Cafe Paradiso by Mykki Blanco
When: Out Sept. 4
What: Mykki Blanco, queer provocateur and underground music savant, comes back after an academic hiatus spent completing a master’s in Switzerland. CAFE PARADISO is the musician’s first album in four years. Artsy kids rejoice—Blanco says he made this record for you.
The Living Realm by Jordan Tannahill
When: Out Sept. 8
What: Jordan Tannahill, novelist, playwright, and our favorite Canadian export, heads to the cruising grounds of Berlin in a new semi-surrealist book, The Living Realm that manifests grief as the ghosts of past lovers. After the splash his play Prince Faggot made off-Broadway last year, Tannahill gives us another preposterously fresh exploration of queer relationships.
Henry Zankov’s Diane von Furstenberg Debut
When: Sept. 10
What: Knitwear and textile aficionado Henry Zankov levels up, making his debut as artistic director of Diane von Furstenberg on the first day of New York Fashion Week. It’s less of a hard launch than a triumphant return—the designer worked under former DVF Chief Creative Officer Jonathan Saunders in the 2010s.
“Machine Boys” and “Tendered” by Karimah Ashadu
When: Open Sept. 11 and 12, respectively
Where: The Art Institute of Chicago and the Renaissance Society, Chicago
What: Hamburg- and Lagos-based artist Karimah Ashadu unveils two video exhibitions in the Windy City: “Machine Boys” at the Art Institute of Chicago and “Tendered” at the Renaissance Society. The double-barreled presentations unpack the themes of labor, African identity, and patriarchy that underpin Ashadu’s evolving interrogation of the filmmaker-subject relationship.
CANAL by Jesper D. Lund
When: September 13
Where: Dashwood Projects
What: As he was documenting downtown’s fashion set for office magazine (the title he co-founded in 2014), Jesper D. Lund was using his lunch break to hit the streets with a camera in tow, snapping away. CANAL collects six years of his Canal Street wanderings—coffee runs, cigarette breaks, the mundane choreography of a neighborhood he was quietly cataloguing the whole time. Now a 300-copy hardcover with a Landon Metz poem tucked inside, it’s proof that the best photo books are the ones made in stealth.
Gustavo Dudamel’s Inaugural Season at the New York Philharmonic
When: Opens Sept. 16
Where: Lincoln Center, New York
What: After leaving his mark on the LA Philharmonic, Gustavo Dudamel is taking on Lincoln Center. The star conductor makes landfall at the New York Philharmonic with Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 5 to open the season. The Venezuelan maestro promises a much-needed infusion of energy into the institution—one loyal audiences are hungry for.
The Traitors: New Blood
When: Premieres Sept. 17
Where: Peacock
What: Alan Cumming, actor turned reality TV host par excellence, and a smattering of non-celebs you’re about to know really well are hitting Peacock as the first season of The Traitors: New Blood takes on an all-civilian cast. Twenty-two average Joes were plucked from a pool of over 60,000 hopefuls. Could have been you!
“Father Country Do I Love You” by Taryn Simon
When: Opens Sept. 18
Where: Guggenheim, New York
What: Taryn Simon was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2001. Now, she’s taking the Guggenheim New York. “Father Country Do I Love You,” her expansive solo show at the museum, on view through next March, will offer a new lens on a practice that excavates everything from contraband at JFK to what really goes on at Playboy Enterprises. A new selection of Simon’s famously in-depth research paraphernalia, sculptures, and films will take over the entire Frank Lloyd Wright-designed spiral with an interactive installation. Bottega Veneta, the Italian fashion house currently led by Louise Trotter, is providing support for the show.
David Byrne’s Who Is The Sky? Tour Closing Show
When: Sept. 19
Where: Forest Hills, New York
What: Talking Heads frontman and all-around visionary David Byrne gives us a good old stadium show. The musician (and Olivia Rodrigo coconspirator)’s trippy-dippy Who Is The Sky? tour wraps up at Forest Hills. The nearly year-long global road show celebrates the 74-year-old’s first album in seven years.
Roll the Calls by Ari Emanuel
When: Out Sept. 22
What: Entertainment powerbroker Ari Emanuel gets reflective in Roll the Calls, a memoir charting his dizzying rise at the helm of Endeavor and his transformation into a full-on media mogul. (Emanuel’s time in Hollywood is the stuff of legend—literally. His exploits inspired the character Ari Gold on Entourage.)
The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art Opening
When: Opens Sept. 22
Where: Exposition Park, Los Angeles
What: Power couple George Lucas and Mellody Hobson are opening an 11-acre museum, which will house memorabilia, blue-chip art, and film archives galore. The 40,000-piece collection started as a pile of $30 comic books in the Star Wars and Indiana Jones filmmaker’s dorm room and has culminated in a fair number of Rockwells.
“I Am Tony” by Arthur Jafa
When: Opens Sept. 24
Where: New Museum, New York
What: Arthur Jafa is on a tear. In the last year, he’s curated a MoMA show, exhibited alongside Richard Prince in Venice, and snagged a prestigious Art Basel award. Now he’s getting the survey treatment. “I Am Tony,” the largest institutional exhibition to date of the video artist’s at once blistering and exultant explorations of Blackness in America, is the New Museum’s first solo showing since its reopening last spring.
Victorian Psycho
When: Out Sept. 25
What: This is your chance to get ahead on Halloween costumes. Scream queen Maika Monroe, the elder Malfoy (aka Jason Isaacs), and Sanctuary director Zachary Wigon have collabed on what promises to be a conversation-sparking thriller: an adaptation of Virginia Feito’s horror novel Victorian Psycho. (The film deal was inked before the book hit shelves.) There’s enough blood in the trailer alone to fill one of the film’s creepy clawfoot tubs.
2026 NY Art Book Fair
When: Sept. 25-27
Where: MoMA PS1, New York
What: Looking for the monograph of your dreams? With the 2026 NY Art Book Fair at MoMA PS1, Printed Matter and the Queens museum are teaming up to give New York’s Luddites something to write home about. Both institutions ushered in their 50th years in 2026. This edition of the NYABF hints at what’s next.
Ply by Hernan Diaz
When: Out Sept. 29
What: Hernan Diaz, modern man of letters and author of Trust, does it again. His third novel, Ply, sees an orphan take over a futuristic black market. Diaz has already won a Pulitzer. How much more convincing do you need?
“The Sacred Mangrove” by Anina Major
When: Opens Oct. 1
Where: Pérez Art Museum Miami
What: Bahamian-born artist Anina Major works at the crossroads of ceramics and the transcription of cultural histories. In her Pérez Art Museum Miami exhibition, “The Sacred Mangrove,” she hand-weaves clay into palm-leaf-like plaits. It’s a rebuttal, in stoneware, of postcard visions of the Bahamas—labor and ancestry rendered solid enough to outlast tourist brochures.
“A Sustained Becoming” by Derriann Pharr, Simonette Quamina, and Taylor Simmons
When: Opens Oct. 1
Where: Studio Museum in Harlem, New York
What: Derriann Pharr, Simonette Quamina, and Taylor Simmons are this year’s artists in residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem, and the first cohort to present work in the institution’s freshly renovated and much-discussed new home on West 125th Street. “A Sustained Becoming” features their recent output, spanning painting, collage, printmaking, drawing, sculpture, and mixed media.
Digger
When: Out Oct. 2
What: The man, the myth, the director Alejandro G. Iñárritu claps back after 2022’s divisive Bardo. Digger, a pitch-black comedy with serious Oscar buzz, stars Tom Cruise (with a beer belly and thick Southern accent), Sandra Hüller, Jesse Plemons, and Riz Ahmed. This is Iñárritu’s first English-language film since The Revenant—a logical choice since it’s about a CEO on the verge of triggering an imminent apocalypse.
Hauser & Wirth’s Palo Alto Outpost
When: Opens Oct. 3
Where: 201 Hamilton Avenue, Palo Alto
What: Hauser & Wirth takes on Silicon Valley. The mega gallery is heading to the Bay Area, opening an outpost in Palo Alto—an undertaking hitherto only attempted (and failed) by Pace. Art history majors, ready your CVs: The new location, housed in a renovated post office, is just a short walk from the Stanford campus.
Slayyyter’s Tour Reaches New York
When: Oct. 3-4
Where: Terminal 5 and Brooklyn Paramount, New York
What: Electronic-pop diva Slayyyter, aka the “WORST GIRL IN AMERICA,” is ready to make New York shriek. The singer-song-writer has taken her sleaze revival act on the road and is finally landing in the center of it all, hitting Terminal 5 and Brooklyn Paramount on Oct. 3 and 4, respectively.
Partitia by Barbara Kingsolver
When: Out Oct. 6
What: Pulitzer winner Barbara Kingsolver is releasing her 11th novel, Partitia. It follows Livia, a one time piano prodigy shaken by a phone call from an old lover decades after she buried her music conservatory dreams in favor of farm life. The Demon Copperhead author trades Appalachian grit for Appalachian grit plus Chopin—proof she can wring a tearjerker out of absolutely anything.
The Social Reckoning
When: Out Oct. 9
What: Screenwriter and director Aaron Sorkin is back with Mikey Madison, Jeremy Strong, and Jeremy Allen White in tow for The Social Reckoning. With 2010’s The Social Network, Sorkin penned the definitive take on the dawn of our social media era. Now, he takes on Facebook’s heavy hand in the misinformation age. The original film’s Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) declined the role on principle, so this time it’s Strong who’s stepping into the tech oligarch’s Nikes.
“California Gothic: A Bus Tour” with Oliver Misraje
When: This October
Where: New Theater Hollywood, Los Angeles
What: Writer Oliver Misraje returns to New Theater Hollywood’s “California Gothic.” The cult bus tour’s ghostly edition now also features Ruby McCollister and more guest stars, joining together to eulogize the dead California Dream. Here, the “celebrity homes” bit gets swapped for a memorializing of the movie industry itself—somehow both funnier and sadder than it sounds.
The Whitney’s Roy Lichtenstein Retrospective
When: Opens Oct. 11
Where: Whitney Museum, New York
What: Roy Lichtenstein, forever a legend, gets his laurels. A major retrospective at the Whitney, “Like New,” curated by artist Alex Da Corte and the museum’s Meg Onli, Nakai Falcón, and David Crane, comes on the heels of a blockbuster Pop art group show at the Guggenheim. The late New Yorker reaches out from beyond the grave to offer an ever-timely critique of mass culture in the era of A.I. slop.
“Unworlding, NYC”
When: Oct. 14-27
Where: Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York
What: BAM curator and artist-in-residence Helga Davis brings heavyweight thinkers like Claudia Rankine and Jack Halberstam to the Downtown Brooklyn institution for “Unworlding, NYC,” a new series of public dialogues between artists and writers considering collapse “as a generative condition.”
Crystal Lake
When: Out Oct. 15
Where: Peacock
What: Freak (this time, no geeks) Linda Cardellini and director Brad Kane (who you may know as the voice of Aladdin) give us a prequel for the ages. Friday the 13th’s infamous Jason Voorhees gets the long-awaited origin story treatment in this TV slasher, Crystal Lake. An old-school summer camp backdrop adds to the nostalgia factor.
Other Desert Cities by Jon Robin Baitz
When: Opens Oct. 18
Where: Hudson Theatre, New York
What: Julia Louis-Dreyfus, everyone and their mother’s favorite comedian and podcaster, takes New York. The legendary actor is making her Broadway debut in Jon Robin Baitz’s Other Desert Cities at the Hudson Theatre. A Pulitzer Prize–finalist script, a cast also featuring Ed Harris and Allison Janney, and nonstop family drama—what’s not to love?
Bonnie Blue’s Due Date
When: This fall
What: If you don’t already know OnlyFans creator and controversy magnet Bonnie Blue, you’re certainly about to. Blue is set to give birth to her first child—father unknown—sometime this fall. The porn star’s pregnancy comes on the heels of an infamous publicity event she hosted last summer, at which she got… intimate… with more than 400 men.
World Premiere of Lincoln in the Bardo
When: Opens Oct. 19
Where: Metropolitan Opera, New York
What: Composer Missy Mazzoli and librettist Royce Vavrek bring a literary gem to an elite opera stage. Lincoln in the Bardo is making its world premiere at the Metropolitan Opera, which continues to try its hand at modernizing its program. George Saunders’s Booker Prize-winning novel, on which it is based, sees a fictional Abraham Lincoln stalking his dead son, Willie.
Knicks Season Opener
When: Oct. 20
Where: Madison Square Garden, New York
What: Jalen Brunson, OG Anunoby, and the rest of New York’s best boys are back for a victory lap, with the first Knicks game of the season, now a blue-chip occasion after 53 long years. The cherry on top? The Knicks-themed subway entrance at 34th Street will still be there for photo ops if you’re not shelling out for tickets.
Simply Ina by Ina Garten
When: Out Oct. 20
What: The one and only Ina Garten, America’s fairy godmother, is back to save your next dinner party. Her first cookbook in four years, Simply Ina, features 85 new recipes.Things change, but a home-cooked meal—especially one with bountiful, whole-fat ingredients—never goes out of style.
860 by Billy Crystal
When: Opens Oct. 21
Where: The Imperial Theatre, New York
What: Billy Crystal, frog-throated funnyman and Oscar host emeritus, goes deep. His new autobiographical one-man show, 860, details the loss of his family home in the 2025 Palisades fire with a limited 14-week run at the Imperial Theatre. Crystal won a Tony for his 2005 one-man play about growing up on Long Island. Could 860 land him another?
Six Kings Slam
When: Oct. 21-24
Where: Netflix
What: Six of the Association of Tennis’s biggest names (Alcaraz, Djokovic, Fritz, Sinner, Tsitsipas, and Zverev) land in Riyadh for Netflix’s Six Kings Slam. The streaming giant is broadcasting the third edition of this glitzy exhibition tournament in the latest boon for the Saudi entertainment industry. It’s tennis as spectacle first, sport second; appearance fees are reportedly set at $1.5 million, with a $6 million winner’s pot.
Wicker
When: Out Oct. 23
What: Alexander Skarsgård and Olivia Colman star in a monster romance of sorts. Adapted from a short story by Ursula Wills-Jones, Wicker sees Colman as an ostracized small-town woman who orders a wicker husband for herself. Enter Skarsgård. Keep an eye out for his press tour looks.
Citizen Kim by Jonathan Van Meter
When: Out Oct. 27
What: Jonathan Van Meter, longtime entertainment journo, goes deep on Kim Kardashian in Citizen Kim. His biography traces her path from Paris Hilton sidekick to architect of a new celebrity economy. Unlike other unauthorized biographies of the star, this tome is built upon hundreds of hours of interviews with Kardashian and her inner circle.
Nocturne
When: Premieres Oct. 30
Where: Apple TV
What: Apple TV’s been quietly building the best prestige-thriller bench on streaming. Liev Schreiber, Zazie Beetz, and Stephen Graham star in its latest entry into the genre, Nocturne. Adapted from Lars Kepler’s bestselling “Joona Linna” novels, it follows an ex-soldier-turned-detective whose quiet Pennsylvania town is upended by a serial killer.
Machine Girl’s One-Night-Only Set for Halloween
When: Oct. 30
Where: Pioneer Works, New York
What: Machine Girl, the breakcore duo whose live shows have a reputation for controlled chaos, is staging a one-night-only Halloween-eve set at Pioneer Works, fresh off their PsychoWarrior tour. They’ve called their genre “fucked-up electronic punk;” Devil’s Night in Red Hook is the perfect venue for just that.
Lara Saget’s Sophomore Show with Trotter&Scholler
When: Opens Nov. 10
Where: Trotter&Scholler, New York
What: Artist Lara Saget is making her mark on Trotter&Scholler’s new space with its inaugural exhibition, curated by Sarah Darro. Working with glass, copper alloys, and stone, the sculptor explores nature’s resilience through ancient palm trees, volcanic fields, and tectonic plates, asking whether extinction is really an ending—or simply a disappearance from view.
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