The best things to do in Miami this week

Every Wednesday night, Wynwood's PASTA opens its kitchen for a hands-on pasta-making class led by head chef Luis Jose. The restaurant — brought to life by acclaimed Peruvian chefs Juan Manuel Umbert and Janice Buraschi — blends traditional Italian technique with Peruvian influence, and the class reflects exactly that: you'll mix, knead and shape your own pasta before sitting down to eat what you made. A welcome cocktail, appetizer and dessert round out the evening.

The Balloon Museum's globe-trotting "Pop Air" exhibition has landed at Mana Wynwood, turning one of the neighborhood's most cavernous spaces into an entire immersive environment dedicated to inflatable art. The show has already toured Rome, Paris, New York, and LA, and the Wynwood footprint gives these installations more room than they've had anywhere. You're meant to wander, touch, and interact—through a geometric inflatable labyrinth, a suspended sphere installation that responds to movement, a room where balloons swirl in controlled tornadoes, and a massive LED-lit butterfly you can power yourself by pedaling. The standout is Hyperstudio's luminous projection-filled ecosystem of swings and shooting stars. Budget more time than you think you'll need; you'll want to stop and appreciate the scale of everything after filling your camera roll with selfies. 

Kick off the weekend with laughs, live music, and local art at the Comedy Vybez Festival on Friday, July 24, from 4 to 10pm at the Miami Beach Bandshell. Billed as the largest Black stand-up comedy festival in South Florida, the event is part of the four-day Miami Takeover celebration and features a stacked lineup of Black comedy veterans and rising stars, including Tony Woods, Ashima Franklin, and Joe Clair, the former host of BET's Rap City. The fun doesn't stop at stand-up: enjoy live R&B performances, a soulful Toni Braxton tribute by singer Latasha Bla'q, and an immersive art activation by Miami-based muralist Rodney Royal.

Summer in Miami is for melting away any stress, and self-care is never more accessible than during Miami Spa Months. Whether your skin is feeling a little parched from the heat, all those Pilates classes have you pining for a massage, or you’ve been meaning to try out that cute new medspa down the street, July and August are prime time to get out and explore all of the top Miami spas participating in the annual summertime promotion.  Some of the best hotel spas in Miami Beach, Brickell and Sunny Isles have signed on this year, along with boutique medspas and facial spas from down south in Coral Gables up north to Aventura. They’re curating special treatment menus for the occasion, with luxurious experiences priced at $109, $159 or $199. Beyond all the amazing massages, facials and body scrubs, most of these spas sweeten the deal even further with access to amenities like steam rooms, saunas, resort pools and beaches, plus complimentary parking, welcome drinks and more.  Availability varies, but a majority of the Miami Spa Months deals are offered daily. Just be sure to book in advance, as the best time slots tend to get snapped up quickly. For a full day of discounted indulgence, get acquainted with the Miami Spice Restaurant Months, which overlap with Spa Months in August. 

Gilded and crimson-draped Faena Theater is the ideal venue to experience OBSESSION, a new original production presented by Faena Live in collaboration with the Quixotic performance art collective. Nestled in Mid-Beach, the cabaret-style show blends live vocals, choreography and cinematic storytelling to take guests on a seductive 1.5-hour journey complete with lasers, projected visuals and plenty of theatrical haze. Helmed by emcee Sophia Bollman—whose credits include a stint on NBC's The Voice as part of Team Miley Cyrus and backup singing in Beyoncé's iconic Coachella performances—Faena Theater's 2026 headlining production also features the energetic stylings of Principal Violin and Musical Lead Kostia Lucky. Tickets start at $100 per person and include show admission only (food and beverages sold separately). Guests must be 18 or older, with a valid ID required upon arrival.

The largest presentation of Jean-Michel Basquiat's work ever mounted in Florida opens at PAMM on June 25. Basquiat: Figures, Signs, Symbols brings together ten works from the collection of Kenneth C. Griffin, including Untitled (1982), the painting that sold for $110.5 million at Sotheby's and reportedly changed hands again for $200 million in 2024. But the exhibition is less interested in the market mythology around Basquiat than in the work itself, concentrating on his portraiture, his use of text and coded language, and the layered visual vocabulary he built from world history, Renaissance anatomy, hip-hop, and the street culture of 1980s New York. As the son of a Puerto Rican mother and Haitian father, Basquiat's relationship to migration and cultural hybridity lands with particular resonance in Miami. Curated by PAMM director Franklin Sirmans, who has been central to the posthumous study of Basquiat's work for over two decades. On view through June 2027.

The Betsy has hosted live jazz ten times a week on Ocean Drive for years, and this summer's programming leans into Miami's multicultural identity in a real way. The anchor is the Overtown Jazz Legacy Series, which honors Miami's golden-age jazz era. On July 10, resident vocalist and Miami's "first lady of jazz" Carole Ann Taylor performs with the Angel Perez Trio, featuring Juilliard graduates Renée Cruz on bass and Brandon Lee Lewis on drums. The following night, July 11, the Bruno Tzinas Quartet takes over — led by Miami-born Manhattan School of Music trombonist Bruno Tzinas and joined by pianist and Miami Dade College educator Jim Gasior and Juilliard-bound bassist Sofia Longa, in a program curated by Nicole Yarling in partnership with WDNA Radio. Every Tuesday through the summer, Grammy-winning pianist Tal Cohen performs at the Piano Bar as part of the Piano Masters & New Voices mentorship series alongside pianist Martin Bejerano, connecting rising Frost School of Music students with established performers. The free outdoor Promenade Concert Series continues in Lummus Park on August 2 with vocalist Amy Arlo and Jaui Schneider, and August 9 with the Assel Jean-Pierre Trio. All events are free and open to the public. For a full rundown of daily programming, check out The Betsey's cultural calendar. 

The World Cup is happening in Miami, and Wynwood is fielding its own culinary teams. The Wynwood International Food Festival runs June and July alongside the tournament, turning the neighborhood into a two-month global food trail with 20-plus restaurants each representing a different nation. The entry point is a physical passport — $25, available online or at partner locations — that gets stamped at each stop, with exclusive tasting items priced at $10 or $15 per restaurant. If you upgrade to a shot glass package, you get a welcome shot everywhere you go. The lineup spans Cuba, Japan, Korea, Lebanon, France, India, Italy, Mexico, and the United States, with familiar Wynwood spots like Cerveceria la Tropical, Ghee, Lira Beirut, and Fra Diavolo among the participants. Collect every stamp and you unlock exclusive prizes, not to mention bragging rights for saying you've basically eaten your way through Wynwood. 

If your Netflix algorithm includes Wild Wild Country and Wayward, the Museum of Sex Miami's new exhibition was made for you. Utopia: Three Centuries of Sexuality in American Cults and Communes, curated by filmmaker and publisher Jodi Wille, traces how over 20 American intentional communities — from the Shakers to the Rajneesh movement to the Source Family — used sexuality, spirituality, and art to build alternative visions of society across 300 years. More than 300 artworks, photographs, films, garments, and rare artifacts make up the two-story show, nationally recognized by Artforum and the Brooklyn Rail. On view through November.

Two simultaneous exhibitions at the Lowe Art Museum on the University of Miami campus make up the most comprehensive presentation of Afro-Cuban art ever mounted. El Pasado Mio/My Own Past, organized by Harvard's Afro-Latin American Research Institute and expanded for its Miami run, brings together more than 81 works by 44 Cuban artists of African descent spanning two centuries, including nine paintings by Wifredo Lam and works by eleven female artists being exhibited together for the first time. The show restores artists who were deliberately erased from the Cuban art historical record, placing obscured figures like Pastor Argudin, Maria Ariza, and Tony Ximenez alongside better-known names like Agustin Cardenas and Maria Magdalena Campos Pons. The companion exhibition, Afrocubanismo: Highlights from the Ramón and Nercys Cernuda Collection, traces the cultural movement that emerged in the 1930s, when a generation of Cuban artists began centering the country's African roots at a moment when most of Cuban society had actively suppressed them. The tension in that moment is part of what makes the show complex: some of these artists are seen as co-opting a history that wasn't theirs; others as genuinely trying to re-imagine Cuba through its African roots and Afro-religious forms. On view through September 12. General admission is free.