Rio de Janeiro City Hall launches Rio Art Week, which will bring together more than ten festivals in the city center.

The first edition takes place from September 16th to 27th, featuring exhibitions, urban interventions, and cultural activities - Press Release/Municipal Secretariat of Culture

Rio de Janeiro Mayor Eduardo Cavaliere presented, this Saturday (July 18th), the Rio Art Week, which will bring together more than ten festivals and artistic initiatives from the city in an integrated program. Coordinated by the Municipal Secretariat of Culture, the first edition will take place between September 16th and 27th, 2026, with exhibitions, urban interventions, and cultural activities in public and private spaces in the central region. The complete program will be released soon. The launch, at the Carlos Gomes Theater, also included the presence of the Municipal Secretary of Culture, Lucas Padilha, as well as cultural producers and artists.

For 12 days, museums, cultural centers, theaters, galleries, and other venues will host a program that brings together established projects from Rio de Janeiro's cultural scene and more recent festivals, encompassing different artistic languages. The aim is to expand the circulation of artists and audiences, value the city's tangible and intangible heritage, and strengthen the cultural economy.

"This is Rio's first Art Week, and its cultural policy has a very clear direction: the occupation of the city center. The entire city will be able to occupy the center with the most diverse languages: dance, choreography, visual arts, theater, cinema. Art Week will be a huge opportunity for artists and the cultural sector. It attracts tourists, generates jobs and income. That's what culture can represent, which goes far beyond identity, the message, the artistic and cultural element that shapes our country, our city, but also generates economic activity. We hope that Rio's Art Week will become one of the most important in the world," said Mayor Eduardo Cavaliere.

More than just concentrating cultural programming in a single period, Rio Art Week represents the convergence of different public policies developed by the City Hall for the sector. The initiative articulates actions to promote artistic production, support festivals and cultural institutions, train artists and audiences, preserve heritage, and foster cultural occupation of territories.

The Week also seeks to connect these policies with other strategic areas for the city, such as tourism, economic development, and urban planning. Through this integration, the City Hall intends to strengthen Rio de Janeiro's cultural ecosystem and expand its projection as a national and international reference in contemporary artistic production.

— Rio Art Week represents a new stage in the city's cultural policy. More than just holding a large event, we are structuring a permanent policy to strengthen festivals, cultural institutions, artistic groups, and the cultural occupation of the territory. It is a strategy that connects artistic production, heritage, tourism, and urban development to consolidate Rio as one of the main cultural capitals of the world — says the Municipal Secretary of Culture, Lucas Padilha.

In this edition, ten festivals have already been confirmed: Flup (Literary Festival of the Peripheries), Panorama Festival, Aquarius, ARUA Summit 2026, 7th International Circus Festival, Zózimo Bulbul Black Cinema Meeting, Mimo Festival, ArtRio, Arte de Portas Abertas and CasaCor.

An integrated cultural policy

Rio Art Week emerges as a way to reclaim the tradition and memory of the city, which for over a century has hosted events that have marked Brazilian culture, such as the National Exhibition (1908), the International Exhibition of the Centenary of Independence (1922), the first edition of Rock in Rio (1985), and the first ArtRio (2011), in addition to Todo Mundo no Rio, held since 2025.

The platform is the result of a series of actions developed by the Municipal Department of Culture to strengthen the cultural production chain and expand public access to artistic production in the city.

Among these initiatives is the call for proposals to support private cultural institutions, which expands the programming capacity of cultural spaces in different regions of the city and strengthens their presence in these areas.

This strategy also includes calls for proposals to support artistic companies, residencies, and training programs, aimed at encouraging research, experimentation, and the development of new artists and audiences.

In the city center, programs such as Reviver Cultural and Circuito MAM-Capanema promote the coordination and scheduling of permanent cultural activities, encouraging audience circulation and creating new connections between cultural facilities, artists, and local initiatives.

Completing this set of policies are the calls for proposals for Artistic Languages, Masters and Mistresses, and Continuous Flow, aimed at supporting artistic production and preserving the city's intangible cultural heritage.

New notices

During the launch ceremony for Rio Art Week, the City Hall also presented two new mechanisms to promote culture.

The Local Actions – Ongoing Projects call for proposals will support Cultural Centers that develop permanent activities in their territories, expanding the population's access to cultural goods and services in different artistic languages.

The Cultural Mediation and Audience Development call for proposals will select two Cultural Hubs responsible for developing cultural mediation and audience development activities, focusing on the circulation of students and communities in public and private cultural facilities in the city.