Things to do on a Sunday in New York

MoMA is opening a grocery store where absolutely nothing is edible—and that’s the point. Launching on January 7, 2026, MoMA Mart is a limited-time pop-up from the MoMA Design Store that turns the mundane task of grocery shopping into a visual prank. Shelves are stocked not with snacks, but with objects that look like food at first glance and then reveal themselves as lamps, clocks, candles, stools and sculptural décor.

MoMA Mart will run from January 7 through March 29 at both MoMA Design Store locations—SoHo (81 Spring Street) and Midtown (44 West 53rd Street)—and will also be featured online, where people will be able to shop for the various items. Consider it grocery shopping for people who already have snacks—and could use a tomato lamp instead.

Under the Radar, consistently one of the most exciting theater and performance festivals in New York City since its launch in 2005, will take place in over 20 venues across the city from January 7-25, 2026.

In keeping with the festival’s eye toward the best of U.S. and international experimental performance, it will continue to explore dance, music, theater, film, opera, conversation and stagecraft through works by NY-based artists Narcissister (in her first-ever proscenium presentation), The HawtPlates, Kaneza Schaal, Lisa Fagan and Lena Engelstein, as well as European virtuosos Cherish Menzo and Mario Banushi.

A big dose of digital magic is on its way to Tribeca. Onassis ONX—the Onassis Foundation’s lab serving artists working in XR, AI and immersive performance—is packing up its midtown digs and heading downtown, where it will double in size with a 6,000-square-foot studio at Broadway and Walker Street. The new space will open to the public in January, marking a big move for an organization that’s fast become a power player in the city’s experimental art scene.

The first show to christen the new studio will be TECHNE: Homecoming, set to run January 9–18, 2026. The exhibit will bring together six artists to explore identity and kinship, including Björk collaborator Andrew Thomas Huang and VR pioneer Tamiko Thiel. Visitors can expect video environments and “phygital” installations—a mash-up of real, tangible objects with interactive tech.

This annual international-music showcase takes over three stages with represented genres including Cambodian, Moroccan, Spanish Flamenco, Ukrainian, Tropical Latin and much more. This year's lineup includes: Al-Qasar, Dale Watson & his Lone Stars, David Rivera & La Bámbula, Maria Mazzotta, Nidia Góngora, Raiatea Helm, The Naghash Ensemble, Vopli Vidopliassova and more. 

This year is the 23rd anniversary of GlobalFEST, which will happen across three stages at Lincoln Center’s newly-renovated David Geffen Hall on Sunday, January 11 as part of Lincoln Center Presents.

GlobaFEST's mission is to encourage attendees and artists to network and build a global network as well as deepen cultural understanding—a mission that resonates particuarily strongly these days. To check out their full programming, visit GlobalFEST's website. 

Oedipus is not really about the fall of a great man; rather, it’s about a great man coming to realize that he has already fallen. It is election night, the TV screen blinks with news, and Oedipus (Mark Strong) is surrounded by his family: his studious daughter Antigone (the lovely and sympathetic Olivia Reis); his twin sons, the sweet Polyneices (James Wilbraham) and the rakish Eteocles (Jordan Scowen); his sturdy old mum, Merope (Anne Reid, tasty as a crust of bread), whom Oedipus keeps blowing off. And above all there is his wife, Jocasta, who—as played by the great Lesley Manville—is a creature of effortless fascination: confident, worldly, intelligent, practical, passionate, sexually frank and a touch narcissistic, with a hint of Sphinxlike inscrutability to shroud the trauma behind her drive. Oedipus seems untouchable. But as an onstage clock ticks down to his landslide win, the earth gives way beneath him.

Escape the chilly weather with some Southern-style, yee-haw-worthy fun in midtown. The Professional Bull Riders organization will take over the World's Most Famous Arena (a.k.a. Madison Square Garden) for a three-day stint from January 9-11. 

Don a cowboy hat and cheer on ace studs from across the country as they attempt to stay atop bucking bovines—which can weigh as much as 2,000 pounds—for more than eight seconds. As a bonus, this stop on the Unleash the Beast Tour includes a PBR Monster Energy Team Challenge event on Friday night, featuring a must-watch showdown between the New York Mavericks and the Florida Freedom.

During the typically bleak post–New Year’s Eve concert lull, Winter Jazzfest promises a bright spot on the city’s calendar. The annual event showcases new talent performing a broad spectrum of musical styles all under the banner of jazz. Year after year, the crowds grow attracting both avid jazz fans along with new listeners, plus industry professionals. 

This year's fest runs Thursday, January 8, 2026 to Tuesday, January 13, 2026, with immense "Marathon" events in Manhattan on Friday, January 9 and in Brooklyn on Saturday, January 10.

The week of rollicking fun takes over venues across the city, from Nublu to Roulette and much more. Plus, the signature "Marathon" nights are back offering buzzy, multi-stage shows that always add up to one of the best concert experiences in NYC. The Marathon shows aren't individually ticketed, so your pass grants you access to any of each night's gigs—as long as a given club doesn't hit capacity. It’s a model that encourages sampling and venue-hopping. The event also requires patience and an open mind: If your preferred show is full, just head to one of the nearby spots for something unexpected.

The New York Transit Museum is giving the time-honored subway swipe a proper sendoff with a new exhibit called "FAREwell, MetroCard" (see what they did there?), opening on December 17 in Brooklyn.

The exhibit covers the full journey of the little yellow card that changed how the city moved. When the item launched in 1994, the goal was simple: retire the cumbersome token for something more fitting for the modern era. The show explores how that idea grew from clunky magnetic stripe prototypes into the systemwide rollout that reshaped the daily commute. Through early pilot brochures, SubTalk ads and photos of the first activated turnstiles, you'll realize how much work went into convincing riders to trust the new system.

The Met's first major exhibition of Egyptian art in over a decade is on its way. Now until January 19, 2026, "Divine Egypt" will focus in on images of gods in ancient Egypt. The exhibit considers how these physical tools brought the gods to life for daily worship, offering ancient Egyptians a vital connection between the human and divine worlds.

Spanning more than 3,000 years, the Egyptian people's belief system grew to include more than 1,500 gods with many overlapping forms and traits. At the exhibit, expect to see statues and small elegant figurines that represent 25 of ancient Egypt's main deities. Look for subtle visual cues, like what a figure wore, how they posed or the symbols they carried to help identify each one.

"The ways in which the ancient Egyptian gods were depicted are vastly different from the divine beings in contemporary religions and therefore are intriguing to modern audiences," said Diana Craig Patch, Lila Acheson Wallace Curator in Charge of Egyptian Art in a press release about the exhibition. "The identity of an ancient Egyptian god may at first seem easy to recognize but looks can be deceiving, as one form can be shared by many deities. Across more than 3,000 years of history, gods, attributes, roles and myths were rarely dropped from use, yet the Egyptians of the time had no difficulty understanding and accepting the resulting multiplicity. Through hundreds of spectacular objects, 'Divine Egypt' will allow visitors to understand the complex nature of these deities and help translate the images that were needed to make the inhabitants of the celestial realm available to ancient Egyptians."

The exhibition will conclude with artifacts relating to the transition to the next life. 

Theater, they say, is the fabulous invalid, regaling visitors with tales of past glory as it sinks into its deathbed; conversation, they say, is another dying art. But don’t tell that to Bess Wohl’s Liberation, which has just moved to Broadway, with its exceptional cast intact, after a much-discussed run at the Roundabout earlier this year. A searching and revealing drama about the achievements and limits of 1970s feminism, Liberation weaves different kinds of conversation into a multilayered narrative—and, in doing so, serendipitously restores the very word conversation to its roots. As an adjective or noun, converse denotes opposition or reversal. As a verb, however, it stems from the Latin term conversare, which means “turning together.” In other words: Conversation may involve disagreement—and in Liberation, it often does—but it is not at its core adversarial. It’s literally about sharing a revolution.