What to Do in Rio in September 2026
Rio de Janeiro · Culture
The first Semana de Arte do Rio closes today, the harp festival closes inside it with free concerts at the CCBB, and a Ney Matogrosso tribute takes the afternoon under the Arcos da Lapa. Here is the rest of September, day by day.
RIO DE JANEIRO — There is a great deal to do in Rio in September, and very little of it is written down anywhere in English. This guide is the monthly selection for people who live here rather than visit: what is on, where, when, what it costs, and why it might be worth crossing the city for. Most of the entries below are free.
Free daily brief — no card needed
Get every Entertainment story in one morning email
We build you a personalized brief around the topics you follow — free for 7 days. Love it? Your first month after that is US$1.
Rock in Rio and the MIMO weekend are behind us. What remains of the month is better distributed and cheaper: the first Semana de Arte do Rio closes today after pulling more than ten festivals under a single banner, and the harp festival inside it plays its last free concerts at the CCBB this afternoon. The day ends with a Ney Matogrosso tribute free under the Arcos da Lapa, and the month closes on the 30th at the CCBB. Plan accordingly.
Also running now
Until 27 September, Fridays and Saturdays 8pm, Sundays 7pm
A Pequena Prisão
Teatro Laura Alvim, Casa de Cultura Laura Alvim, Av. Vieira Souto 176, Ipanema · R$30–60 · 60 minutes · 16+
Nine performances only, after more than forty at the Teatro Poeira. Vino Fragoso plays over thirty characters in the first stage adaptation of Igor Mendes’s book on the Brazilian prison system. In Portuguese, and physical enough to follow without it.
One-stop reference
Company Intelligence
Every listed company in Latin America — financials, ownership and structure for 1,450+ companies across 26 exchanges, in one place.
Ask Rio Times
Straight answers about living in Brazil, from our reporting.
Answers are generated from Rio Times reporting only â every claim links to its source article.
Until 27 September
19º Niterói em Cena — International Theatre Festival
Theatro Municipal de Niterói and venues across the city · Free
Paulo Betti opens with his monologue Autobiografia Autorizada. What follows is free for seventeen days: companies from Angola, Georgia, Senegal, Mexico, Colombia, Paraguay and Peru, plus street theatre on the Praça João Saldanha. The street programme — clowning, acrobatics, the Peruvian Inka Clown Show — needs no language at all. Twenty minutes on the ferry from Praça Quinze.
Every Saturday, from midnight
Rock-blues at the Bukowski, the oldest rock bar in the city
Bar Bukowski, Rua Álvaro Ramos 270, Botafogo · R$39.90 at the door, free from 1am on the guest list
Botafogo’s Bukowski has been a rock house for decades and has just added a weekly blues night. The Charles Zanol Trio plays from midnight: Zanol has thirty years of blues, rockabilly and country behind him, with Pedro Leão on guitar and Dawton Mendes on drums and cajón. R$39.90 at the door includes a drink if you arrive before 10pm; R$99.90 gives you R$80 back in food and drink. Put your name on the guest list through @barbukowski and entry is free from 1am. The bar runs from 7pm to 5am.
To 27 September: the first Semana de Arte do Rio
Until 27 September
Semana de Arte do Rio — first edition
Museums, cultural centres, theatres and galleries across the city · Varies; much of it free
More than ten festivals come under one banner for the first time. In addition, there are exhibitions, street interventions and events in both public and private venues. Part of the Centro Cultural Justiça Federal programme falls inside it. If you have one week of Rio in September to give to the city’s art scene, make it this one.
24 to 27 September
Mostra Violas Brasileiras: Da Raiz ao Contemporâneo
Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, Centro · Free
Curated by Ivan Viela. The viola caipira is the instrument most foreigners never hear in Rio, because it belongs to the interior. Four days to correct that.
Saturday 26 and Sunday 27 September, 1pm and 3pm
The RioHarpFestival closes at the CCBB
Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, Rua Primeiro de Março 66, ground-floor rotunda and third-floor auditorium, Centro · Free
Harold Emert’s Camerata Viva Música takes the rotunda on the Saturday with the Venezuelan harpist Luis Castro. On the Sunday a bagpipe band closes the Latin American edition at 1pm — gaitas de foles under Maestro J. Paulo, which is not a sentence anyone expects to read about Rio — and Castro plays the last recital upstairs at 3pm with the Japanese musician Michinari Usuda.
Late September
Wednesday 23 September to 19 October
Soy Loco por Ti, Centroamérica — Central American cinema at the CCBB
Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, Rua Primeiro de Março 66, Centro · Free
Twenty-one features and shorts from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama, most of them never before screened in Brazil: the Locarno winner Tengo sueños eléctricos, the Cannes Caméra d’Or winner Nuestras Madres and La Llorona, the first Central American film nominated for a Golden Globe. A masterclass with curator Laura Bermúdez follows the opening on 26 September, and a Central American documentary debate on 30 September.
Sunday 27 September, 4pm
Festival Solar: a tribute to Ney Matogrosso
Praça dos Arcos, Arcos da Lapa · Free
Juliana Linhares, Linn da Quebrada, MC Tha, Tássia Reis and Xênia França take on the maestro’s repertoire — the most interesting free bill of the closing weekend, and the last big day of the Semana de Arte.
Tuesday 29 September, 6pm
Recorders and voices at the Forte de Copacabana
Museu do Exército, Forte de Copacabana, Praça Cel. Eugênio Franco 1, Posto 6 · Free
The recorder ensemble Fino Som and the vocal group Vozes Encanto play international classics, directed by Nelma Pataro. The fort sits on the rocks at the end of Copacabana beach and the view alone carries the evening.
Wednesday 30 September, 12.30pm
Mignone, 40 anos de saudade — the month closes at the CCBB
Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, Rua Primeiro de Março 66, 4th floor, Centro · Free
Five pianists mark forty years since the death of Francisco Mignone, one of the central figures of Brazilian concert music, with video testimony from the composer between the pieces. A good last free hour of Rio in September.
Until 4 December
The Jazz Room: a Sinatra and Armstrong tribute
Teatro Rival Petrobras, Rua Álvaro Alvim 33, Cinelândia · From R$100
The Rival’s long-running tribute evening — the American songbook with a live band in the Art Deco theatre off Cinelândia. The reliable option when nothing else on this list fits the night.
Opera and orchestras in Rio in September
September
Festival Oficina da Ópera
Theatro Municipal, Cinelândia, Centro · Price from the box office
The Municipal’s September strand brings Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana and Donizetti’s Il Campanello. The building alone justifies the ticket; it was modelled on the Paris Opera and finished in 1909.
Through September
21st RioHarpFestival and Música no Museu
Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil and partner venues · Mostly free
Twenty-three harp concerts run from 16 to 27 September inside the Semana de Arte, all of them free — at the CCBB, tickets are handed out at the box office from 9am on the day. They sit alongside the Música no Museu series, which is in its twenty-ninth year and puts classical music into museums, palaces and churches at no charge. The September dates are listed individually above: the CCBB on the 9th and the 30th, the Museu Nacional de Belas Artes on the 16th, the Palácio Tiradentes on the 18th, the Palácio São Clemente on the 26th and the Forte de Copacabana on the 29th. One of the best-value things in the city and almost unknown to new arrivals.
Free all month in Rio in September
Until 12 October
Vik Muniz — season extended
Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, Centro · Free
Brazil’s most internationally recognised living visual artist, in the show that has been held over. If you see one exhibition this month, this is the one to see.
2 September to 16 November
Amazônicas — Poéticas Femininas
Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, Centro · Free
Sissa Aneleh curates work by women from the North of Brazil. The reading is decolonial, and it foregrounds Afro-indigenous ancestry. Furthermore, the show uses virtual and augmented-reality elements.
September
African Cinema showcase
Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil cinemas, Centro · Free or low cost
Ten features and six contemporary shorts. Given how little African cinema reaches Brazilian screens, this is the rare chance.
Until late September
Coleção Ingá: Brasil Plural — final weeks
Centro Cultural Justiça Federal, Centro · Free
Around 200 works come from the Museu de História e Artes do Estado. Among them are Di Cavalcanti, Portinari, Goeldi and Mestre Guarany. The CCJF’s September programme also runs open-air cinema, short-film and Spanish-cinema seasons, choral concerts, flamenco, choro and indigenous music, literary workshops and two theatre productions — nearly all of it free.
Until 10 October, Tuesday to Saturday, midday to 7pm
Inefável Presença — nine painters from one Tijuca studio
Centro Cultural dos Correios, R. Visc. de Itaboraí 20, Centro · Free
Nine artists have shared a studio in Tijuca for seven years. Ayla de Oliveira curates the show, and also exhibits in it. The group formed around a life-drawing class at the UFRJ fine arts school in 2017 and kept meeting on Monday evenings. Figurative painting, unfashionable for a while, now finding buyers.
Planning your Rio in September
Where we have not printed a ticket price, the organisers did not publish one — check with the venue before you travel. Programmes at the CCBB, the Theatro Municipal and the CCJF change during Rio in September, so confirm on the day.
This guide to Rio in September runs monthly, and returns in October. If you run a venue, a gallery or a production in Rio and would like to be considered, write to the newsroom with the date, the time, the address and the ticket price. Those four things are what get an event into the list.
More on living here: our Rio de Janeiro coverage and Expats in Brazil.
