These are the best things to do in Miami this weekend

The Miami Beach Holiday Festival of Lights returns to Ocean Drive with two weekends of live music, festive characters, immersive light displays and seasonal food and drinks. Presented by the Miami Beach Classical Music Festival and artistic director Michael Rossi, the free community shows transform a strip of Art Deco oceanfront into an enchanting open-air theater complete with a 20-foot Christmas Tree. Expect a full symphony orchestra, appearances by Santa, the Grinch and Elsa, plus mesmerizing animated light shows splashed onto the historic buildings' façades. Performances take place on December 14, 20 and 21 at 6:00 and 7:30pm, and on December 13 at 6:15 and 7:15pm outside The Betsy Hotel. On December 13, the City of Miami Beach presents a special Holiday Extravaganza featuring a grand drone show viewable from Lummus Park.

Forget the 18-hour trek from Miami to Tokyo: you can now discover the tastes of Japan with just a short jaunt to JAPAN Fes in Coconut Grove. Touted as the largest Japanese food festival in the world, this sprawling street fair returns to Miami for its second installment after debuting in Miami Beach this past October. Vendors hail from Miami and New York, as well as other states and countries. Past festivals have featured foods like takoyaki, ramen, matcha sweets, yakisoba, karaage, okonomiyaki and lots more. Expect food, music and art across two days along the Grove's tree-lined streets. After you're full, shop for Japanese crafts and gifts featured at the festival. Grand Ave between McFarlane Rd and Rice St

Miami's own Tony & The Kings celebrate the release of their new 45-inch, Son Con Soul, with a free live show at Gramps Getaway on Saturday, December 13. The party kicks off with an opening performance by Lula Rios and vinyl sets by DJ Ackdaddy of Tiki Tumbao Records. For the uninitiated, expect raw, modern takes on bugalú and Afro-Caribbean rhythms as the band brings their latest release to life in a festive waterfront setting.

Keep your art-fueled buzz going post-Basel at the Sand CastleDonna, a four-day pop-up that invites guests to dine inside an extravagant, larger-than-life sandcastle. The fleeting culinary experience is a partnership between DoorDash Reservations and Edgewater's buzzy coastal Italian spot CasaDonna and runs from December 11 to 14 at the Design District's Jungle Plaza event space. Even wilder than booking a meal inside a giant sandcastle is the fact that the entire pop-up is complimentary, with a free three-course lunch or four-course dinner available to snag through the DoorDash app. Tables are first-come, first-served, and new reservations drop daily at 10am starting on December 5.

Locust Projects has teamed up with Little Haiti Little River Art Days to host a special Holiday Makers Market on December 13. This sweet afternoon of festive shopping supports local creatives and encourages folks to discover the bubbling arts district, where studios and independent spaces will be open throughout the day. The heart of the shopping happens at Locust Projects' airy alternative art space, which will be filled with unique pieces by artists, designers and makers. On the heels of another action-packed Basel, consider this the perfect moment to wade into Miami's eclectic local art scene and score a thoughtful holiday gift or two.

Wynwood Art Walk returns for a holiday-themed edition of its rebooted monthly crawl. On Saturday, December 13, Miami's arts hub transforms into an all-day street festival of galleries, pop-ups and live music. Expect special exhibitions, immersive installations and DJ sets across the district, plus a candy station (2300 NW 2nd Ave), complimentary glam touch-ups at Panther Coffee and free entry throughout the day. Start your tour with DJ sets at The Coffee, a buzzy new minimalist cafe chain from Brazil, or the hobbyists' hangout Collectors Club (2–4pm). Sole Garden hosts a DJ set from 4 to 6pm, followed by Classic Football Shirts Miami (5–7pm) and Doggis (6–8pm). Scoop shop Dasher & Crank is serving ice cream with a side of goodwill during its all-day holiday toy drive, with a DJ set from 4 to 7pm. (Donate a toy and get a free scoop).

When it comes to holiday lights, the zoo goes wild. One million bright, animal-shaped lights illuminate the premises during Zoo Lights Miami, which takes on select dates through December 30. Families can stroll around while sipping hot chocolate and listening to carollers and if you're lucky, you might just get a glimpse of Santa or The Grinch. Check the Zoo Miami website to see what the theme is for the weekend (Galactic Night should be interesting) and don't miss the new animated special “Jingle Paws & Santa Claws” at the Sami Family Amphitheater (7:30 and 8:30pm showtimes). There will be rides, a 26-foot holiday tree, themed photo spots, character meet-and-greets and a station for writing letters to Santa, just in case he hasn't already gotten the message.

Our favorite buzzy supper club in Wynwood is doing its part to spread the holiday cheer this season. Though its dramatic arched ceiling, sunken dining room and cabaret performers lend Sparrow Italia a festive ambiance year-round, the Italian steakhouse has gone the extra mile to ensure diners soak in all the cozy feels from now through December 31. The luxe wintertime transformation includes a stunning ceiling installation by Floratorium, a nature-driven studio known for its sculptural, biophilic designs. At Sparrow, they've ensconced the dining room in hundreds of metallic gold ornaments that float overhead, draped in white pine and cedar that subtly scent the space. The pop-up also features two limited specials: a warm, caramel-drizzled Panettone Bread Pudding with vanilla ice cream, and an Italian Coquito that riffs on the classic with rum, Braulio, nocino, coconut cream and holiday spices.

You're not hallucinating: Santa and his elves just paddled by. Experience holiday lights Miami-style at No Name Harbor during this free community celebration as the decorated Key Biscayne Yacht Club boat parade glides by from 6 to 7:30pm, with a paddleboard flotilla launching from Boater’s Grill between 4 and 5pm. A beloved Key Biscayne tradition returns as paddlers and boaters dress up, loop the harbor and compete for prizes like Best Holiday Spirit, Most Creative, Best Pet Outfit and the new “Best Shiny Lighthouse,” while spectators watch from the waterfront with blankets and chairs as the sun sets over the bay. Snap pics with Santa, partake in festive arts and crafts and ogle a giant snow-globe—one of our favorite waterfront bars, The Cleat, will be open too. RSVP to reserve your spot and learn more about how to participate.

There’s more to the Design District than high-end shopping. Discover a different side of the glittering neighborhood on this hour-long guided public art tour, covering 18 blocks of public artworks and the buildings they adorn. The free, expert-led walking tours happen every second and fourth Saturday of the month, showcasing selected artworks and architectural highlights along distinctive routes. Meet in front of the Fly's Eye Dome on the first floor of Palm Court (enter at 140 NE 39th Street). 

Miami has a smattering of quaint and reliable flea markets, but they pale in comparison to the sprawling, gem-filled vintage markets of, say, Paris or Madrid. Now, local treasure hunters can get a taste of Europe's grand vintage villages at Salon du Vintage, a prestigious fashion fair making its U.S. debut at Bal Harbour Waterfront Park. From December 12 to 14, the chic Miami enclave hosts over 5,000 square feet of highly curated, museum-quality vintage fashion, from rare runway-era pieces to fine jewelry and design objects. Shoppers can browse archival looks from iconic French and Italian houses, alongside one-of-a-kind finds from top European dealers, all set against the waterfront. A VIP preview ($85) kicks off the experience on December 12 with a DJ and open bar, followed by public shopping ($45) on December 13 and 14. 18 Bal Bay Drive, Bal Harbour

If it doesn’t feel like Christmas where you live, just wait until you step foot inside Pinecrest Gardens. The botanical gardens transform into a winter wonderland draped in a blanket of sparkling lights. Every night brings new forms of fun like movie nights, mariachis, character experiences and even concerts at the sunken Banyan Bowl stage. For families, there are sit-downs with Santa, storytime, carolers and more. Watch out for the Seuss-themed nights, which are sure to be great fodder for this year's Christmas cards. 

South Beach isn't the only beach town that attracts a star-studded lineup of chefs once a year. The Palm Beach Food & Wine Festival takes place over four jam-packed days in December with a lineup of local talent and world-renowned hospitality mavens, giving you a delicious reason to flock to Miami's glamorous northern neighbor. Now in its 18th year, the 2025 festival will include over 20 food and beverage events between December 11th and December 14th throughout Palm Beach, culminating in a Grand Tasting event at the Palm Beach Convention Center on Sunday. Expect an expanded wine program this year with over 100 wine tables pouring only selections that scored 90+ ratings by Wine Spectator. Various dates and locations

The Downtown Development Authority is bringing all the cozy seasonal vibes to our subtropical paradise for its annual Holiday Village on Flagler, running on December 7, 14 and 21. Downtown's charming historic thoroughfare will transform into a festive pop-up village complete with twinkling décor, local vendors and interactive stations where kids can craft ornaments, snap photos and enjoy sweet seasonal treats. Other highlights include a menorah lighting on December 14, a toy giveaway on December 21 and a New Year's Day celebration from 3 to 8pm featuring live music, family fun and surprise guests, all free and open to the public.

The gorgeous and historic Deering Estate makes an idyllic backdrop for this year's photo op with Kris Kringle. On December 13 from 10am to 1pm, the waterfront landmark hosts a lively story-time with Santa’s elves, photos with Santa inside the Richmond Cottage (for an additional fee) and holiday arts and crafts activities. Visitors can also partake in two Historic Holiday Decor scavenger hunts, one inside the Richmond Cottage and a second outside among the pine rocklands. General admission for non-members is $18 for adults and $10 for children (ages 4 to 14), plus tax. Holiday photo packages are available for an additional fee paid on-site the day of.

Miracle Bar makes its Carousel Club debut at Gulfstream Park this holiday season, and the racetrack’s open-air playground is the perfect backdrop for all the kitschy, Christmas-themed chaos. Running from November 21 through December 28, the beloved annual pop-up gives Carousel Club a full festive makeover: think twinkling tunnel entrances, over-the-top lawn displays and cozy cocktail mugs everywhere you look, all set against Carousel’s neon bar, trackside views and massive tented lounge.

This year's refreshed cocktail lineup channels the winter-meets-tropical vibes, with old and new favorites like the Christmapolitan, Snowball Old-Fashioned, Coconut Hot Chocolate and Koala LaLaLa. (And yes, Carousel’s bartenders commit to the holiday-core aesthetic, too.) With its oversized décor, wide-open footprint and trove of picture-perfect corners, Carousel Club is a sweet new home for the latest rendition of the long-running Miracle experience, which is free to attend. Check their website for a calendar of special events, like an Ugly Sweater Party on December 12.

In tandem with the holiday season, Jungle Island's enchanting festival of lights returns for a fourth year with a new production featuring more than 37 monumental, handcrafted silk lantern scenes created by a global team of artisans, graphic designers, seamstresses and more. This year, Luminosa takes visitors on a vibrant trail of themed vignettes representing different ecosystems, from the Amazon rainforest to African savannahs, complete with cutting-edge animatronics, holograms and interactive storytelling. The popular Holiday Village also makes a return this year (through January 4), featuring Christmas trees, holiday treats like churro donut holes and coquito, a seasonal bazaar and a 30-foot Christmas tree centerpiece. 

Christmas gets a freaky twist at this holiday carnival in Hialeah. Expect all the usual rides, midway games and festive displays, plus entry to Ripley’s exhibition of strange and unusual oddities and artifacts. New sideshows roll out weekly, too, like contortionists, sword swallowers, foot archers and the Shortest Woman in the World. Other experiences include the shimmering Fairyland Journey pathway and Dinner at Santa's, a cozy sit-down meal at Santa’s North Pole home.

A much-anticipated precursor to the holiday season in Miami, NightGarden returns in November for its seventh season at Fairchild Tropical Botanical Garden, promising even more psychedelic scenery, family-friendly activities and interactive artwork than ever before. Running from November 7 through January 11, NightGarden invites guests to frolic around a neon-lit wonderland of tropical trails lined with holographic sculptures, secret sunken ponds and hidden fairy worlds. Expect several enticing new activations this year, including the Tree of Life, a monumental centerpiece with lights and projections activated by guest touch. You'll also find new immersive domes with themed photo backdrops, a Secret Garden Laser Light Show, movie nights and more.

ZeyZey in Little River looks like it could be a friend’s bohemian bungalow—if your friend had their own natural wine gazebo, custom sound system and vinyl listening room, shipping container cocktail bar and mainstage for live performances. This weekend, they've curated another lineup of fun concerts and parties, including the monthly Miami is an Island Record Fair, featuring a lineup of local vinyl vendors touting thousands of selections across soul, funk, disco, Caribbean classics, Afro sounds and more. With Mr. Brown spinning the soundtrack all afternoon, it's bound to evolve into a full-blown tropical dance party by the time the sun sets. 

If you’ve ever wanted to live inside a Mariah Carey Christmas special, this is your moment. Mariah Carey’s Holiday Bar is landing at Ray's Hometown Bar in Miami Beach, promising a “Mariahfied cocktail experience” that’s part pop-up, part wonderland and entirely extra (in the best possible way). Expect wall-to-wall holiday décor dripping with glitter and nostalgia, festive photo ops and recreated backdrops from her most iconic album covers. Every 30 minutes, the unmistakable opening notes of “All I Want for Christmas Is You” will cue the room into collective holiday euphoria.

The menu keeps the theme alive with festive small bites and seasonal cocktails made with Carey’s own Black Irish cream liqueur. For fans who want to take the experience home, there’s exclusive merch, vinyl copies of her holiday albums and even her newest LP, Here For It All. You can even write to the star herself at the “Letters to Mariah” station. 

Get your festive carnival fix at Tropical Park during Christmas Wonderland, a local holiday production that's grown into the largest of its kind in the U.S. Now in its third year, this 14-acre spectacle features six immersive holiday worlds, 50-plus rides, dazzling light shows and nightly entertainment like fireworks shows, acrobatic acts and even Santa as a human cannonball.

Of course, the grounds are lined with photo-worthy moments, starting with the Wonder Portal, an LED archway that leads into Tinsel Trail, a half-mile of synchronized lighting displays, installations and whimsical backdrops. At the heart of the midway, the IG’loo 360-Dome surrounds guests in a 3D-mapped immersive visual experience.

The midway is also where you'll find the fair's main food and drink offerings, including plenty of local food trucks and seasonal brews from Cervecería La Tropical.

Brickell’s backyard transforms into a neighborhood bazaar for The Underline’s monthly Farmers Market, a bustling pop-up stocked with seasonal produce, baked goods, cheeses, honey, artwork, handmade crafts and more. Graze the artisanal prepared foods, grocery shop for the week and discover a new local maker you can't live without. Located at The Underline’s Brickell Backyard Promenade green crosswalk on Southwest 1st Avenue across from Southwest 9th Street, the outdoor market runs on select Saturdays through December 20th from 9am to 4pm. Free

You'll be hard-pressed to find a more festive bar year-round than JohnMartin's in Coral Gables. The Irish-style pub strikes just the right balance of cozy and contemporary with its penny tile mosaic flooring, black steel frame windows and moody lighting, ideal for sipping something dark and sudsy. For the holidays, JohnMartin's goes the extra mile, decking its halls with twinkling lights, festive décor and a lineup of boozy cocktails that channel the cheer of the season. The pop-up runs from November 14 through December 28, with DJs and other festive programming sprinkled in along the way.

Few brunches in Miami rise to the level of an "event," but the Sunday brunch at Novikov is assuredly one of them. After a brief sabbatical, this buzzing sunlit feast makes a return to its luxurious perch along the Downtown Miami waterfront, featuring two hours of unlimited grazing from an extensive Market Table spread. Choose from a raw bar, endless sushi and sashimi, a salad bar, dim sum and robata-grilled favorites, plus a decadent dessert bar and signature brunch cocktails. Premium add-ons take the party to another level, including a honey truffle king crab leg, wagyu ribeye and roasted peking duck. Of course, it wouldn't be one of Miami's hottest brunch propositions without a live DJ spinning beats that pair perfectly with Novikov's bayfront views and a glass (or two) of bubbles.

Winter Wonderland is back at The Ben Hotel, transforming the swanky West Palm Beach waterfront lawn into a glittering holiday playground with twinkling trees, Aspen-style chalets and, of course, a 50-by-66-foot rink made of the real stuff. Around the rink, expect plenty of festive distractions: chalet vendors slinging gifts and sweets; a holiday bar for hot chocolate, s’mores, grown-up toddies and the debut of a Holiday Tree Forest created in partnership with local nonprofits, including Habitat for Humanity and the Boys & Girls Clubs of Palm Beach County. There will also be themed events like Live Music Saturdays and Santa Sundays, ornament-making workshops and an opening-day curling exhibition (yes, Palm Beach now has curling athletes and, no, the tropics do not care about your winter stereotypes). Skating runs daily from November 1 through January 4 from 10am to 9pm. Entry is free unless you’re lacing up, in which case tickets start at $25 for adults and $10 for kids 11 and under.

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.

Elliot & Erick Jiménez: El Monte is the Cuban twin photography duo’s first solo museum exhibition, marking their leap from award-winning image makers for the likes of Prada, Tiffany’s, Bad Bunny and Selena Gomez to multi-disciplinary artists on an institutional stage. Inspired by the Afro-Caribbean spiritual tradition of Lucumí and Lydia Cabrera’s seminal text El Monte, the show centers on a womb-like, chapel-meets-forest installation alongside photographs and sculptural works that explore spirituality, ancestry and identity. 

Art meets science at "Leonardo da Vinci – 500 Years of Genius," a sweeping exhibition presented by Frost Science and produced by Grande Experiences in collaboration with Rome's Museo Leonardo da Vinci. On view through April 5th, 2026, the show explores da Vinci's multidisciplinary legacy with interactive displays, rare artifacts and life-size replicas of his machines, alongside immersive projections of iconic works like The Last Supper and Mona Lisa. Explore 16 themed sections, from anatomy and flight to engineering and optics, plus hands-on installations like the Vitruvian Man interactive station and the Mona Lisa Revealed exhibit, featuring the world’s only exact 360-degree replica of the painting.

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.

The Coconut Grove Farmers Market is probably Miami’s most well-known. Every Saturday, Homestead's Glaser Organic Farms transforms an unoccupied corner of Coconut Grove into a full-fledged produce market with dozens of fruit and vegetable stands, a raw bar featuring prepared foods and salads and coolers filled with cold-pressed juices and nut mylks. There’s even velvety vegan ice cream for sale and several rows of picnic tables where you can sit and enjoy your bounty. Along its periphery, you’ll find other local vendors selling honey, homemade soaps, handmade jewelry and other artisanal items. And the setup and breakdown are so fascinating to watch! Much like the circus leaving town, everyone quickly dismantles their tents and packs up just after sunset, leaving no trace of the bustling day on the empty gravel lot.