These are the best things to do in Miami this weekend

Memorial Day weekend calls for something the whole family can do together, and there are few better ways to spend it than watching the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds tear across the South Beach sky. The Hyundai Air & Sea Show brings two days of military aircraft performances, high-speed water demonstrations, and five city blocks of interactive displays along Ocean Drive. This year carries extra resonance: the show is part of America's 250th birthday celebration, and Miami Beach has its own chapter in that story. During WWII, more than 300 hotels along these same streets were converted into barracks and training facilities for nearly half a million U.S. Army Air Forces troops, who who drilled on the golf courses, swam in the hotel pools, and trained on the very beach this event is taking place on. 

The action spreads across the whole stretch of Lummus Park, but you don't need a designated viewing area to catch it; the aircraft are visible from anywhere along the beach, particularly between 1st and 10th streets and 13th to 20th streets. The heart of the action is between 10th and 13th streets, where you can spot them taking off, then wander the Patriot Display Village for tanks, helicopters, rifle ranges, flight simulators, and live demonstrations from all six branches of the military. There's a kids zone, extreme sports demos, and a food court if you need to refuel. On Saturday evening, the party continues with SaluteFest on Ocean Drive: country group Parmalee performs live, the U.S. Air Force Band and drill team take the stage, the U.S. Army Golden Knights do a nighttime pyro parachute jump. The whole thing wraps with a 1,000-drone show and fireworks. All of this, fellow Americans, is free to attend. 

For Memorial Day weekend's other major event, head to Maurice A. Ferré Park on Sunday, where the 20th annual Best of the Best Music Fest takes over the waterfront for a 10-hour deep dive into reggae and dancehall. The festival has been a Miami institution for two decades, and this year marks a new chapter — a fresh venue with a lot more waterfront and a lot more room. The lineup spans generations: roots reggae heavyweights Sizzla, Beenie Man, Capleton, and Tarrus Riley anchor the bill, while contemporary dancehall acts including Skeng, 450, Tifa, and Kraff keep the energy rolling well into the evening. Gates open at 2pm.

Before "genre-fluid" became marketing shorthand, Santi White was already fusing punk, dub, reggae, ska, electronic, and hip-hop into something that sounded less like crossover and more like its own thing. Santigold plays ZeyZey on Saturday night, touring behind Spirituals, her 2022 album written inside the exhaustion and anxiety of pandemic-era motherhood, with production from Rostam, SBTRKT, and Nick Zinner. She's one of those artists whose live show — full choreography, dancers, intricate visuals — consistently outpaces what you expect. General admission tickets from $73.20.

Norwegian producer Kygo brings his Memorial Day weekend sunset party to Palm Tree Club Miami on Sunday. The waterfront venue on the 79th Street Causeway in North Bay Village is essentially his home court in Miami, and the combination of Biscayne Bay views, his piano-driven tropical house, and a long holiday afternoon makes for a predictably good time. Ticketed entry guaranteed until 5pm, 21 and up.

Stamped, the bimonthly party where Cameroon-born DJ Leslie "Aya" Ayafor features sounds from the African continent—and nothing else—returns to Higher Ground at Arlo Wynwood for a special Memorial Day weekend edition. Amapiano, Afrobeats, and the full breadth of what Ayafor calls "sounds from the continent" fill the open-air courtyard from 5 to 11pm, with the Wynwood skyline as a backdrop. Tickets are free; prices go up at the door.

Rhye, the project of Canadian singer and producer Michael Milosh, brings his 2026 acoustic tour to ZeyZey for two nights on May 24 and 25. Just Milosh, an acoustic guitar, and keys — a stripped-back format for music that was already about intimacy. His albums Woman and Blood built a devoted following, and arrangements that reward close listening. Sunday is waitlisted; Sunday tickets remain available. Both nights at 7pm.

Rhye, the project of Canadian singer and producer Michael Milosh, plays ZeyZey for two nights on Sunday May 24 and Monday May 25. The 2026 tour is acoustic only – just Milosh, an acoustic guitar, and keys – stripping back the lush production of albums like Woman and Blood in a rare format for an artist whose records are dense with texture and arrangement. Sunday is waitlisted; Monday tickets are selling out quickly. Both nights at 7pm.

Watawe Miami teams up with Afro Garden for a Memorial Day Saturday day party at Tomorrowland Miami, running 3 to 9pm. The recurring Afrobeats series has been quietly building one of Miami's more dedicated dance music communities, and this edition stretches the soundtrack across amapiano, reggae, dancehall, soca, and kompa. Bakou, Mili Marv, and DJ Cool are on the decks, with hosting by Idee Miami. Free before 6pm with RSVP.

Ten years ago, a Miami musician started releasing music under two names: Peoplewatch for the vocal records, Interlude for the instrumental ones. On Friday May 22 at Bargean Miami in Little Havana, he's playing the entire catalog in one sitting — all eight EPs, start to finish. Interlude opens at 8pm with the jazz, Latin, funk, and neo-soul records; Peoplewatch takes over at 10pm for the four vocal EPs titled Rock, Paper, Scissors, and Glue. It's a deeply personal kind of show, and Bargean is the right room for it.

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. 

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.

Bayskate is back, taking over the Historic Pan Am Hangar at Regatta Harbour in Coconut Grove for six weeks of roller skating, live DJs, cocktails, and outdoor lounges. You'll be gliding and grapevining around a 20,000-square-foot rink, with a gargantuan disco ball lighting up a place where some of America's first international flights began. This is, of course, a Miami-fied skating experience, with a cocktail program by Bayshore Club, with a rotating nighly soundtrack taht includes Latin tropibass, disco and, of course, Miami bass. The rink is open Thursdays through Sundays through June 14th, with daytime family sessions on weekends at lower admission prices. Groups can book rinkside table reservations, and season passes are available for unlimited access through the run. Skate rentals are available onsite, though you can bring your own Moxis or Impalas for extra style.

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. 

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.

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. 

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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