With the first fortnight of September already over, summer is definitely starting to fall behind. Days without schedules, moments by the sea and holidays are nothing more than a memory, while afternoons shorten and routine regains its place. September makes us run again: between schedules, obligations and an agenda that is filling up, the city regains its usual rhythm.
However, high temperatures still offer an excuse to extend summer a little longer. This weekend's cultural agenda also invites us to take advantage of this last truce before autumn: saying goodbye to the music and big festivals season with Festival · B, exploring Barcelona with artisan ice cream, discovering new exhibitions and contemporary art spaces, eating on the street or entering corners of the city that usually remain outside the daily gaze are just some of the proposals offered by the agenda from September 17 to 20. All in all, on a weekend that combines the last echoes of summer with the start of the new cultural season.
Saying goodbye to the season of big music festivals
From September 17 to 19, at Parc del Fòrum
When it seemed that summer was already leaving behind the era of big festivals and concert nights, Festival·B still offers a last gasp of the season. From September 17 to 19, Parc del Fòrum will once again host three days of concerts that claim, as its name suggests, the B-side of the music scene. A label that, over the years, has been blurring: some of the artists who have passed through its stages as alternative names have ended up becoming regular figures on big billboards.
This is the case for a good part of this edition's program. Yung Beef, Rusowsky, Guitarricadelafuente or Mushka are some of the names that, despite still maintaining a certain alternative aura, are becoming less so. The lineup also includes Maria Arnal, La Plazuela, Sanguijuelas del Guadiana, mvrk, D. Valentino, Claudio Montana, Cupido, Jimena Amarillo, Juicy Bae or Leïti, among many others. More than thirty artists who bring to the stage a sample of what is happening right now in urban, alternative and emerging music and who already allow us to start tracing the route through the different stages according to the schedules.
Exploring Barcelona with artisan ice creams
From September 15 to 20, at 15 ice cream parlors in the city
If Festival·B allows us to extend the festival season a little longer, there are other more obvious ways to continue feeling the essence of summer. The most obvious? Eating ice cream. And these days the city offers the perfect excuse: from September 15 to 20, fifteen ice cream parlors in Barcelona are participating for the first time in Gelato Week, an initiative that proposes exploring the city through its artisan ice creams.
The proposal is organized into three itineraries —Gràcia, Diagonal and Verdaguer; Esquerra de l’Eixample and Sants; and Ciutat Vella and Poblenou— and each establishment has prepared an exclusive flavor for the occasion. With a ticket of 12 euros for a tub or 16 for a cone, you can taste up to five ice creams from establishments such as Delacrem, Bibì e Bibò, Pot or Gocce di latte. Among the special flavors that can be tasted are ice creams such as honey and mató, cream with ratafia and carquinyolis, or chocolate with olive oil and sea salt.
Warming up for La Mercè through its 48 posters
From September 15 to October 12, at the Pati del Museu Frederic Marès
A week before Barcelona's main festival, La Mercè is already starting to appear throughout the city. This year, however, the festival invites you to delve into it through an unusual element: the 'Moltes Mercès' represented in the various posters. The courtyard of the Frederic Marès Museum brings together the 48 official posters of the main festival, from 1979 to 2026. Almost fifty years of images that allow us to see how the festival has changed, but also how aesthetics and the way of representing Barcelona have changed.
Behind these images, signatures such as those of Antoni Tàpies, Javier Mariscal, Jaume Plensa, Malika Favre or Cinta Vidal can be recognized, among many other artists. For those who want to dedicate some time to it or prefer to do it from home, the exhibition has also been turned into a book published by Barcelona Llibres that collects the entire collection and turns the Mercè posters into a particular visual memory of the city.
Visiting a metro station that Barcelona never opened
From September 18 to 20
Between the busy stations of Sagrada Família and Sant Pau | Dos de Maig there is a secret stop that most passengers have never seen. Not because it is hidden or because it is part of a line still under construction, but because all metro trains pass it by: it is the Gaudí station, which was never inaugurated and which today is part of the ghost stops of the Barcelona metro network. This weekend, however, the space will cease to be inaccessible and can be visited from the inside due to European Mobility Week.
The visit to Gaudí is just one of the doors that TMB will open these days. You can also visit the Santa Eulàlia repair workshops, the oldest in the network and in operation since 1922, and those in the Logistics Activities Zone, with more than 10,000 square meters dedicated to train maintenance. And, to complete the journey through the history of Barcelona transport, TMB's historic buses will be on display on Passeig de Gràcia on September 18 and 19.
El Born turns the street into a large table
From September 18 to 20, at Pla de Palau
Summer is also synonymous with outdoor plans and summer dinners in the street. And, although September already brings us back to routine, El Born still wants to take advantage of the last days of good weather. From September 18 to 20, Pla de Palau will become an extension of the neighborhood's restaurants with a new edition of Born Street Food.
Sixteen restaurants will bring dishes designed for street eating, from botifarra and smash burgers to surf and turf noodles, arròs brut, focaccia or cochinita tacos. Among the participants will be some festival regulars, such as 1881 by Sagardi, Cadaqués, Oaxaca or Ikoya, and four new additions: Espai Puntal, Bar Super, Arcano and David Barroso, from Mercat de Santa Caterina.
More space for contemporary art in Poble-sec
Carrer de Lafont, 24 (Sants-Montjuïc)
An art gallery can be much more than a place to hang paintings. Homesession has been working in this direction in Poble-sec for years, combining exhibitions with artist residencies, project production and creation spaces. Now it takes another step and opens a new 250 square meter space on Carrer de Lafont, also in the neighborhood, which allows it to expand this way of working.
The first exhibition presented there is It is there where I go: echoes of what was and did not return, an exhibition that reviews Homesession's trajectory through works that artists have produced during their programs. Nineteen artists participate with pieces that now reunite and establish new dialogues in this new space. Among the names participating are Carolina Cordeiro, Daniel de la Barra, Daniela Ortiz, Eulàlia Rovira, Joan Pallé or Paul Maheke.
Barcelona becomes a large open-air bookstore
From September 18 to 27, on Passeig de Lluís Companys
When we think of the great literature festival in Barcelona, we usually refer to Sant Jordi: crowded streets, red roses and book stalls all over the city. September, however, also hides another way of celebrating books, more relaxed but also more extensive: for ten days, La Setmana del Llibre en Català occupies Passeig de Lluís Companys and turns this space into a meeting point for authors, editors, booksellers and readers of Catalan literature.
In this year's edition, with the motto "Much to see, much to read," up to 282 publishers will participate, spread among 98 stalls and 9,000 square meters. An extensive program of presentations, conversations, literary routes, family activities, and a book battle in the purest freestyle style complete a proposal that goes far beyond the stalls. And authors will not be missing either: Llucia Ramis, Care Santos, Empar Moliner, Ramon Solsona, Màrius Serra, or Biel Mesquida are some of the names that will be seen on Passeig de Lluís Companys.
Singing The Sound of Music again
Until September 27, at Teatre Apolo
Even if we haven't revisited it in a long time, a few notes are enough to suddenly return to the mountains of Austria. To Maria, to Captain Von Trapp's seven children, and to songs that have crossed decades and generations. The Sound of Music, the musical that Julie Andrews brought to cinema in 1965, now returns to the stages of Barcelona. Now, the Teatre Apolo revisits this classic by Theatre Properties for only two weeks, from September 17 to 27.
Actress Silvia Villaú takes on the role of Maria and also directs the production, while Carlos Benito plays Captain Von Trapp. The story is once again set in Austria in the late 1930s, with a set design that recreates that era of the late 1930s.
Chamber music plays among modernist buildings
From September 15 to 23, at the Sant Pau Modernist Site and the Petit Palau of the Palau de la Música
a way of understanding concerts: closer, more intimate, and without the distance of large auditoriums. From September 15 to 23, the Sant Pau Festival champions this proximity with six recitals that will divide its second edition between the Sant Pau Modernist Site and the Petit Palau.
The program covers different composers and eras, with proposals ranging from Max Richter and Shostakovich to Prokofiev and Brahms. This Saturday, September 19, precisely, the latter will be the protagonist of a concert that will culminate with his Piano Quartet No. 1.
The abstract world of Romà Vallès
Until January 17, at Espais Volart (Fundació Vila Casas)
Before abstraction became a fully consolidated language in the art world, Romà Vallès was already seeking his own way to move away from figurative painting. Over six decades of his career, the Barcelona artist explored color, matter, and composition in a constant search for an increasingly abstract horizon. Now, the Espais Volart of the Fundació Vila Casas trace this trajectory with an exhibition that allows following its evolution from the first experiments to the latest stages.
The exhibition also recovers a little-known but significant relationship: that which Vallès maintained with Josep Maria de Sucre, a singular figure of the Catalan avant-gardes. Both shared concerns and friendship, and even coincided in the project of a contemporary art museum in Barcelona promoted with Alexandre Cirici-Pellicer and Rodríguez-Aguilera.
What if your life were a play?
From September 18, at Espai Texas
What if that anecdote you always tell your friends ended up becoming a scene? What if a breakup, a disastrous vacation, or an unexpected encounter suddenly transformed into the plot of a play worthy of being performed on stage? This is the premise of Biopic, the Impro Barcelona show that arrives at Espai Texas to turn a real life into a stage story that will only exist for one night.
It all starts with a spectator willing to tell a few episodes of their life. From there, four performers gather characters, memories, and situations and transform them on the fly into a kind of theatrical film. There is no script or prepared story: and each performance becomes a unique show.
Barcelona inaugurates the contemporary art season
From September 17 to 20, at the 25 galleries in Barcelona and L'Hospitalet de Llobregat
While we are still looking for excuses to extend summer, art galleries are already starting to think about the new cultural season. From September 17 to 20, the Barcelona Gallery Weekend once again marks the beginning of the artistic year with 38 exhibitions in 25 galleries in Barcelona and L'Hospitalet.
There is no single theme that runs through the 38 exhibitions, but there are some concerns that appear again and again, such as identity, displacement, or memory. The proposals also do not share a single language: painting, drawing, photography, installation, textile, or light coexist in a program that allows jumping from one space to another and discovering very different ways of understanding art.