Jan 19-25: Wednesdays Jazz, British Shorts, CTM Festival, and more!
Things to do in Berlin - Jan 19!
As many of you noticed, there was no newsletter last week and this one is landing on Monday morning instead of the usual Sunday at 6pm. I ended up in a situation with no internet for a full week. It was unplanned. Just… no connection. It was an interesting experience.
With nothing to scroll, I paid more attention to my surroundings, felt calmer, and actually connected with the people around me instead of my phone. Less background anxiety. More presence. More real life.
It made me think that I might start doing little “tech cleanses” from time to time here in Berlin, even when the internet is available.
What’s in store for you this week:
🎷 YSY Wednesday Jazz
💃 British Shorts 2026
🎼 CTM Festival
🎻 Echoes of Two Worlds
🎭 Último Helecho
👠 RE/CLAIMED — Your Atypical Fashion Show
✍ Halb Kunst / Halb Business
🎬 Nuremberg
1. YSY Wednesday Jazz
Every Wednesday, YSY Bar hosts a live music series built around signature cocktails, thoughtful mocktails, and a rotating lineup of local musicians, creating a relaxed space for both casual listeners and performers to meet through a shared love of live music and a well run venue, with each week bringing new artists and a setting that feels personal rather than generic. More info.
💵 Donation Based
📅 21 Jan (Wed), 19:30
📍 YSY
2. British Shorts 2026
British Shorts presents a selection of recent short films from the United Kingdom and Ireland. The festival offers screenings across multiple venues in Berlin, showcasing diverse storytelling and filmmaking approaches from British and Irish creators. Each program features different themes and styles, providing audiences with a range of cinematic experiences. More info.
💵 ≈€11
📅 23 Jan (Fri) - 28 Jan (Wed)
📍 Various Venues
3. CTM Festival
The CTM Festival for Adventurous Music and Art presents experimental, contemporary, and electronic music across multiple Berlin venues. The 27th edition explores the relationship between dissonance and resonance through a program that includes doom, drone, experimental rap, hyperpop, noise, and bass-heavy sounds. Venues include Berghain, Radialsystem, Oxi, Silent Green, and Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz. Featured artists include Emma Ruth Rundle, Dengue Dengue Dengue, Blawan, Sarah Davachi, and others. The program.
💵 Cost Varies
📅 23 Jan (Fri) - 01 Feb (Sun)
📍 Various venues
4. Echoes of Two Worlds
The Berlin Academy of American Music chamber orchestra presents a contemporary program at Konzerthaus Berlin that brings together new works and recent premieres by Jonathan Dawe, Missy Mazzoli, Lawrence Wilde, Ursula Mamlok, and Billy Childs, led by conductor Garrett Keast with oboist Juan Pechuan Ramirez, tracing a musical conversation between New York and Berlin where established voices and new ideas meet through symphonies, concertos, and chamber writing shaped by both tradition and experimentation. More info.
💵 €22
📅 24 Jan (Sat)
5. Último Helecho
“Último helecho” is a stage work by Nina Laisné and François Chaignaud with singer Nadia Larcher that brings together music, voice, and dance, where Baroque traditions meet South American folklore and mythology. Following their earlier collaboration “Romances inciertos”, this new project focuses on shared history and fluid identity, with Chaignaud singing and dancing, and Larcher stepping into the folk dances of her native Argentina for the first time. Six musicians with roots in both Baroque and folklore perform live, shaping a score that moves from quiet, symbolic scenes to energetic dance sections, and reflects on the links between Europe and South America through stories, movement, and song. More info.
💵 €17+
📅 24 Jan (Sat) - 25 Jan (Sun)
Submitted Events
6. RE/CLAIMED — Your Atypical Fashion Show
RE/CLAIMED is a hybrid event where fashion, art, and activism come together to look at responsible fashion through upcycled garments, live sound, and installations, showing how clothing with a past can take on new meaning, while the runway and exhibition spaces examine textile waste, the systems behind it, and practical ways to change them, guiding the audience through a sequence of scenes that move from a sound based opening reflecting the current state of the industry to presentations that connect design, politics, and emotion into a shared conversation about the future of fashion. More info.
💵 €11
📅 22 Jan (Thu)
7. Halb Kunst / Halb Business
halbkunst, a Berlin-based collective of four international women, invites people to take over the office through collective drawing and live performance. With office drag, pens, and controlled chaos, the event transforms bureaucracy into ritual and the daily grind into shared artistic release. More info.
💵 Free
📅 24 Jan (Sat)
Movie Suggestion:
I have not had the chance to try new restaurants recently, so for this edition and the next few, I will share a movie I watched and think is worth your time. Then we will get back to our usual restaurant picks.
Nuremberg (⭐4/5)
A WWII psychiatrist evaluates Nazi leaders before the Nuremberg trials, growing increasingly obsessed with understanding evil as he forms a disturbing bond with Hermann Göring.
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