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

Start the year by giving your bookshelf a gentle refresh at Read Fest, a reading festival that treats books as shared pleasures rather than homework. The fair returns with a programme designed to suit every age, encouraging families to wander, linger and discover titles they didn’t know they needed. This edition follows the theme Reading Journey, unfolding inside Hua Lamphong Station, a place already shaped by departures, arrivals and quiet anticipation. Words travel well here. Across the festival, conversations sit alongside live music, hands-on workshops, exhibitions and an art and craft market that invites slow browsing. A dedicated Reading Space turns the station hall into an open library, welcoming anyone to sit with a book for as long as they like. It feels relaxed and generous, reminding visitors that reading doesn’t need rules, just time, curiosity and a comfortable place to pause.   January 23-25. Free. Hua Lamphong Railway Station, 10.30am-10pm

Bangkok’s reputation as a concert capital didn’t arrive by accident and the calendar for next year looks just as crowded. Bangkok Music City returns after last year’s strong showing, taking over the Charoenkrung Creative District for two days of business talk and live sound. Thai names lead the charge, with Apartment Khunpa, Bedroom Audio, DEFYING DECAY, Kosum Boy and Lepyutin opening proceedings, joined by artists flying in from across Asia. South Korea sends OWAVE, 87dance, Animal Divers, Milena and SUAUN, while Indonesia, Singapore and Vietnam add their own voices. France’s FÜLÜ and Jamaica Moana from Australia and New Zealand stretch the map further. Spread across Bangrak Post Office and Talad Noi, it’s free with registration, which feels quietly generous, or you can skip the queues with a Priority Lane ticket for B350.   January 24-25. Free or B350 for Priority Lane. Central Bangrak Post Office area and Talad Noi district 

Made By Legacy returns with its idea of a ‘New Old Community’, set high above the city in an elevated park that feels quietly removed from street level. For three days, Bangkok’s newest creative corner hosts a careful mix of vintage and lifestyle finds, shaped by memory but never stuck there. New sellers join familiar names, adding a cooler edge to the line-up without losing its warmth. Over 250 handpicked vendors fill the space, offering vintage clothing, designer pieces, ceramics, vinyl, books, art and furniture chosen with real intent. Food stalls and cocktail bars sit among fresh greenery, while DJs and live musicians keep the mood easy. Families wander, friends linger and dogs nap in the shade. It feels less like an event and more like a weekend habit worth keeping.   January 23-25. B160 at the door. Sky Park, Cloud 11, 1pm-11pm

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

FUSE makes his Thailand debut with IGNITE, a solo exhibition that sits between cultures without trying to smooth the edges. Born in 1985 and now based in Tokyo, he works through oil paint, folding Japanese and American pop references into images that feel familiar yet slightly unsettled. At the centre is LOOKA, a recurring figure shaped by cloud-like lines that never quite settle. The form shifts from canvas to canvas, hovering between character and idea. Guided by the notion of seeing with the mind’s eye, LOOKA looks back at a world crowded with information, searching for something steadier underneath. Clouds stand for freedom, though they also blur vision, turning clarity into mist. That tension runs quietly through the work. Nothing here offers easy answers, only a reminder that truth often hides behind soft edges and patient looking.   Until February 8. Free. KYLA Gallery and Wine Bar, 3pm-midnight

This feels like the sort of exhibition you stumble across on a slow afternoon and end up thinking about days later. Jean-Paul De Croux’s abstract paintings sit quietly, asking you to slow your pace and notice what’s happening on the surface. Inspired by the natural world, each canvas carries traces of time through layered marks, rough textures and gestures that feel both deliberate and instinctive. Light slips across the work in subtle ways, changing how colours behave and how forms settle. Emotion isn’t announced but sensed, like weather rolling in. Nothing here feels fixed or final. Memory, movement and material seem to shift depending on how long you stay with them. It’s less an exhibition to decode and more a moment to share, reflective without being precious and reassuringly human in its restraint.   Until February 8. Free. 5/F, Art Jewel, Siam Paragon, 10am-10pm

A Kid from Yesterday returns with a fifth solo outing that feels quietly defiant. Somphon ‘Paolo’ Ratanavaree’s latest body of work steps back from certainty and sits without knowing, a rare move in a culture obsessed with definitions. Titled “Just” BEING BE/NG BE—NG, the exhibition borrows from Camus’ Philosophy of Sisyphus while nodding to the calm discipline of a Zen garden. The result isn’t comfort or escape, but acceptance of contradiction. Cigarettes sit opposite raked sand, everyday habits facing ritual stillness, neither winning the argument. This space doesn’t promise healing or answers. It allows doubt to exist without apology. Being human here means pausing, noticing and carrying on regardless. In a world eager for declarations, the show suggests something softer and braver: existing without explanation might already be enough.   January 17-March 1. Free. Street Star Gallery, 8am-6pm

The Imprint Project opens its first chapter with a focus on marks that travel further than borders. Conceived as an international printmaking initiative, the idea is simple and generous: one country at a time, letting each exhibition carry its own cultural residue. This edition brings together 16 artists from Poland alongside works from Pracownia414 Studio, forming a conversation that moves through technique, texture and intention. Printmaking here isn’t treated as a historical footnote but as a living language shaped by social conditions and personal memory. Etchings, presses and layered surfaces reveal how identity settles on paper in quiet but deliberate ways. The project itself acts as a meeting point, linking artists across continents while offering audiences a chance to read the traces left behind. Not grand statements, but thoughtful impressions that reward close looking and patient attention.   Until January 30. Free. Arun Amarin 23 Art Space, 11am-4pm

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

Jesper Haynes presents a photography exhibition that looks back at downtown New York in the ‘80s and ‘90s with clear eyes and no soft focus. Faces feel close, streets feel tight and the city shows itself without asking for permission. Featuring figures like Andy Warhol and Naomi Campbell, the work traces Haynes’ long fascination with street life, sparked when Warhol invites him to New York as a teenager and quietly changes his direction. Haynes earns a reputation for photographing the edges of urban life with honesty that never feels staged. His black-and-white images read like pages torn from a private notebook, raw but deliberate. Often described as a rebel diarist, he documents nights, friendships and passing moments that refuse nostalgia. What stays with you is the intimacy, as if the city leans over to tell you a secret and trusts you not to interrupt.   January 24-February 14. Free. Chaloem La Art House, midday-6pm