Amey Mirashi

Whether you’re looking for this week’s soundtrack, want to work up a sweat or try out new bar experiences, Mumbai has your calendar covered. Spotify I-Pop Icons Live returns, bringing Anuv Jain, Rashmeet Kaur, Paresh Pahuja, Harrdy Sandhu and Taaruk Raina to Mehboob Studios for the streaming giant’s premium members. If your idea of a good evening revolves around sipping cocktails, Punchline Bar brings Seoul’s celebrated bar scene to Bandra for two nights, with bar-side theatrics and inventive pours. Petrolheads can witness custom motor vehicles, drag-and-drift-style stunts, plus live DJ and MMA performances. Fitness enthusiasts can sign up for HYFIT Games, where beginners and seasoned athletes can test their mobility and strength with 200-metre runs, functional workouts and more challenges. Alternatively, check out HYROX at The Space in Juhu if you’re aiming to lift some weights and finish running sets. For a quieter change of pace, step into Dr Bhau Daji Lad Museum for Histories in the Making: Photographing Indian Monuments. The exhibition takes you back to 18th- and 19th-century India through a rare collection of photographs capturing the country’s architectural heritage during the colonial period. This week’s event schedule is enough to rescue you from the dreaded eat-work-sleep-repeat routine. Pick your plans, check the weather and head out before Mumbai’s monsoon changes its mind. Looking for plans beyond this week? Check out our monthly guide to the best events in Mumba

If you've spent most of July waiting for the gusty winds and rain to calm down, it’s high time you stepped out. There's a fair bit to explore in Mumbai this August – and a lot of it's to do with some really stellar artists coming to town. Leading that charge is Punjabi folk and Sufi singer Rashmeet Kaur (known also for her jazzy touch), plus Polish guitarist Marcin Patrzalek makes his debut in India, which is big news either way you look at it. Not just that, there's more to catch up on: an Independence Day special Candlelight Concert that's planned as a tribute to AR Rahman's timeless music (we're sure that's bound to hit different after the student protests in July), a Fado performance at NCPA educating the city about Portuguese music, and a jazz show! It's not all about music, though. Anime and manga lovers will rejoice in the news of an upcoming cosplay competition, and for motorsports fans, there's a special high-adrenaline event that promises a full-throttle experience. Fitness freaks, you're not being left out – HYROX has got your back. In more ways than one. Without much further ado, here's a list of the very best events taking place in Mumbai in August 2026.  

Your coffee runs just got an upgrade! Mumbaikars’ homegrown cult favourite Boojee Cafe is set to open a new outpost in Bandra Kurla Complex – aka BKC – marking another milestone in its rapid expansion across the city. While it isn't yet confirmed exactly when they're opening doors, the cafe announced their opening at One BKC with a social media post, saying they're coming soon. 'It's opening sooner than you think,' they teased in the caption.  Having won over Bandra’s brunch loyalists, Fort’s coffee devotees and Worli’s grab-and-go crowd, Boojee's now planting its flag in the city’s busiest business district – serving everything from caffeine-fuelled meetings to leisurely all-day breakfast. Perhaps this is a decent reason, at last, for the office crowd in BKC to look forward to Mondays and combat the awful traffic.  Boojee Cafe: From a tiny Bandra outlet to a BKC hotspot Boojee's had Mumbai in a chokehold since 2019, when it opened with a 100-square-foot cafe in Bandra West and followed with a second outlet. They soon expanded to Worli and Fort, and now, a brand new Boojee Cafe's ready to set foot in BKC, marking its fifth outlet in Mumbai. What makes them popular? Their thoughtfully curated breakfast menu, artisanal coffee, and general cosy vibe's made it the go-to neighbourhood cafe in Mumbai – for plebs and celebs alike.   The menu at the new Boojee BKC outlet There’s no confirmation on what’s on the menu and what the ambience will be like at the new outlet yet. Expect you

Onam is just a few days away, and Mumbai is preparing to celebrate the Kerala harvest festival the best way it knows how: gatherings, traditional performances, music, and an unreasonable amount of food enough to require a post-lunch nap. The traditional Onam Sadhya is a culinary marathon served on a banana leaf and packed with an immersive lineup of dishes – from creamy avial and comforting sambar with plenty of rice to tangy pachadis and pickles. Since every good feast needs a grand finale, payasam, Sharkara Adapradhaman, and Palada Pradhaman are always waiting at the end –  there’s no shortage of sweets. As Mumbaikars prepare for what to wear, where to go, and make their Onam plans, the city’s restaurants are pulling out all the stops. Mumbai's already home to several of the best South Indian restaurants in India – and many are curating sadhya menus that are enough to make you overeat yet leave you satisfied with their elaborate spreads, and some add live music and traditional performances to elevate the festive vibes. While the Onam sadhya traditionally celebrates vegetarian cooking, the city’s Onam offerings aren’t always playing by the rulebook. There’s also an option featuring seafood and chicken, plus sadhyas delivered to your home and workplace. Whether you’re an Onam sadhya devotee or someone who still needs a quick tutorial on what to start with served on your table, this list has you covered with places you can go to. Come hungry and take your time in the tradition

If there’s one thing Mumbaikars have had enough of, it’s carrying all the stuff – handbags, wallets, umbrellas, tiffin bags – while surviving the overcrowded trains, metros, and peak-hour traffic. Out of the never-ending list of things to carry in your daily commute, you can strike one item off the list: the Mumbai Metro pass.  Mumbai Metro One has now launched India’s first metro pass which you can purchase, issue, and use entirely through WhatsApp. This digital pass can be accessed by commuters on the Versova-Andheri-Ghatkopar corridor – Mumbai Metro One’s 11.4-km Blue Line. Instead of carrying a physical pass, daily commuters can access their travel pass digitally – plus add it to Google or Apple Wallets – minus apps or waiting in long queues for a physical pass.  Two types of Mumbai Metro One WhatsApp passes Promoted by Reliance Infrastructure, this initiative offers two options: Trip Pass A Mumbai Metro One trip pass allows travellers to buy a predefined number of journeys in advance – and they’ll remain valid until used. This eliminates the need to buy individual tickets for each journey. Store Value Pass The Mumbai Metro One store value pass is more of a digital wallet – load money onto it and let the amount get deducted automatically after each journey. The balance can be topped up digitally whenever required, similar to how the Delhi Metro passes work.  This initiative comes after Mumbai Metro One’s WhatsApp ticketing service was first introduced in November 2022 for

Long waits at the boarding gate and delayed flights must have tested your patience, ending in you doomscrolling or watching something – or scrambling through your credit cards to get a peek of the multi-cuisine menu at the lounge.  You might want to know your boarding pass comes with another option: Flybrary, a free library for passengers. Flybrary is an initiative launched by Bakul Foundation in collaboration with Airports Authority of India – with Bhubaneswar’s Biju Patnaik International Airport becoming the first participant in February last year. This programme allows passengers to browse and borrow books, read them at the airport, and also take them along for the journey – all without paying a single rupee.   Over 60 airports across India now have Flybrary shelves at the arrival or departure areas – Bhubaneswar airport has them in both. This also includes smaller airports like Pune, Srinagar, Chandigarh, Patna, Chennai, Leh, Jaipur, Lucknow, Ahmedabad, Ranchi, Bhuj, Darbhanga, Kullu-Manali, Prayagraj and Amritsar, and more. From departure gates to reading nooks The arrivals and departure areas of airports offer shelves stocked with books in English, Hindi, and regional languages – including fiction, non-fiction, self-help titles, children’s books, and magazines. Yes, these shelves are meant to be actually used, not merely admired while you look out for a charging point.  The system is simple: pick a book, read it or carry it along for the journey, and put it back on the

Mumbai's ever-expanding roadway network just got a new addition. The much-awaited four-lane elevated connector – Santacruz-Chembur Link Road (SCLR) Phase 2 – opened to motorists on August 13. And well, the traffic simply relocated. The road links Bharat Nagar, Kurla, BKC and Vakola, promising better connectivity to the Western Express Highway. But as vehicles began piling into the new corridor, congestion built up almost immediately at Valmiki Nagar and NABARD junction. The project was meant to ease traffic between Kala Nagar and Vakola while offering a faster link to WEH. On day one, though, it reportedly got very crowded at BKC's NABARD junction and along Valmiki Nagar Road, particularly where the elevated stretch descends and merges into WEH traffic. The spillover soon reached the Kurla side too. The city's newest bottleneck For anyone who's ever stood on a road corner willing an auto to appear, the difference is hard to miss. A journey from NABARD to Bandra Colony Metro Station on Aqua Line 3, which used to take five minutes, now takes ten to fifteen. And this is apparently just the warm-up. Not everyone's caught on to the new route yet, and traffic police expect things to get worse before they get better as more commuters discover it. What's next for Mumbai's transport While SCLR Phase 2 settles into its new role in the city's transport network, another major project has joined the queue: the Thane-Borivali Twin Tunnel. The Maharashtra government recently launched a seco

Chembur Metro station is now open, giving commuters a new connection between Mumbai’s metro, suburban rail and monorail networks. The station was inaugurated on August 13 as part of Metro Line 2B (Yellow Line) and sits around 200 metres from Chembur railway station and 100 metres from the V N Purav Marg Monorail station. The new station comes as Mumbai’s metro network is set for a major expansion, with around 60 to 70km of new lines across the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) expected to become operational this year. For commuters, that means more ways to get around the city without battling its notorious traffic or squeezing onto overcrowded local trains. What is Chembur Metro station connected to? Chembur Metro station is part of Metro Line 2B, also known as the Yellow Line. Its location makes it particularly useful for commuters switching between different modes of public transport, with Chembur railway station around 200 metres away and V N Purav Marg Monorail station around 100 metres away. With the addition of Chembur Metro station, the operational section of Metro Line 2B has six stations in total: Diamond Garden, BSNL Metro, Shivaji Chowk, Mandkhurd, Mandale and Chembur. Which other Mumbai Metro projects were inaugurated? The other three projects inaugurated yesterday are the Metro Line 2B extension from Diamond Garden to Chembur Naka, the Santacruz Chembur Link Road (SCLR) to Western Express Highway, plus the launch of TBM Arjuna for the Thane-Borivali Twin Tunnel pr

It's time to clear your November calendar. DGTL India is back with its sixth edition –  hitting Mumbai and Bengaluru – giving India’s clubbing crows another reason to postpone their sensible weekend plans.  For the 2026 edition, the electronic music festival will take over Fort’s The Ballard Pier in Mumbai and The LaLiT Ashok in Bengaluru’s Seshadripuram on November 13 and 14.  For anyone who assumes a playlist is best experienced at a thousand watts, DGTL India is basically a loud love letter to techno music. The festival has built a reputation for bringing global electronic music while giving homegrown artists room to shine. While continuing with the formula, DGTL India has announced an exciting lineup bringing everything in between – including doses of pulsating house and hypnotic techno.  DGTL 2026: A lineup packed with electro heavyweights  For DGTL India 2026, the lineup gets an interesting addition with russian producer Vladimir Dubyshkin performing, with Colyn, BIIANCO, Nox Vahn, Blu Attic, Nicky Elisabeth and Kibo joining, making this year a seriously stacked bill for electronic music fans. Kraviz – no stranger to big festival stages – will bring a genre-blurring techno sound to India again. Meanwhile, Bodzin, popular for his atmospheric, melodic approach, and Dubyshkin, with hypnotic music, add to the schedule. And the lineup keeps getting more interesting.  In the Mumbai lineup, expect BIIANCO, Blu Attic, Colyn, KIBO, Nicky Elisabeth, Nina Kraviz, Nox Vahn, Paralle

Folks in Mumbai, if you assumed that your Blinkit order arrives from a spotless little grocery wonderland, FDA’s recent food-safety crackdown might have you think thrice. The Maharashtra Food and Drug Administration (FDA) suspended the food licence of the commerce facility's Blink Malad West outlet after uncovering an alarming list of hygiene and storage violations during an inspection that took place on August 7 as part of its wider-state crackdown on food safety. What did the FDA find at Blinkit’s Malad West facility? The FDA officials found widespread cockroach infestation at the Malad outlet, along with large numbers of insects on store fruits and vegetables. Additionally, the inspections also found expired and damaged products along with tampered packages in the cold room. They also found non-compliance with FEFO and FIFO practices – the food storage rules which stipulate that older or soon-to-expire products are sold before the newer stock. It's not a kind of storage system you would want when the groceries are delivered at lightning speed. Personal hygiene issues and more If you think hygiene practices and storage rules were the only issues, you haven’t seen the bigger picture yet. During the inspection at the Blinkit Malad West outlet, the FDA also flagged insufficient pest control, a poor waste management system, and lapses in food handlers’ personal hygiene. Officials found inappropriately maintained checkups and health records of its staff, and the protective equi

Maharashtra’s sky may get a little more starry. Udmal, a tribal village in Nashik, Surgana district, is set to become the state’s first officially certified Dark Sky Community. The district administration sanctioned ₹42.1 lakh – under District Annual Tribal Sub-Plan (DATSP) – for a project to protect its pristine night skies and develop astro-tourism. The project’s aim is simple: reduce light pollution, promote astronomy tourism and create sustainable livelihood opportunities for the local tribal community.  This initiative comes after Udmal’s gram sabha passed a resolution – under the Panchayats (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act aka PESA – to curb light pollution and introduce scientifically planned outdoor lighting. This ensures that the village’s lights are smarter and well-directed and are less disruptive to the night sky. Udmal’s in the process of getting certified by DarkSky International as Maharashtra’s first official Dark Sky Community.   What’s more in the project? Implemented in collaboration with NGO Astronera, the project will include a night sky quality assessment with a responsible lighting system and awareness campaigns, along with technical training for the local tribal youth. The district administration hopes for this initiative to turn into a model for community-led conservation and an addition to the astro-tourism destinations. Udmal is among several locations identified by Maharashtra astro-tourism development. It is a part of Vikasit Maharashtra 2047, a

Seedhe Maut is heading to Mumbai! This time, the iconic duo's coming to town for Royal Enfield GRRR Nights X Underground, bringing a high-voltage live show to the city’s underground culture circuit.  The Delhi-based hip-hop duo – Siddhant Sharma (stage name Calm) and Abhijay Negi (stage name Encore ABJ) – will take centre stage at the motor vehicle event. The hip-hop duo recently stopped in Mumbai in July this year as a part of India Rising: Road to EWC, headlining the entertainment segment alongside a gaming and esports programme.  Being popular for their rapid-fire flows with punchy productions and unapologetically high-energy, Seedhe Maut have built a fan following that extends beyond the country’s hip-hop underground. Whether you’ve listened to Nanchaku and Namastute or any of the duo’s recent tracks, you could imagine how their live sets are gonna be.   Not just a regular music gig GRRR Nights X Underground is designed around Royal Enfield’s larger exploration of machine culture and underground music, uniting artists and motorists operating outside the mainstream. It’s an event to add to the to-do list for someone who enjoys high-volume music and motor stunts. The venue – Richardson & Cruddas (1972) Ltd – is a former industrial complex, which is increasingly becoming one of the go-to places for large-scale music and cultural events. Expect a live DJ and hip-hop experience, see a range of custom bikes and supercars, and stunts by petrolheads in draga nd drift style, plus

It’s been seven years since we last saw Chet Faker perform in India. Now, you won’t have to wait much longer to see the Australian singer-songwriter live again. The multi-instrumentalist will return next month with the A Love For Strangers India Tour – a three-city tour where the artist will perform in Delhi on September 18, Mumbai on September 19, and Bengaluru on September 20. A Love For Strangers is Chet’s latest studio album and his first full-length record in five years, released this February. Even though the official setlist remains under wraps, don’t be surprised to hear fan favourites – Gold and Talk is Cheap and sing along. Plus, expect musical beats from his latest studio album. If the artist’s previous India show is anything to go by, then the electronic textures-meet-warm vocals will carry you through whatever the night ends up being! How to get the tickets? The tickets for Chet Faker's A Love For Strangers India Tour went live at 12pm on Friday, August 7, and you can now book via Skillbox India. The prices range from ₹2,999 to ₹3,499 for all the venues. About Chet Faker Popularly known for blending musical styles of alternative R&B and electronica, Chet Faker – real name Nick Murphy – built a loyal global following with his tracks like Gold, 1998, Drop the Game, and Talk Is Cheap. His soulful voice and atmospheric productions made him one of music festival favourites. Indians last saw him in 2019, when he performed in Pune at NH7 Weekender. He also made an impro

There's a new cafe-cum-bar on the block! This time it's actress Shilpa Shetty and her entrepreneur husband Raj Kundra's newest drop on the food and bev scene – Janu by Blondie, helmed by their Bastian Hospitality.   Janu, which opened to the public on July 15, isn't your regular cafe. For one, it transforms to a cocktail bar by evening. Secondly, it's pure vegetarian. (Read: no eggs in addition to no meat or poultry.)  The interiors involve a fairly desi spin on the modern cafe experience: mustard and terracotta hues, sculptured archways, patterned flooring, pendant lighting. It almost look slightly Moroccan. Morning coffee's supposed to transition into lunch, and then into pre-dinner drinks. And no Euro-centric menu here. You're getting chaat and dal. Experimental Menu and Drinks Ah, the contemporary twist on Indian classics. The food menu's got highlights like superfood salad sitting alongside palak patta chaat, raj kachori chaat, malaiyo, Zaffreno pasta and black dal with khameeri. And ever thought of your favourite Indian sweets being westernised? Here’s apple jalebi. Actually, there’s more: rasgulla matcha, rasgulla tiramisu latte. For some after-dark drinks, they're doing cool drinks inspired by all sorts of stuff, including the evil eye, apparently. The cafe also has a retail section for matcha and coffee to take home. More about the owners For Shipa and Raj – the founders of the insanely popular celebrity go-to place for seafood feasts and star-studded diners, Bastian