool, cute and defiantly original.

August 16-17 and 23-24. Free. TEA Art Hub, 3pm-9pm

Bangkok once held a name in cinema that slipped quietly from memory. The International Film Festival, which for years drew attention alongside Osaka and Busan, disappeared after 2008, leaving only whispers of screenings and red carpets in the city’s imagination. Now it returns, 16 years later, not with nostalgia but with ambition. Curated by the Thailand Creative Culture Agency in collaboration with the Department of Cultural Promotion and local cinemas, the festival opens on September 29 with Tee Yod 3 (Death Whisperer 3), a Thai production that anchors the program. Over 200 films from around the globe will fill screens across the city, offering a pulse of contemporary storytelling. For Bangkok, it is both a revival and a reminder that the world’s cinema can still converge in unexpected, exhilarating ways.

September 27-October 15. Cinemas across Bangkok.

the weekend promises momentum and clarity, a blueprint for navigating uncertainty with both ambition and ease. Visionaries, innovators and boundary-pushers gather not to speak at each other but to spark something larger, a shared current that carries ideas into action. Attendees move between game-changing keynotes and intimate circles, pause in guided mindfulness sessions, or wander the WellNest sanctuary where wellness feels more like ritual than routine. At the Dragonfly Bazaar, conscious brands offer glimpses of possibility, each object a prompt for reflection. By the final day, participants carry strategies, insights and connections like small, portable transformations, proof that a weekend can extend far beyond its hours.

September 27-28. B5,500-35,000 via here. Paragon Hall, Siam Paragon, 6.30pm