These are the best things to do in Miami this weekend

Bayfront Park has hosted a lot of Fourth of July celebrations over the years, but nothing quite like this one. America turns 250, and Miami is marking it with an all-day free concert on the waterfront. Hosted by IRIE at Bayfront Park, the lineup runs R&B to reggae, with Ashanti and Ja Rule sharing a stage in Miami for the first time in years, joined by 112 featuring Slim and Mike, The Fray, Shaggy, Willy Chirino, and Orlando Mendez. The night closes with a midnight fireworks spectacular and a drone show over the bay. It also happens to be the final day of the FIFA World Cup Fan Zone at Bayfront, with the Semi-Finals on the big screen, so you can catch the match and stay for the concert.

Downtown's favorite neighborhood bar is rolling out the turf for the World Cup, turning Flagler Street into a blockwide viewing party with giant LED screens, stadium-quality sound, and a pitch out front for pickup games between matches. Located just blocks away from the FIFA Fan Fest, The Lost Boy Clubhouse opens with Portugal vs. Colombia, which is sure to be one of Miami's rowdiest games, and will showcase every match throughout the duration of the tournament. Seating and tables are first come, first served, and there will be plenty of food and specialty drink offerings available, plus other fun fan surprises. 

South Beach's Fourth looks a little different than the rest of Miami's. The Miami Beach Classical Music Festival Symphony Orchestra sets up in Lummus Park at 8:30pm for a free outdoor concert of patriotic favorites — Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture, the Armed Forces Salute, The Stars and Stripes Forever — performed directly beneath the fireworks as they launch over the Atlantic at 9pm. Feel free to linger after the show, as the orchestra keeps playing through 10:30pm. Conducted by founder and artistic director Michael Rossi, the 50-piece ensemble brings genuine classical chops to one of the most cinematic backdrops in the city. The day also includes an American Made Car Show along Ocean Drive from 9am to 2pm. Bring a blanket or beach chairs and stake your spot early.

While the rest of Miami is watching fireworks, Tumbao is taking the Fourth to 1-800-Lucky with one of reggaeton's true founding figures. DJ Playero, the Puerto Rican DJ and producer whose legendary mixtape series in the early 1990s first captured the underground sound that became reggaeton, gave Daddy Yankee, Nicky Jam, and a generation of artists their earliest platform. Tumbao, the afro-Latino party series built around curated club sounds, perreo, and community, rounds out the night with a supporting lineup of Bozito, Littlerok, Pazmal, Dumb Groove, and GVMNT. Free entry on RSVP, first come first served. Ages 21 and up.

The largest presentation of Jean-Michel Basquiat's work ever mounted in Florida opens at PAMM on June 25. Basquiat: Figures, Signs, Symbols brings together ten works from the collection of Kenneth C. Griffin, including Untitled (1982), the painting that sold for $110.5 million at Sotheby's and reportedly changed hands again for $200 million in 2024. But the exhibition is less interested in the market mythology around Basquiat than in the work itself, concentrating on his portraiture, his use of text and coded language, and the layered visual vocabulary he built from world history, Renaissance anatomy, hip-hop, and the street culture of 1980s New York. As the son of a Puerto Rican mother and Haitian father, Basquiat's relationship to migration and cultural hybridity lands with particular resonance in Miami. Curated by PAMM director Franklin Sirmans, who has been central to the posthumous study of Basquiat's work for over two decades. On view through June 2027.

Coral Gables does the Fourth right every year, and 2026 is no exception. The City and the Biltmore open the golf course grounds at 5pm for a free community celebration, with the Greater Miami Symphonic Band taking the stage at 7pm. This year there's an added layer: a patriotic drone show debuting in honor of America's 250th anniversary, with national symbols and Coral Gables landmarks including the Biltmore itself, the Venetian Pool, and City Hall illuminated across the night sky before the fireworks close out the evening at 9pm. For a more elevated experience, the hotel is also hosting a private Red, White & BBQ dinner in the Granada Ballroom with premium fireworks views, a BBQ spread, and drinks. 

Plan ahead on getting there: the city encourages arriving by bike, with complimentary valet parking available at the Kerdyk Biltmore Tennis Center. Limited free parking opens at 5pm at Municipal Garages 2 and 4 near Miracle Mile, with trolley shuttles running from Coral Gables City Hall. Rideshare and Freebee drop-off is at Catalonia Ave. and Anastasia Ave.

Miami is one of eight cities nationwide selected to host the Freedom Plane National Tour, a traveling exhibition of original Founding-era documents from the National Archives, on view at Museum of Miami (formerly Miami History Museum) from June 20 through July 5. The collection includes the William Stone engraving of the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Association, oaths of allegiance signed by George Washington and Alexander Hamilton, the Treaty of Paris, and early draft printings of the Constitution—documents that rarely leave Washington, D.C. The exhibition is part of the national commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the United States, modeled after the Bicentennial-era Freedom Train. Alongside the documents, the museum will feature a digital mural where visitors can share their desires for the future of America both onsite and from home and a public celebration on the plaza July 4th. Access to the exhibit is included with museum admission. 

No track in South Florida throws a Fourth of July party quite like Homestead-Miami Speedway. The City of Homestead brings a full evening of live music, food trucks, and family programming to the oval, with a new drone show added this year alongside a Kids & Art Zone, an interactive FIFA World Cup fan zone, and the Food Truck Pit Crew featuring local favorites. The night closes with what the city bills as the best fireworks show in South Florida, lighting up the same sky that's seen some of the most competitive finishes in NASCAR history. Free admission and parking make the trek down to Homestead feel seamless. 

Dayglo Presents and GMP Live bring us a World Cup concert and watch party series at Miami Beach Bandshell from June 20 through July 17, timed around match days throughout the tournament. The concert lineup brings Thievery Corporation on June 26, Chromeo on July 17, Poolside on July 10, and Scottish outfit High Fade on June 23 — the night before Scotland faces Brazil. The series opens June 20 with The Rock and Roll Playhouse Presents: The Music of Bad Bunny, a family-friendly show, and also includes four watch parties at the Bandshell, covering both World Cup Semi-Finals. 

Miami-Dade County's signature Independence Day event returns to Tropical Park for a free afternoon of live music, food, and a fireworks finale over the lake. Hosted by Univision personality Javier Romero, the lineup includes Whiskey All Stars, Celebrity Band 305, Giselle, Orlando Mendez, and Piso 21, with a Carnival Cruise Line Fun Zone for kids and themed photo opportunities rounding out the afternoon. It's a proper community cookout scaled up for 250 years of America, done the Miami way. 

The FIFA World Cup is coming to Miami this summer, and Hard Rock Stadium will host seven matches between June 15 and July 18, including four group stage games featuring Brazil, Portugal, Colombia, and Uruguay, a Round of 32, a quarterfinal, and the third-place playoff. It is the biggest sporting event the city has ever hosted, and the energy will extend well beyond the stadium.

Matches at Hard Rock Stadium:

• June 15: Saudi Arabia vs. Uruguay, 6pm ET
  
  
• June 21: Uruguay vs. Cape Verde, 6pm ET
  
  
• June 24: Brazil vs. Scotland, 6pm ET
  
  
• June 27: Colombia vs. Portugal, 7:30pm ET
  
  
• July 3: Round of 32
  
  
• July 11: Quarterfinal
  
  
• July 18: Third-place playoff

Fan events:

• FIFA Fan Festival at Bayfront Park (June 13–July 5, free): The 436,000-square-foot waterfront takeover is the city's main public gathering point for the tournament, with live match screenings on giant LED screens, a 10,000-capacity amphitheater hosting concerts and cultural programming, interactive installations, food and drink activations, and — only in Miami — water-powered jet pack demonstrations over Biscayne Bay.
  
  
• Free community watch parties across Miami-Dade at Little Haiti Park, Amelia Earhart Park, Tropical Park, North Beach Sand Bowl, and Palmetto Golf Course, with specific matches assigned to each location.
  
  
• Branded fan events will be popping up all around the city, which we'll be including in our guide to the best events in Miami, updated weekly. 

The Wynwood BID is turning the neighborhood into its own World Cup experience this summer with Let's Wyn, a six-week scavenger hunt, public art trail, food festival, and watch party series running through the tournament. At its core is Wynwood to the World, a treasure hunt built around 48 country panels hidden throughout the neighborhood, one for each qualifying nation. Find them, earn badges, collect points, and climb a real-time leaderboard for a shot at two tickets to the Bronze Medal Match on July 18 at Hard Rock Stadium. The first 48 fans to complete all 48 country missions win a custom Let’s Wyn World Ball. 

The Soccer Ball Art Trail showcases 10 hand-painted balls by Paraguayan artist Lili Cantero, whose work has been shown at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar and commissioned by adidas and FIFA, installed at businesses across the district, each representing a past tournament from 1986 to 2022. 

Free youth soccer clinics for kids ages 6 to 10 run June 27, June 28, July 14, and July 15, hosted with the Fútbol Sin Barreras Foundation. And the Wynwood International Food Festival gives the neighborhood's restaurants a chance to represent global cuisines across the full six-week run, with participating spots including 1800 Lucky, Barcelona Wine Bar, Lira Beirut, and Cotidiano. Registration is free at letswyn.com starting May 26, with full programming launching June 11. 

You don't need a ticket to Hard Rock Stadium to feel like you're at the World Cup this summer. The FIFA Fan Festival takes over Bayfront Park for 23 days, turning 436,000 square feet of downtown waterfront into the city's main public gathering point for the tournament. All seven Miami matches screen live on giant LED displays, with a 10,000-capacity amphitheater hosting concerts and cultural programming in between fixtures. Expect food and drink activations, interactive installations, and a daily attendance of up to 30,000 people from every corner of the world. The festival runs June 13 through July 5 and is free to attend.

A new storefront in Wynwood looks like a retro convenience store, fully stocked with Cheez-Its, Cheetos, Pringles, Pop-Tarts, and Liquid Death, except every single item on the shelves is actually a sock. ODDMART, created by the licensed accessories brand Odd Sox, turns more than 100 recognizable consumer brands into wearable collectibles housed inside their own authentic packaging. The space goes well beyond shopping with larger-than-life installations, live DJ sets, and rotating surprise activations throughout the run. The exterior carries a custom mural by Miami artist Golden 305, tying the pop-up directly into Wynwood's street art identity. Miami is the second stop after a debut in Tampa, with Las Vegas, New York, and Tokyo still to come.

Two of the twentieth century's most important painters, Wifredo Lam and Jean-Michel Basquiat, share a room with a selection of Songye kifwebe masks, nkisi figures and prestige objects from Central Africa at Gary Nader Art Centre in Wynwood. The show makes a pointed argument: that both artists weren't borrowing from African visual traditions so much as thinking from within them, as painters of the African diaspora working at the same intersection of the visible and the invisible that Songye sculpture has long occupied. Expect about 35 paintings and works on paper between the two, alongside objects drawn from a distinguished European collection. 

Fooq's and Lion's Den have launched a Sunday series on their Little River patio, running weekly through the summer. Each week brings in a different DJ along with food and beverage pop-ups. The schedule goes as follows: Subzero on June 7th, Joe Padilla and Ferny on the 14th, David Sinopoli and Erick Paredes on vinyl on the 21st, and Lago and Mark Gorbulew on the 28th. Additional partners include eyewear brand Tejesta on June 7th and vintage clothing store Capsool on June 21st with more to be announced. Come for brunch, linger past sunset. Free, 4–10pm. 

Miami food media platform The Hungry Post is launching Foodball Club, a ten-event series taking place across the city that includes a range of watch and sunset parties at some of Miami's best-known venues. Presented by Casamigos and Buchanan's, the events will run on select dates from June 13th through July 19th. The events lineup is as follows:

Jun 13: Sunset Party at THRōW Social
Jun 14: Watch Party at Level 6
Jun 20: Sunset Party at Cantina La Veinte
Jun 21: Watch Party at Barsecco
Jun 27: Sunset Party at Komodo
Jul 3: Sunset Party at Gekko
Jul 5: Watch Party at The Rooftop at KLAW
Jul 10: Sunset Party at Seaspice
Jul 11: Watch Party at The Gibson Room
Jul 19: Final Watch Party at Amara at Paraiso

Magie Wine Bar is swapping stemware for coffee cups this summer by opening its Little River location every Friday as a daytime workspace. There's complimentary coffee and tea, and to keep your workday energy up, pastries from Ficelle Bakery and $5 bacon, egg & cheese sandwiches by Chef Ivan Barros. La Colombe canned coffees and free, reliable Wi-Fi round out the perks. 

The World Cup is happening in Miami, and Wynwood is fielding its own culinary teams. The Wynwood International Food Festival runs June and July alongside the tournament, turning the neighborhood into a two-month global food trail with 20-plus restaurants each representing a different nation. The entry point is a physical passport — $25, available online or at partner locations — that gets stamped at each stop, with exclusive tasting items priced at $10 or $15 per restaurant. If you upgrade to a shot glass package, you get a welcome shot everywhere you go. The lineup spans Cuba, Japan, Korea, Lebanon, France, India, Italy, Mexico, and the United States, with familiar Wynwood spots like Cerveceria la Tropical, Ghee, Lira Beirut, and Fra Diavolo among the participants. Collect every stamp and you unlock exclusive prizes, not to mention bragging rights for saying you've basically eaten your way through Wynwood. 

Magic City Flea has a new home. The popular downtown market, which built its following outside Julia & Henry's on Flagler Street, has moved to Miami Ironside in the Upper Eastside — a design-focused enclave with landscaped courtyards amid industrial surroundings. Local vendors bring vintage clothing, handmade goods, art, and accessories. Free to attend, Saturdays from noon to 6pm.

Two of the twentieth century's most important painters, Wifredo Lam and Jean-Michel Basquiat, share a room with a selection of Songye kifwebe masks, nkisi figures and prestige objects from Central Africa at Gary Nader Art Centre in Wynwood. The show makes a pointed argument: that both artists weren't borrowing from African visual traditions so much as thinking from within them, as painters of the African diaspora working at the same intersection of the visible and the invisible that Songye sculpture has long occupied. Expect about 35 paintings and works on paper between the two, alongside objects drawn from a distinguished European collection. 

If your Netflix algorithm includes Wild Wild Country and Wayward, the Museum of Sex Miami's new exhibition was made for you. Utopia: Three Centuries of Sexuality in American Cults and Communes, curated by filmmaker and publisher Jodi Wille, traces how over 20 American intentional communities — from the Shakers to the Rajneesh movement to the Source Family — used sexuality, spirituality, and art to build alternative visions of society across 300 years. More than 300 artworks, photographs, films, garments, and rare artifacts make up the two-story show, nationally recognized by Artforum and the Brooklyn Rail. On view through November.

Two simultaneous exhibitions at the Lowe Art Museum on the University of Miami campus make up the most comprehensive presentation of Afro-Cuban art ever mounted. El Pasado Mio/My Own Past, organized by Harvard's Afro-Latin American Research Institute and expanded for its Miami run, brings together more than 81 works by 44 Cuban artists of African descent spanning two centuries, including nine paintings by Wifredo Lam and works by eleven female artists being exhibited together for the first time. The show restores artists who were deliberately erased from the Cuban art historical record, placing obscured figures like Pastor Argudin, Maria Ariza, and Tony Ximenez alongside better-known names like Agustin Cardenas and Maria Magdalena Campos Pons.

The companion exhibition, Afrocubanismo: Highlights from the Ramón and Nercys Cernuda Collection, traces the cultural movement that emerged in the 1930s, when a generation of Cuban artists began centering the country's African roots at a moment when most of Cuban society had actively suppressed them. The tension in that moment is part of what makes the show complex: some of these artists are seen as co-opting a history that wasn't theirs; others as genuinely trying to re-imagine Cuba through its African roots and Afro-religious forms. On view through September 12. General admission is free.

The Balloon Museum's globe-trotting "Pop Air" exhibition has landed at Mana Wynwood, turning one of the neighborhood's most cavernous spaces into an entire immersive environment dedicated to inflatable art. The show has already toured Rome, Paris, New York, and LA, and the Wynwood footprint gives these installations more room than they've had anywhere. You're meant to wander, touch, and interact—through a geometric inflatable labyrinth, a suspended sphere installation that responds to movement, a room where balloons swirl in controlled tornadoes, and a massive LED-lit butterfly you can power yourself by pedaling. The standout is Hyperstudio's luminous projection-filled ecosystem of swings and shooting stars. Budget more time than you think you'll need; you'll want to stop and appreciate the scale of everything after filling your camera roll with selfies. 

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.

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. 

Frost Science opens its summer exhibition just in time for a city that's about to become the center of the sports world. Extreme Sports: Beyond Human Limits is an interactive deep dive into the science behind wingsuit flying, freediving, parkour, ice climbing, and other disciplines that push the body to its edges — with hands-on stations where visitors can test their own reaction time, grip strength, balance, and decision-making. The exhibition also includes a Science of Soccer experience, built around the FIFA World Cup, with an interactive sports wall and gameplay experiences that translate the physics of the sport into something you can actually feel. On view through September 7.

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.

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.

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.

This long-running, weekly farmers’ market is well stocked and well attended, featuring a bounty of produce from nearby farms in the Redlands and Homestead, live music and a free yoga class at 8:30am. Vendors set up in the beautiful tree-lined parking lot of Pinecrest Gardens, which makes a weekly shopping trip pretty idyllic. Don’t miss the selection of local honey, tropical blooms and other specialty items, including cheese from independent dairy farmers and homemade guacamole. While the market takes place year-round, some growers opt to only participate during the fall and winter seasons, so consider this the best time to go. 11000 South Red Rd, Pinecrest

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.