Singapore’s first specialty coffee festival, an immersive Sinners-style theatre night inside a working brewery, and Baybeats’ new Roblox world are only the start.
From a Shanghai market debut at Suntec to Singapore Oceanarium’s first-ever after-dark silent disco, here are the best things to do in Singapore this September.
1. Singapore Oceanarium: Into the Glowcean
Singapore Oceanarium is getting a neon makeover. Into the Glowcean fills the oceanarium with glowing marine-life sculptures by Singapore glass neon artist Megan Foo, alongside a skeleton-costumed diver feeding thousands of marine animals and plenty of glowing photo moments.
Come later in the month and there’s even more happening: a one-night silent disco against an underwater backdrop on 19 September, plus a Light Painting Photo Booth from 26 September where you can paint with light and bring home an instant photo.
Date: 5 September–1 November 2026
Location: Singapore Oceanarium, 24 Sentosa Gateway, Sentosa Island
2. Singapore River Festival 2026
The Singapore River Festival returns for its 10th edition, and there’s plenty to discover across Boat Quay, Clarke Quay and Robertson Quay. This year, The Quay Collective brings the river to life with immersive experiences, live performances, interactive installations, gamified adventures and a heritage tour, and more!
From back-alley projections and roving performances to an interactive sound-and-light motion-tracking experience, live music and acrobatic performances, an outdoor movie screening, a riverside market, and a matcha-themed event for your matcha fix. There’s something to suit your every mood! Explore the Entertainment Zone @ Boat Quay , get creative at the Expression Zone @ Clarke Quay , or slow things down at the Lifestyle & Wellness Zone @ Robertson Quay — and make your way along the river to experience all three.
Date: 11–20 September 2026
Location: Singapore River — Boat Quay, Clarke Quay and Robertson Quay, Singapore
3. Another Coffee Festival
Coffee festivals have been popping up here and there in Singapore this year, but this might be the biggest one yet.
Thirty-four roasters from nine countries set up booth-hopping style across Tanjong Pagar, with 19 local names sitting alongside first-timers from Taipei, Seoul and beyond. Here’s how it works. Tasting tokens work like a bar tab: buy a bundle, walk the floor, drink your way through the lineup.
Tickets start from $21.6.
Date: 3–6 September 2026
Location: Guoco Tower Urban Park, 1 Wallich Street, Singapore 078881
Opening hours:
3–4 Sept: 11am-8pm
5–6 Sept: 10am-8pm
4. Common Rare Market
Shanghai’s best-known creative market makes its Singapore debut this month, and it’s bringing over 200 brands with it.
More than 100 of the participating labels are flying in from Taipei, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Seoul and Shanghai, covering fashion, homeware and design objects that don’t otherwise reach Singapore shelves.
You’ll also find art exhibitions, live music and hands-on workshops across the three-day run, and pets are welcome on a leash or in a carrier.
Tickets start from $7 for single-day entry.
Date: 18–20 September 2026
Location: Suntec Singapore Convention & Exhibition Centre, Hall 401–402, 1 Raffles Boulevard, Singapore 039593
Opening hours: 12:30-9pm
5. A Study in Red: The Official Sherlock Holmes Experience
The world’s first officially licensed Sherlock Holmes experience playable in the real world lands in Bugis this month.
On your first day at 221B Consultants, you’ll chase clues across Bugis Junction, Bugis+ and Bugis Street as you investigate a murder in Bugis.
The case threads the Sherlock Holmes canon through Bugis’ lesser-known history, including its past as a pre-war Japanese quarter, and takes around 90 min to complete.
Tickets start from $19.
Date: 21 August–31 December 2026
Location: Bugis Street, Bugis+ and Bugis Junction, Singapore
Opening hours: 11am-9pm
6. Central Singapore Market
A pop-up this small rarely gets written up, which is exactly why it’s worth the detour this month.
Central Singapore Market runs for only one afternoon, gathering independent vendors along a residential stretch that don’t get the hype they deserve. Expect the usual pop-up staples of small-batch food and lifestyle finds, without the crowds that come with the bigger Suntec-sized affairs.
Date: 12 September 2026
Location: Balmoral Road (in front of Balmoral Crescent), Singapore
Opening hours: 3-7pm
7. Disney and Pixar’s Toy Story Takes Flight at SKAI
Woody and Buzz get a high tea 70 floors above Singapore, timed to land alongside Toy Story 5.
Director of Culinary Nicholas Issel and Executive Pastry Chef Yong Ming Choong turn the film’s cast into sweet and savoury bites: a berry velvet sponge for Buzz, Caraïbe chocolate with a cowboy hat topper for Woody, matcha choux for the Aliens, and a black truffle-and-caviar potato dish for Mr. Potato Head. Two non-alcoholic cocktails round it out, styled after the Aliens and Woody’s sheriff badge.
A linked staycation package adds priority high tea reservations, breakfast for two adults and two children, and a Disney-themed merchandise pop-up at the Level 2 Atrium.
High tea is priced at $78++ per adult, including a themed cocktail and TWG tea or coffee.
Date: High tea 1–30 September 2026; staycation package 3 September–30 November 2026
Location: SKAI, Level 70, Swissôtel The Stamford, 2 Stamford Road, Singapore 178882
Opening hours: 12:15-5:30pm daily
8. Audemars Piguet: Perspectives on Time
Four rooms, four different ways of looking at time.
Looking Back and Beyond traces Audemars Piguet’s history back to its 1875 founding in Le Brassus through rare archival timepieces, while Guided by the Cosmos covers the house’s astronomical complications with a live demonstration of one of its most intricate calendar mechanisms.
The Beauty Within gets up close with openworking technique across vintage and current designs, and Giving Time a Voice demonstrates one of watchmaking’s rarest complications — a chiming mechanism — in person.
Sessions are limited, so register in advance at bit.ly/ap-perspectivesontime. Walk-ins are welcome, subject to availability.
Date: 10–13 September 2026
Location: National Museum of Singapore (Gallery Theatre), 93 Stamford Rd, Singapore 178897
9. Sacred Caves: Dunhuang, Buddhism, and the Silk Road
The Silk Road’s most important Buddhist cave complex has never made it to Southeast Asia — until this September.
For over a thousand years, the oasis city of Dunhuang sat at a crossroads linking China and Central Asia, and its Mogao Caves became one of the world’s most important centres of Buddhist art. Carved into cliffs at the edge of the Gobi Desert between the 4th and 14th centuries, the caves are now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The Asian Civilisations Museum recreates several cave interiors at life size, paired with paintings and sculptures, plus manuscripts and textiles that trace the trade and religious exchange along the route. It’s the first time this material has been shown anywhere in Southeast Asia.
Date: 25 September 2026-7 March 2027
Location: Asian Civilisations Museum, 1 Empress Place, Singapore 179555
Opening hours:
Mon-Thu: 10am-7pm
Fri: 10am-9pm
Sat-Sun: 10am-7pm
10. Baybeats Festival — Beatsverse
Baybeats turns 25 this year, and its newest stage isn’t at the Esplanade at all.
The free alt-music festival keeps its usual four days of indie, punk, hardcore and shoegaze across nearly 50 acts, but here’s how this year’s Baybeats is different.
It’s the first time a Singapore music festival has built a genuine digital extension; it’s not just a simple livestream. In addition to the usual lineup, expect in-game meet-and-greets and virtual merch drops running alongside the physical stages.
Free to enter, though Annexe and Powerhouse2 performances require registration.
Date: 3–6 September 2026
Location: Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay, 1 Esplanade Drive, Singapore 038981
11. Singapore Design Week 2026
Design Week doesn’t stay inside the National Design Centre this year — it spills into the National Museum, Victoria Theatre and NAFA too.
The programme runs across three pillars: Design Futures, Design Marketplace and Design Impact, spanning the Bras Basah.Bugis, Marina, Orchard and Singapore Science Park precincts.
You’ll also find independent design shopfronts joining in alongside the institutional programming, so it’s less a single exhibition, and more a city-wide crawl.
Date: 26 September–4 October 2026
Location: National Design Centre and precincts island-wide, Singapore
12. Singapore Food Festival 2026
Singapore Food Festival is back!
The Bayfront Event Space village anchors the festival, but the real draw is the city-wide spread, featuring one-off chef collaborations that’s exclusive to the festival.
Date: 4–24 September 2026
Location: Bayfront Event Space and venues island-wide, Singapore
13. Chinatown Mid-Autumn Festival Light-Up
The organisers dropped the giant lantern centrepieces this year, and it’s a deliberate choice.
New Bridge Road, Eu Tong Sen Street and South Bridge Road still fill with thousands of hanging lanterns, as well as a community-built centrepiece at Kreta Ayer Square.
You’ll also find a lantern painting competition and tea appreciation sessions timed to the festival, in addition to the usual street light-up.
Date: 18 September–20 October 2026
Location: Kreta Ayer Square and surrounding streets, Chinatown, Singapore
Opening hours: 7pm-12am
14. Singapore Tennis Open
Southeast Asia’s only WTA 500 event, and general admission starts cheaper than a movie ticket this month.
The tournament runs a 28-player singles draw and 16-team doubles draw on hard courts at OCBC Arena, a 3,000-seat indoor venue built for this kind of flexible sports programming.
Early bird pricing already closed, but general admission is still accessible without committing to a hospitality package.
Tickets start from $8.
Date: 21–27 September 2026
Location: OCBC Arena, The Kallang, Singapore Sports Hub, 3 Stadium Drive, Singapore 397630
15. Twilight: Flea & Feast
A halal food-and-flea market modelled on Australia’s hawker markets, and it’s unlike the usual Singapore pasar malam format.
Fashion vendors, beauty stalls, movie screenings and live performances all run alongside the food stands across the three-day event.
It’s closer to a festival than a market, a format Singapore hasn’t quite seen before.
Date: 11–13 September 2026
Location: Suntec Singapore Convention & Exhibition Centre, Hall 401–403, 1 Raffles Boulevard, Singapore 039593
Opening hours: 12-10pm
More weekend and monthly markets in Singapore: here
16. Ginger.Lily Bar — Synaesthesia 2.0
The cocktail menu here is built around what a dish tastes like in your memory, not what’s actually in the glass.
Synaesthesia 2.0 pairs five-senses-themed cocktails with bites engineered to echo familiar dishes: a drink that tastes like tom yum, another that leans into butter chicken.
It’s a strange premise that mostly works, and it’s new enough that most of Orchard Road hasn’t caught on yet.
Cocktails start from $22.
Location: Ginger.Lily Bar, Level 5, Hilton Singapore Orchard, 333 Orchard Road, Singapore 238867
Opening hours: 12pm-1am
17. Tembusu
Fleursophy Group’s newest restaurant sits inside a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and the menu leans into that.
The kitchen reworks Malay and Peranakan dishes using ingredients pulled from the surrounding Ginger Garden, a genuinely different approach from the usual Botanic Gardens cafe fare.
The space soft-opened in early August, and the official launch lands this month.
Date: 3 September 2026
Location: Ginger Garden, Singapore Botanic Gardens, 1 Cluny Road, Singapore 259569
Opening hours: 7:30am-8pm
18. The Hammock Market
A thrift-first flea market that skips the usual mall-atrium setup entirely.
Over 25 vendors set up across maker brands and online thrift stores, leaning younger and cheaper than most Singapore pop-ups.
Date: 5 September 2026
Location: 12 Kallang Ave, Singapore 339511
Opening hours: 1-7pm
19. COMEX 2026
Four days of tech deals that actually undercut online prices, and not just marked-up “show specials.”
Over 400 brands bring product launches, gaming setups and smart home tech to the show floor, with limited-edition drops and hands-on demos you won’t find at a regular retail store.
Free to enter, and it’s an easy add-on to a coffee festival trip since it’s at the same convention centre this month.
Date: 3–6 September 2026
Location: Suntec Singapore Convention & Exhibition Centre, Levels 3–4, 1 Raffles Boulevard, Singapore 039593
20. Sinners Live
Step through the door and it’s 1932 Mississippi, not Gillman Barracks.
Sinners Live drops audiences straight into a juke joint lifted from the film’s world, staged inside a working brewery rather than a conventional theatre.
It’s a two-night run only, built for people who want to be inside the story rather than watching it from a seat.
Tickets start from $68.
Date: 5–6 September 2026
Location: Little Island Brewing Co. (The Southern Depot), Gillman Barracks, 71 Malan Road, Singapore 109453
Opening hours: 7-10pm
21. The Parting Glass
Order a drink at The Blackbird this month and you might end up part of the play.
Gateway Arts’ first immersive, site-specific production turns the Gillman Barracks gastrobar into an intimate stage for The Parting Glass, adapted for Singapore audiences by Krish Natarajan from Chris O’Connor’s original script.
Jim and Sarah revisit a relationship that’s tender and heartbreaking in equal measure, staged close enough that the audience becomes part of the room.
Tickets start from $30.
Date: 2–13 September 2026
Location: The Blackbird, Gillman Barracks, 8 Lock Road, Singapore 108937
22. Post Malone: The Big Ass Stadium World Tour
One night, one stadium, and Don Toliver opening.
Post Malone’s Singapore stop is part of a run that also hits Thailand, Malaysia and the Philippines this September.
The National Stadium is set up for the full stadium production, not a scaled-down arena show.
Tickets start from $138.
Date: 25 September 2026
Location: National Stadium, 1 Stadium Drive, Singapore 397629
Opening hours: 8pm
Can’t find what you’re looking for?
Check out our ultimate guide on the 65 best things to do in Singapore instead. Alternatively, if you’re on a budget, we’ve also compiled a list of the best things to do in Singapore for free.
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