Korea Events Calendar
Korea events calendar lists festivals, exhibitions, seasonal highlights and traditional customs month by month, with ticketing dates, hours and map links. Don’t miss all of the amazing things you can do in Korea.
New this month
4th Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism
📍 Songhyeon Green Plaza · 열린송현녹지광장
Seoul set “Land Architecture, Land Urbanism” as the 4th Biennale’s theme in a bid to draw the next 100 years of Seoul, an eco-friendly, high-density city of mountain ranges, waterways, and wind breezes. The Biennale will have five exhibitions (Thematic, Seoul 100-year Masterplan, Guest Cities, Global Studios, and On-site Project) to introduce projects and discourses about eco-friendly, high-density Seoul’s masterplan. Those projects and discourses are suggested by architects such as Jürgen Mayer, Snøhetta, Thomas Alexander Heatherwick, and nearly 100 Korean and international teams.
Sol LeWitt: ‘Open Structure’
📍 Amorepacific Museum of Art · 서울 용산구 한강대로 100 아모레퍼시픽미술관
The Amorepacific Museum of Art presents Sol LeWitt’s posthumous 'Open Structure', the artist’s first large-scale exhibition in Korea. Spanning the entirety of the artist’s career, 'Open Structure' champions LeWitt’s belief that artistic work reaches new ambitions within the structure of an exhibition space. From his early works spotlighting black-and-white structures to his expansion into colour and the investigation of archival materials, the exhibition invites viewers to enter conversation with LeWitt’s principles of authorship, instruction and sequence.
Seoul Light DDP
📍 Dongdaemun Design Plaza, 281 Eulji-ro, Jung-gu, Seoul · 서울특별시 중구 을지로 281 (을지로7가)
Full guide
Dongdaemun Design Plaza (DDP) Seoul: What To See, Do, and Know Before You Visit
Seoul Light is a world-class media art and light festival hosted by the Seoul Metropolitan Government, transforming iconic city landmarks like the Dongdaemun Design Plaza (DDP) and Gwanghwamun Square into giant canvases of light, sound, and technology. Seoul Light DDP: Utilizes the world's largest irregular 3D architectural media façade (a 222-meter exterior wall) to project immersive shows, seasonal exhibitions, and special collaborations.
Watch from 7:30pm ~ 10:30pm
Gwangju Biennale (광주비엔날레)
📍 111 Biennale-ro, Buk-gu, Gwangju · 전남광주 북구 비엔날레로 111 광주비엔날레전시관
Full guide
A Guide to Gwangju’s Art Scene: Museums, Studios & Public Art Beyond the Biennale
≪You Must Change Your Life≫
Inspired by the final line of Rainer Maria Rilke’s poem Archaic Torso of Apollo, the 16th Gwangju Biennale explores how new capacities and forms of life emerge through artistic practice.
In Rilke’s 1908 poem, a fragment of an ancient sculpture releases within its viewer an overwhelming surge of emotional energy, culminating in the injunction: “You must change your life.” Yet the poem offers no prescription. Transformation remains open—urgent, but not yet determined. Taking inspiration from this imperative, the Biennale approaches change not as a destination but as a method: a process through which matter, bodies, perceptions, and relations are continually reorganised.
Change is often most immediately visible to us in moments of rupture and crisis. Yet change also unfolds quietly and unnoticed, like the changes in faces of the loved ones we see daily. And change also unfolds through the accumulation of our everyday acts and rituals as they accumulate to practices of repetition that brings about difference and. It is through such practices that we expand our capacity to affect—and to be affected.
A central proposition of this Biennale is that change is sustained through practice. But in order to be generative, any practice must be sustainable enough to repeat across multiple scales of life. Repetition is what shapes how we perceive, how we relate, and how we live. As such living models of persistence and experimentation, artistic practices appear here as cumulative techniques through which individuals and communities embody their experiences of transformation.
DDP Rooftop Tour 2026
📍 281 Eulji-ro, Jung-gu, Seoul · 서울특별시 중구 을지로 281 (을지로7가)
Full guide
Dongdaemun Design Plaza (DDP) Seoul: What To See, Do, and Know Before You Visit
Walk along the 652-meter DDP rooftop and enjoy a 360-degree panoramic view of Dongdaemun and the Seoul skyline.
This is an urban attraction tour program offering a unique way to experience the city from above.
Admission Fee Standard KRW 26,000 / Special KRW 50,000
Operating Hours
· 1st Session: 11:00 (English)
· 2nd Session: 13:00 (Korean) Friday–Sunday
· 3rd Session: 16:00 (Korean)
※ Operating Schedule Subject to Change.
※ Please check the detailed booking system for details.
Program Description A guided walking tour across DDP’s fully connected 652m rooftop, offering a 360° panoramic view of the Dongdaemun skyline.
Capacity · 15 participants per Standard Tour
※ Only adults aged 18 to 70 are eligible to participate.
※ A valid ID is required.
Duration · 60 minutes
※ Includes time for changing into the experience outfit, safety briefing, and event participation.
※ Please arrive at least 20 minutes before the tour starts for a safety briefing and tour preparation.
Notice · Photography and filming will take place for promotional purposes. Participation implies consent to photo/video usage.
※ Tours may be canceled due to weather conditions (rain, strong winds, extreme heat or fine dust).
※ Participation is restricted for those with acrophobia or health conditions.
※ For safety reasons, participants must: Weigh between 40–100 kg, Be 140 cm–200 cm tall, Be aged 18–70 years.
Still going on / more dates
‘3rd Poem: Es Devlin, Come Home Again’
📍 Futura Seoul, 61, Bukchon-ro, Jongno-gu, Seoul · 서울 종로구 북촌로 61 (가회동) 푸투라 서울
Across performance, visual art, architecture, literature and technology, Es Devlin’s first solo exhibition in Korea oversees 30 years of the English artist’s practice. A strong believer in a ‘temporary society’ built by transient audiences, Devlin places emphasis on the moment when individual perception expands into a collective experience. The exhibition’s large-scale installation invites visitors to engage in acts of participatory drawing, literature and audio. The artist harnesses multitudes of mirrors to refract natural and artificial light, illuminating the possibility of new encounters in the presence of others.
‘The Cubists: Inventing Modern Vision’
📍 63 Building 50 63-ro, Yeongdeungpo-gu Seoul · 서울특별시 영등포구 63로 50 63빌딩(미술관 입구: 별관 G층)
In the inaugural exhibition of the recently opened Centre Pompidou Hanwha, 'The Cubists: Inventing Modern Vision', highlights the birth of cubism in Paris and follows its development from 1907 to 1927. Featuring more than 90 works throughout eight sections, including one portion dedicated to emergent cubism in colonial Seoul of the 1920s and onwards, the landmark exhibition provides a multi-layered narrative of the revolutionary 20th-century movement and how it surpassed the boundaries of painting and entered wider contemporary culture.
Do Ho Suh
📍 MMCA Seoul, 30 Samcheong-ro, Jongno-gu, Seoul · 서울 종로구 삼청로 30 국립현대미술관 서울
Korean-born Do Ho Suh returns to his birth city in MMCA Seoul’s major retrospective, exploring concepts of identity, memory and the enigma of belonging. The exhibition features key early works, notable projects and the debut of new pieces. Large-scale installations remain the cornerstone of Suh’s artistic prowess and take precedence in the exhibition. Through his notable use of polyester fabric and stainless steel, Suh constructs neon translucent structures – doorways, rooftops, rooms and connecting hallways that actively interrogate the meaning of inhabiting a space.
Lee Bae: ‘En attendant’
📍 Museum SAN, 260 Oak Valley 2-gil, Jijeong-myeon, Wonju-si, Gangwon-do · 강원 원주시 지정면 오크밸리2길 260 뮤지엄산
For those seeking an immersive cultural experience beyond Seoul, Museum SAN in the Wonju mountains, presents Lee Bae’s solo exhibition 'En attendant'. Drawing on the museum’s dedication to nature, art and space, the artist’s new show meditates on the act of waiting and healing. Charcoal, and its fire-induced metamorphosis from wood, becomes a central point in the exhibition. Throughout the grand scale of the museum’s interior and outdoor spaces, sculptural architecture, video installations and Bae’s signature painterly works comprise a full spectrum of artistic creation in sweeping constructions of black, white and earth tones.
Lee Kang So: ‘Emergence and Dissolution’
📍 LOTTE Museum of Art, 7th floor Lotte World Tower, 300 Olympic-ro, Songpa-gu, Seoul · 서울 송파구 올림픽로 300 롯데월드타워 7층 롯데뮤지엄
Lee Kang So, one of Korea’s most significant contemporary artists, exercises an artistic language guided by philosophical experimentation and reinforced by fluidity across media, including painting, sculpture, photography, video and performance. In 'Emergence and Dissolution', So explores the concept of unfolding, pressing the viewer to question their idea of completion and refocus on the significance of an unfinished process as they interpret new meanings from decades of the artist’s notable and experimental works.
Seoul Art Week
This year, in particular, visitors can encounter the many histories and languages of Korean art at once: from the emergence of Korean abstraction and the development of Dansaekhwa to the contemporary expansion of Korean painting, as well as practices exploring migration and identity, social systems, immaterial sensations, and the digital environment.
These exhibitions do not propose a single, shared idea of “Koreanness.” Rather, Korean art today has been shaped by artists from different generations, each of whom has developed a distinct artistic language in response to the conditions and experiences of their own time.
Yoo Youngkuk: ‘A Mountain Within Me’
📍 Seoul Museum of Art, 61 Deoksugung-gil, Jung-gu, Seoul · 서울 중구 덕수궁길 61 서울시립미술관
Seoul Museum of Art celebrates 110 years since the birth anniversary of abstract artist Yoo Youngkuk in a monumental retrospective covering over six decades of the artist’s works. 'A Mountain Within Me' comprises more than 170 works and archival items, including many paintings, photographs and drawings making exhibitory debuts. Abandoning the standard chronological retrospective structure, SeMA traces a non-linear temporal journey against highly vivid primary colour schemes, centring the singular mountain as a key pivotal point throughout Youngkuk’s abstract evolution.