The best things to do in Cascais in October

On 4 October, ULU welcomes Rui Matias, from KAU Barbecue, for a special afternoon at Quinta da Bicuda. From 3pm, the popular Texas beef pastrami will be served alongside dishes from the Cascais all-day café, accompanied by good music, speciality coffee, craft beer, wine, cocktails and other house drinks. Collaborations are a major focus for ULU, which wants to be more than a brunch and lunch restaurant. ‘We want to bring more life to our late afternoons, create new experiences and introduce our community to interesting chefs and local producers. Working with small independent Portuguese producers and artisanal businesses has always been an important part of our concept,’ says owner Evgeniy Zhukov. ‘With KAU, we wanted to bring one of its signature products, the pastrami sandwich, to ULU and give the collaboration our own twist.’

In October, Fundação Luís I’s film season brings the best in horror cinema to the auditorium at Centro Cultural de Cascais. With free screenings on Mondays at 6pm and 9pm, the programme brings together four landmark films that shaped the genre: the classic Frankenstein (5 Oct), the masterpiece Psycho (12 Oct), the disturbing Peeping Tom (19 Oct) and the essential Night of the Living Dead (19 Oct).

Cascais Food Lab hosts the gastronomic and literary experience ‘Sabores da Bahia de Jorge Amado’, led by Bahia-born chef Ana Sales. The event explores Bahia’s cultural identity, using food as a common thread to uncover the memories, affections and traditions found in Jorge Amado’s work. Throughout dinner, Ana Sales – creator of the Cozinha Afetiva concept – will explain the origins and stories behind each recipe. The exclusive menu includes acarajé with vatapá and dried prawns, prawn moqueca with white rice and farofa, and bolinho de estudante for dessert.

Cascais Food Lab, located at Mercado da Vila, hosts the first part of Workshop de Cerâmica e Cozinha, led by visual artist and ceramicist Beatriz Pisa, on Saturday 26 September, from 10am to 2pm. Divided into two sessions, the initiative challenges participants to shape their own clay pieces on the first day. During the second session, scheduled for 10 October, the fired pieces will be used to prepare recipes, bringing together art, food and sustainability.

Fundação D. Luís I and Cascais City Council present O Último Carnaval da Coreia, an exhibition of photographs by Bruno Figueroa, a diplomat and current Ambassador of Mexico to Portugal. On show in the chapel at Centro Cultural de Cascais until 11 October 2026, the exhibition brings together images captured in the Itaewon neighbourhood of Seoul on the eve of the October 2022 tragedy. The photographs preserve moments of celebration, freedom and individual expression among 159 young people who would lose their lives just hours later.

The Exemplary Girls was written by the Countess of Ségur in 1858. The children's book by the Russian author—who wrote this and many other adventures about well-born girls who behave terribly—now lends its name to the new exhibition at Casa das Histórias Paula Rego. Curated by Catarina Alfaro, it features the female figure, both in childhood and adulthood, as the protagonist and presents, for instance, the hand-coloured lithographs The Salmon-Coloured Dress and Communion, inspired by poems by Adília Lopes. The exhibition, which is open until the end of January 2027, also includes works from the "Jane Eyre" (2001-2002) and "Pendle Witches" (1996) series, influenced respectively by the work of Charlotte Brontë and Blake Morrison, as well as the six prints of "Female Genital Mutilation", a 2009 series that denounces practices of gender-based violence affecting girls in various parts of the world.

Coinciding with As Meninas Exemplares, Casa das Histórias Paula Rego’s long-term exhibition O Exilado: da criação à conservação is dedicated to the technical study and restoration of a work – a process that usually takes place far from visitors’ eyes. The work in question is the painting-collage O Exilado (Um velho exilado sonhando a sua juventude), from 1962-63, shown for the first time in Portugal and accompanied by images and behind-the-scenes explanations of the research and conservation process. The study revealed hidden collages, compositional changes and layers of materials that help shed new light on the Portuguese artist’s creative process.