An insider’s guide to navigating the coolest month in Johannesburg

Here are 10 events that together make up a large part of Joburg's cultural season, from big stages of art and music to underground gatherings where the future is rehearsed.

The BMW Art Generation
30 August 2025

The BMW Art Generation is framed through a commitment to intergenerational conversation and critical joy. The programme draws together cultural giants and contemporary visionaries, with performances by Sipho “Hotstix” Mabuse and Msaki anchoring South Africa’s long history of sonic innovation. 

The day centres on dialogue, reflection and imagination, carried by two key panel discussions: Image and Imagination explores how artists shape self-authored futures, while Existing, Performance & Being responds to Koyo Kouoh’s call to view black experience in loving, emancipatory and autobiographical ways.

Glide Through the Gallery with Mpumi Mayisa
30 August 2025

This curated art walk slows the pace of how we encounter Johannesburg’s art scene. Beginning at Stevenson and moving to the Johannesburg Art Gallery, the walk invites audiences to ask questions and connect with art more intentionally. 

With Gresham Tapiwa Nyaude’s solo exhibition as a focal point, and the possibility of the artist leading the walk, the event closes with an art party that makes the gallery a space of conversation and celebration.

Tomorrow is Another Day by Neo Matloga at Stevenson
30 August – 25 October 2025

Neo Matloga’s return to Johannesburg is a meditation on the everyday. His paintings capture small gestures, emotions and rituals that sit between Johannesburg and his home village of Mamaila. 

He describes his works as psychological landscapes, where urgency and stillness meet. Matloga’s politicisation of hands, his layered approach to collage and his attention to daily life make this exhibition a study of resilience and presence.

Carriers at Goodman Gallery
30 August – 11 October 2025

Goodman Gallery brings together Maxwell Alexandre, Pélagie Gbaguidi, and Ibrahim Mahama in Carriers. The exhibition considers how bodies, objects and landscapes hold memory. Alexandre’s works channel the weight of black life in Brazil, Gbaguidi inscribes trauma and myth onto canvas, while Mahama transforms industrial remnants into landscapes of collective labour and migration. 

Each artist takes up the idea of carrying as burden, inheritance and possibility.

Resonance Archive Film Festival at 44 Stanley
27 – 31 August 2025

The Resonance Archive Festival launches its first edition across venues including The Bioscope, Eyethu Heritage Hall, and The Forge. 

Centred on the theme “The pulse of memory, the power of story”, the festival looks at archives as tools of resistance and identity. Screenings, symposiums, exhibitions and sonic lectures affirm Johannesburg’s position as a hub for film and intellectual life.

FNB Art Joburg at the Sandton Convention Centre
5 – 7 September 2025

FNB Art Joburg is not simply an art fair, it is the gathering point of the entire African art ecosystem. 

In one venue, the fair gathers galleries, institutions, curators, collectors, scholars, publishers and artists who make up today’s cultural landscape. 

Divided into seven sections, it includes large-scale installations, curated shows, talks and publications that frame contemporary African art. To walk through is to see the art world’s infrastructure in motion: commercial and intellectual, local and continental. 

Hidden Spaces presents The Exchange: with L.O.C, The Brother Moves On, Kujenga
5 September 2025

For one night only, The Brother Moves On, Kujenga, and LOC perform on the same stage. 

Exhibition Match
6 September 2025

Exhibition Match, founded by Alexander Richards and Phokeng Setai, brings art and football together. 

Artists, curators, writers and collectors take the field in uniforms designed by leading artists, among them Dada Khanyisa, Robin Rhode and this year’s FNB Art Prize winner Thato Toeba. It is a project that takes collaboration, play and community seriously as forms of cultural practice.

Lost Lovers by Kalashnikovv
6 September 2025

Lost Lovers is a one-night activation staged in the old Kalashnikovv Gallery in Braamfontein. 

It merges performance, nightlife, and installation into an immersive farewell to the gallery’s radical legacy. With two stages of music and installations by emerging artists, it reimagines the afterparty as a site of cultural memory, vulnerability and resistance.

Nocturne by Company Culture
4 – 6 September 2025

Nocturne is three nights of music, art and nightlife at Neighbarhood, with a line-up that includes Lelowhatsgood, Funky Bananaa and P Kuttah. DM