Latest Events in Madrid(January Updated)

From Carnival Friday to Ash Wednesday, Madrid is immersed year after year in a celebration of identity, filled with parties, parades, musical performances, and other vibrant activities. The 2026 Carnival will take place from February 14th to 18th. Don't forget to try the Carnival sardines! The Carnival celebrations, as in previous years, conclude with the "burial of the sardines" ceremony. Goya himself depicted this scene in one of his paintings. People put their finery back in the crates, the noisy horns cease, and the unassuming little fish is solemnly buried, thus ending the celebrations.

Ready, set, go! The biggest and most spectacular Half Marathon in Spain returns! With 21,097 meters throughout the center of Spain’s capital city, Madrid Half Marathon (Madrid Medio Maratón) is the largest one in the country and one of the most outstanding in Europe with more than 24,000 participants. The Madrid Half Marathon will take you to all the most iconic landmarks in the city (Gran Vía, Puerta del Sol, Neptuno, Cibeles...), with start and finish line of the race at the Paseo de Recoletos. Founded in the 9th century, Madrid has this special old European city charm. It is full of colors and the sun is shining almost all year long. Whether you’re into history, art museums, sightseeing or partying, you will find everything you’re looking for in the Spanish capital city, so you can enjoy some time off when you’re not running. Prepare yourself and get your running shoes ready, you don’t want to miss out on the opportunity to discover the beautiful and historical city of Madrid from a runner’s point of view!

The Art Gallery of Cornelis van der Geest, a work by the Flemish painter Willem van Haecht from the collection of the Rubenshuis in Antwerp, is now on temporary display in the Central Gallery of the Museo Nacional del Prado (Room 28) with the aim of celebrating the splendour of art in Flanders and its patronage by the Spanish royal family.

Andy Warhol's fascination with Jackson Pollock is well known; his obsession with having one of his works in his extensive art collection, as well as the relationship between his famous car crash series and the notorious accident that ended Pollock's life one night in August 1956. The Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza is organising an exhibition which brings together the work of these two key names of 20th century art, shown alongside that of other artists who were reconsidering issues relating to the new spatial strategies at this same time. These are two extraordinarily complex figures, seemingly very different but in fact united, like an entire generation of artists, by their interest in change, spatial issues and a fascination with large formats. The present opportunity to see the works in the galleries of the exhibition reveals that Jackson Pollock was not always an “abstract master”, nor was Warhol an artist solely occupied with dispassionate depictions of banal themes from popular culture. While maintaining figuration, in their own way both proposed revisiting the concept of space and its use as a place of concealment; both overturned the notion of the background and the figure, and both focused on an artistic project involving pictorial strategies which served them as camouflage. This exhibition project, which can be seen as autobiographical to some extent, focuses on two artists who worked on repetition, seriality and the move towards abstraction as a means to finding a place in the world in which they lived.

The main events take place in Usera, Madrid's vibrant Chinatown. Two highlights of the annual celebrations are the fireworks display at Prado Longo Park and the DJ performance at Usera's District Council Plaza. However, the most breathtaking event is undoubtedly the Chinese New Year parade. The parade transforms the streets of Usera into a vibrant spectacle, with people dressed in magnificent Chinese costumes enjoying live music, dragons and lions, and lanterns made by children – creating a magical atmosphere. The event also includes cultural performances, exhibitions, storytelling sessions, workshops, markets, shows, the Chinese temple fair at Plaza de España, the Madrid Spring Festival, the Spring Race, and the Chinese New Year Race.

The Museo Nacional del Prado houses the world's largest and most important collection of Rubens' works. Thanks to a generous gift from the Carlos de Ambreres Foundation, the Museo Nacional del Prado will exhibit Rubens's late masterpiece, The Martyrdom of St. Andrew, from now until 2026. The work, along with its original frame, is on display in Room 16B of the Villanueva Building. Rubens created this work during the same period as his decorative scheme for the "Plaza degli Torre."

A selection of works by Antonio Muñoz de Gran (1840-1924) is on display in Gallery 60 of the Villanueva building at the Prado National Museum, running until January 11, 2026. De Gran was one of the most original Spanish artists of the 19th century. The ten paintings on display (five of which have recently been restored) showcase the Valencian painter's rich subject matter, exquisite technique, and unique aesthetic vision. Adjacent to the exhibition are his acceptance speech, "On the Sincerity of Art," given upon his induction into the Academy of San Fernando in 1899, a painting donated to the museum, and a portrait of him by sculptor Miguel Blaise.

The Thyssen Bornemisza National Museum presents a selection of fifty masterpieces by Pablo Picasso and Paul Klee that belonged to the German dealer and collector Heinz Berggruen and are now part of the Berggruen Museum in Berlin. Heinz Berggruen (Berlin, 1914 - Paris, 2007) opened in 1950 a legendary art gallery in Paris, specializing in modern art, which for three decades had a prestigious clientele, including his friend Baron Thyssen-Bornemisza. From 1980, Berggruen devoted himself exclusively to expanding his select personal collection of 20th-century works and managed to assemble an extraordinary set that would be acquired by the German government in 2000. When the Museum Berggruen was created in the Charlottenburg neighborhood, as part of the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, the collector saw fulfilled his aspiration not only to preserve most of his works together for posterity, but also to be able to share his collection with the general public. In a way, this is a case similar to the one starring in Madrid by Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza a decade earlier. On the occasion of the renovation of its building, the Berggruen Museum has been organizing since 2022 a series of international exhibitions in Asia, Japan and China, and more recently in Europe, to show different proposals from the highlights of its collection. In the case of the presentation at the Thyssen Museum, the exhibition discourse proposes a constructive visual and intellectual dialogue between Heinz Berggruen's two favorite artists: Pablo Picasso and Paul Klee.

Juan Muñoz (1953–2001), one of Spain’s most influential contemporary artists, “returns” to the Museo del Prado, a place of inspiration that he frequently visited. Muñoz’s work reveals an ongoing conceptual relationship with Renaissance and Baroque painting with regard to the way in which he approached perspective, composition and staging.

The Museo del PradoandFundaciónBBVAare presentingan ambitious exhibitiondevotedto Anton Raphael Mengs (1728-1779), a key figure in the birth of Neoclassicism and one of the most influential artists of the 18thcentury. The exhibition offers adetailed analysisof his work, thought and legacy, inadialogue with the great masters of the past.