01
Paul McCarthy Exhibition
Throughout May
Bowman Hal
Tickets
Madrid in May 2026: Eric Clapton, Bad Bunny, Salvador Dalí, and the City's Biggest Street Festival
May in the Spanish capital is packed with major festivals, national holidays, headline performances, and rare exhibitions. La Cotorra rounds up the events worth travelling to Madrid for in the last month of spring.
Bowman Hal is a gallery that exhibits works by contemporary artists shaping today's art world. One of them is Paul McCarthy — not to be confused with Beatles co-founder Paul McCartney. He works in performance, installation, and video art, and is known for his critiques of American consumer culture, his deconstructions of Disney fairy tales, and his use of grotesque, often deliberately unsettling imagery to expose the darker side of society.
Until May 16, Madrid is hosting an exhibition of his drawings, part of a larger project exploring structures of power, dominance, and submission within Western culture. The project was created through performance, film, and a drawing series made with German actress Lilith Stangenberg. It features archetypes evoking Adolf Hitler, Eva Braun, and Adam and Eve.
The exhibition's organisers promise visitors a unique combination of nineteenth-century palace architecture and the fantastical world of Salvador Dalí. The historic rooms of the palace house his sculptures, complemented by a carefully curated selection of graphic works.
"Throughout the route, the visitor encounters the key themes born of the artist's imagination: religion, myth, literature, music, the Mediterranean, love, and the figure of Gala," reads the exhibition description.
In total, 14 sculptures are on display. Most have been held in private collections, meaning the public has had virtually no opportunity to see them until now.
03
Madrid Day
2 May
Madrid
On 2 May 1808, the people of Madrid rose against the occupation of the city by Napoleon Bonaparte's French forces. Although the uprising was suppressed, the date entered the history of the city and is now celebrated annually as Madrid Day.
This year, the Madrid city council will stage a spectacular historical reenactment at Puerta del Sol. Free concerts are also planned, featuring Alcalá Norte, Bely Basarte, Judeline, Joseluis Lobos Negros, and Berkana, with the Puente del Rey esplanade serving as the main stage.
As part of the festivities, this year will see the first-ever drone show in the Cuña Verde de Latina park, involving around a thousand drones. The programme also includes folk performances, a concert by the Madrid Community Orchestra and Choir, dance company performances, and more. The full programme is available here.
Eros Ramazzotti is a world-famous Italian singer, songwriter, and guitarist — one of the most popular artists on the planet, with over 100 million records sold. He rose to fame in the 1990s with his romantic ballads, his distinctive gravelly voice, and duets with global stars including Cher, Tina Turner, and Joe Cocker.
Ramazzotti's music blends pop and rock, and he frequently performs in both Italian and Spanish — a combination that has earned him a wide following across Europe and Latin America.
In addition to Madrid, Ramazzotti will perform in Barcelona on 2 May. He has also added new tour dates for 2027: 27 April in Barcelona, 2 May in Pamplona, and 4 May in Valencia.
Biologist and science communicator Alexander Panchin — author of popular science books, member of the Russian Academy of Sciences Commission against Pseudoscience, and host of a popular YouTube science channel — will hold a talk in Madrid on the concept of free will.
The discussion will explore whether humans truly make decisions independently or whether their choices are determined by internal processes in the brain. Panchin will present the latest neuroscience research and explain how it challenges classical ideas about consciousness, as well as how neural processes shape everyday life.
This exhibition is dedicated to the Star Wars universe and is considered one of the largest collections ever assembled around it. The display features over 600 Star Wars-related objects collected by fans, including photographs, posters, costumes, life-size figures, and unique sculptures — all official merchandise acquired by fans, for fans.
Visitors will also have access to a special photo screen allowing them to be photographed against iconic backdrops from the universe. The exhibition is suitable for both dedicated fans of the franchise and the wider public.
Eric Clapton is a legendary British blues-rock guitarist, vocalist, and songwriter, widely regarded as one of the most influential musicians in history. He is renowned as a virtuoso performer and the only musician to have been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame three times.
Clapton was among the first to integrate blues into rock music and consistently appears in rankings of the greatest guitarists of all time (2nd place according to Rolling Stone, 4th according to Gibson). He played in a succession of iconic bands: The Yardbirds, John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers, Cream, Blind Faith, and Derek and the Dominos. His catalogue includes the internationally celebrated Tears in Heaven, Layla, Wonderful Tonight, and his cover of I Shot the Sheriff. Tears in Heaven is a ballad that became a symbol of personal tragedy, written in the aftermath of the death of his four-year-old son.
In addition to Madrid, Clapton will also perform in Barcelona.
On 8 May, Madrid's 40th performing arts festival, presented by the Community of Madrid, gets underway. The programme features contemporary dance productions and performances by choreographers working across a wide range of traditions.
Audiences can look forward to 23 shows from choreographers and companies from Spain, France, Belgium, Denmark, and Canada. Among the featured artists are Angelin Preljocaj, the French dancer and choreographer regarded as one of the leading figures of the new French dance movement; Mette Ingvartsen, a Danish dancer, choreographer, and performance artist; and Marie Chouinard, a Canadian choreographer known for her avant-garde and provocative work exploring the body's possibilities, instinct, and energy, as well as for developing her own choreographic language.
The full programme is available here.
09
Fiestas de San Isidro
15 May
Madrid
On 15 May, Madrid celebrates the feast day of its patron saint, Saint Isidore. While the mid-month date is the liveliest of the festivities, related events begin earlier: on 8 May, a formal opening ceremony will take place at Plaza de la Villa. This year it will be hosted by Sonsoles Ónega, journalist and presenter of the programme Ahora Sonsoles on Telecinco.
Celebrations will take place at Plaza Mayor, Las Vistillas, Matadero, and Parque de San Isidro — where residents of the capital will dress in traditional costume and enjoy the classic churros and doughnuts of the season.
The full programme of events will be published on 4 May.
Helen Levitt began photographing the streets of her native New York in the late 1930s, focusing primarily on poor neighbourhoods. Children on the street became her central subject. Levitt's work transformed everyday moments into images that captured all their emotion, mystery, and humour.
She was among the first women to dedicate herself to the profession. Her first solo exhibition was organised in 1943 by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. Levitt soon became drawn to cinema and colour photography, working on films that would go on to have a significant influence on the development of documentary filmmaking and on artists such as Jonas Mekas and Andy Warhol.
The Madrid exhibition is the first to bring together all of Levitt's work and archives, which have only recently become accessible to the public.
Puerto Rican rapper, singer, songwriter, and actor Bad Bunny is coming to Madrid for a run of concerts. Known as the "King of Latin Trap," he is one of the most popular artists in the world, celebrated for blending reggaeton with trap, his distinctive style, and his principled refusal to sing in anything other than Spanish — a choice that has helped make the language truly global.
Bad Bunny became the first Latin artist to have a Spanish-language album (Un Verano Sin Ti) nominated for Album of the Year at the Grammy Awards. He is also known for his bold image, his championing of Latin American culture, and recent appearances on screen — including in Fast & Furious 9 and Bullet Train — as well as his performance at the Super Bowl.
He arrives in Madrid with the DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS tour. Tickets are sold out, but it may be worth checking official platforms in case any are returned — buying from touts is best avoided.
