These are the best things to do in Miami this weekend

Based on Nicholas Sparks' best-selling novel and the film that made a generation cry in theaters, The Notebook arrives at the Adrienne Arsht Center as a full Broadway musical with music by Ingrid Michaelson and a book by Bekah Brunstetter (This Is Us). The story of Allie and Noah, two people from different worlds bound together across a lifetime, gets a stage adaptation directed by Michael Greif (Dear Evan Hansen, Rent) that critics have called genuinely gorgeous. Tickets from $35, running May 5–10 at the Ziff Ballet Opera House.

Miami Ironside's Saturday lineup runs from morning through afternoon. Start with Zumba Con Cafecito at 9am or Kundalini Yoga at 10am led by Indra Kaur, a yogini with nearly two decades of experience, then stay for the Magic City Flea from noon to 6pm, where local vendors bring vintage pieces, handmade goods, art, and accessories to one of Miami's most characterful outdoor spaces.

Miami City Ballet closes out its season with ¡Vamos! To the Beach, a three-part program that leans fully into the summer energy already settling over South Florida. Paul Taylor's Company B opens with swing-era Andrews Sisters hits; Durante Verzola's Grand Glittering Gershwin brings Art Deco cool to a Gershwin score; and Twyla Tharp's Deuce Coupe, a company premiere, closes things out on a wave of Beach Boys tunes that'll have you humming out of the theater. The program heads north for a final weekend at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts on May 9 at 7:30pm and May 10 at 1pm and 6:30pm.

Mother's Day weekend in Miami doesn't do subtle. Friday and Saturday bring the usual mix of nightlife, live music, and rooftop energy the city does on autopilot — plus ZHU headlining Club Space Saturday night for anyone looking for a reason to stay out. Then Sunday turns it up further: the city has brunches covered, obviously, but it also has a morning rave on Club Space's Terrace, The Notebook closing out its run at the Adrienne Arsht Center, and Miami City Ballet wrapping its season with a Beach Boys-and-Andrews-Sisters finale at the Broward Center. Leave it to Miami to turn a Sunday for moms into a full-scale cultural event.

This bustling vintage market enters its 35th year in 2026 on South Beach's famed Lincoln Road. Approximately every other Sunday (check their calendar for exact dates; the last market of the season is scheduled for this Sunday, May 10), 125 vendors convene along the promenade to showcase their wares and barter with discerning shoppers. Find everything from mid-century furniture to Art Deco decor and more. The long-running weekend social presents a solid mix of 19th and 20th-century memorabilia and unique collectibles. While you're there, stock up on locally grown produce, fresh flowers and artisanal goods from the Lincoln Road Farmer's market, which occurs every Sunday from 9am to 6pm.

If you grew up in a Cuban household in Miami, Álvarez Guedes was probably playing in the background. The comedian who became the Godfather of Latin Comedy through 30-plus albums of distinctly Cuban storytelling is getting the immersive treatment this spring. Debuting April 30 inside a custom-built venue at Tropical Park, Muerto de Risa is a three-hour cabaret-style production that moves guests through themed spaces — El Bar, El Cabaret, El Patio — as stand-up, live music and theatrical storytelling unfold around them. Less traditional theater, more like stepping into a night out at a classic Havana club. Learn more here. 

PAMM's biggest exhibition of the spring and summer brings together more than 100 works exploring what sports mean beyond the scoreboard: how competition, athleticism and the culture around games shape identity, memory and shared experience. On view through August 23, the show features Ernie Barnes's neighborhood basketball scenes, Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno's real-time portrait of Zinedine Zidane, and Tara Mateik's take on the 1973 Battle of the Sexes, alongside work from Virgil Abloh, Mark Bradford, Glenn Ligon, Catherine Opie, Yinka Shonibare and Hank Willis Thomas, among others. Historic sports memorabilia like vintage Nike sneakers, and original McLaren Racing steering wheels sit alongside contemporary art throughout. Timed to Miami's run of major sporting events this spring, from the Miami Open to Formula 1 to the FIFA World Cup, it's a fitting moment for a museum to ask what the arena actually means. Included with museum admission at PAMM.

The ICA Miami is devoting its third floor to the first U.S. museum survey of Harmony Korine, the filmmaker behind Spring Breakers and Kids who has spent three decades confounding and captivating audiences in equal measure. Perfect Nonsense brings together over 50 works spanning film, painting, photography, collage and drawing, tracing a career that has always resisted easy categorization, from his early Southern gothic explorations to recent films shot through gaming engines and iPhone footage. Korine has lived in Miami since 2015, and the city is woven into his recent work in ways the exhibition makes tangible. Beyond the films most people know, the paintings are the revelation here — particularly the "Twitchy" series, which combines iPhone-captured images with painterly techniques into something genuinely strange and new. The exhibition will be on view through October 4.

After sell-out runs in Paris, Rome, and Milan, From the Heart to the Hands: Dolce&Gabbana arrives in Miami, opening February 6 at ICA Miami and running through June 14, 2026. The exhibition offers a rare look inside the creative universe of designers Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana, tracing how their ideas move from inspiration to execution—all by hand. Curated by Florence Müller and produced by IMG, the show brings together more than 300 Alta Moda pieces, set within immersive installations and shown alongside works by contemporary artists, celebrating the artisanry, excess, and exuberance of Italian aesthetics. 

Art, sexuality and cultural taboos converge at the Museum of Sex with the debut of its latest exhibition, Hard Art: Unruly Selections from the Beth Rudin DeWoody Collection. Explore decades of boundary-pushing works spanning the 1930s to today, pulled from the private collection of one of the world’s most dynamic collectors. From playful to profound and, at times, deemed too provocative for public display, the featured works include a wide range of media that challenges convention and invites conversation. Curated with the goal of amplifying underrepresented voices and celebrating uncensored expression, artists on view include Marco Brambilla, Jimmy DeSana, Bunny Yeager, John Kayser and others.

In the winter of 1984, Jack Pierson left New York for Miami Beach and spent six months in cheap apartments, thrift stores and the city's queer nightlife scene, capturing a barrier island on the brink of transformation. The Bass is currently showing the first exhibition devoted to that chapter, tracing Miami's impact on Pierson's photography, sculpture, installation and works on paper through a body of work steeped in desire, wanderlust, loneliness and the particular kind of escapism South Beach offered before Art Basel made it expensive. The anchor is ARRAY (MIAMI), a new ten-by-fourteen-foot commission combining Pierson's own photographs with posters, poems and postcards in a dense, layered collage. 

Fairchild doesn't normally allow dogs on its grounds, which makes Dog Dates all the more worth knowing about. On Sunday mornings, leashed dogs and their humans get two hours to roam all 83 acres—past the waterfalls, through the rainforest, around the lakes, in view of iguanas—before stopping at the Glasshouse Café for snacks and drinks for both species. Sessions have occassionally been themed, with past editions including doga, pet portraits and glow nights, however plainclothed pets and their parents are welcome just the same.

Miami's biggest night for improv comedy happens every Saturday at Villain Theater in the heart of Little Haiti. Enjoy original, spontaneous live performances from some of the fiercest improvisers across South Florida. Shout out a suggestion and become a part of the action as the theater's talented cast of actors spins hysterical yarns over the course of two Second City-style improv shows. Mingle and sip beers in the lobby lounge in between sets: A ticket grants you access to both the 8:30 and 10pm showtimes.

Going strong for over two decades, the Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami hosts another edition of its Jazz at MOCA live music series on the plaza. Every last Friday of the month, the free outdoor concert merges art, music and community while platforming Miami's thriving live jazz scene. This month, Lisanne Lyons headlines. Having performed with the Woody Herman Orchestra, Maynard Ferguson Big Bop Nouveau and Arturo Sandoval, among others, she is currently the director and founder of the jazz vocal program at Florida International University. Seating for the show is first-come, first-served and begins at 7pm. Free registration also includes access to the MOCA galleries until 10pm.

Gilded and crimson-draped Faena Theater is the ideal venue to experience OBSESSION, a new original production presented by Faena Live in collaboration with the Quixotic performance art collective. Nestled in Mid-Beach, the cabaret-style show blends live vocals, choreography and cinematic storytelling to take guests on a seductive 1.5-hour journey complete with lasers, projected visuals and plenty of theatrical haze. Helmed by emcee Sophia Bollman—whose credits include a stint on NBC's The Voice as part of Team Miley Cyrus and backup singing in Beyoncé's iconic Coachella performances—Faena Theater's 2026 headlining production also features the energetic stylings of Principal Violin and Musical Lead Kostia Lucky. Tickets start at $100 per person and include show admission only (food and beverages sold separately). Guests must be 18 or older, with a valid ID required upon arrival.

Southeast Overtown/Park West Community Redevelopment Agency presents Sepia Vernacular, an exhibition that places Overtown’s past back into public view. Drawn from the City of Miami Planning Department archives, the show features more than 80 rare photographs from the 1920s–1950s, including selections from Max Waldman’s 1947 Color Town series, documenting daily life across the streets, businesses, families, and social spaces that seldom make it into Miami’s official histories. The exhibition will be taking place at the newly restored Lawson E. Thomas Building, which once served as the office of Miami-Dade County’s first Black judge and a central figure in the city’s civil rights movement. A newly commissioned mural by Anthony Mojo Reed II adds contemporary context which, together with the archival photo exhibition, frames Overtown as essential to understanding Miami, not peripheral to it.

"Belkis Ayón and Carlos Alfonzo: Odyssey" at MOAD at Miami Dade College’s Freedom Tower pairs two influential Cuban artists whose work explores mythology, spirituality and the search for freedom through bold, symbolic imagery. Presented in dialogue, the show highlights their lasting impact and shared themes shaped by migration, resilience and cultural identity. The exhibition is on view through May 10.