I keep having to look up where to find out what's going on in Vancouver, art openings, galleries, live shows, meetups. So here is a list, sorted by category, of where to look. This is a snapshot from September 2026, not a live feed, so check each link for what's current.
General event calendars
Broad, city-wide listings. Good first stop if you just want to see what's on this week.
- Do604 - Vancouver events listing, concerts, festivals, and things to do, filterable by day.
- Daily Hive - Listed - local events section, covers concerts, food/drink events, and pop-ups around the city.
- Vancouver Is Awesome - Events & Entertainment - local news site's events section.
- The Georgia Straight - Listings - Vancouver's long-running alt-weekly, listings cover music, arts, theatre, and film.
- Scout Magazine - The Scout List - a curated weekly pick of what to do, food/drink and culture leaning.
- Luma - Vancouver - general events calendar/ticketing platform, the Vancouver page aggregates local meetups, workshops, and social events.
- LampPost Social - Events - community events discovery site, aggregates festivals, concerts, theatre, and sports across Vancouver and other Canadian cities.
Recurring art crawls & gallery nights
- East Side Culture Crawl (culturecrawl.ca) - mid-November, studios and galleries all over East Van open their doors. Described in the r/askvan thread as "the beating heart of Vancouver's art scene."
- First Saturday (firstsaturday.ca) - same idea as the Culture Crawl, monthly instead of once a year.
- Instant Coffee mailing list (instantcoffee.org) - artist collective whose email list gets recommended for openings at VIVO Media Arts, Access Gallery, THIS Gallery, grunt gallery, Western Front, and others.
- Pecha Kucha Vancouver - recurring rapid-fire presentation nights, a way to meet the independent gallery and design crowd.
Galleries & artist-run spaces
A partial list, mostly around Mount Pleasant, Chinatown, and the False Creek Flats.
- Slice of Life - gallery on Venables St, no upfront cost to show, rotating exhibits, workshops, gift shop of local work.
- The Playground Studio - exhibition space in Mount Pleasant (108 E Broadway), rotating group shows.
- The Beaumont Studios - one of Vancouver's original creative collectives, hosts open studio events where you can meet the resident artists directly.
- grunt gallery - artist-run centre since 1984, exhibitions, residencies, digital projects.
- Equinox Gallery - a large Commercial Drive space, mostly Canadian and local artists.
- Polygon Gallery (thepolygon.ca) - North Vancouver, right off the SeaBus, photography and contemporary art.
- Others mentioned in the thread: THIS Gallery, Paul Kyle Gallery, Gallery Jones, Trapp Projects, Western Front, Fingerprint Gallery, Gallery 881, Pendulum Gallery (downtown, opposite the Vancouver Art Gallery), Catriona Jeffries, Monte Clark Gallery, Pale Fire, Unit Pitt, Unit 17, Or Gallery, Cica, One More Life Gallery, Parker St. Gallery, Sum Gallery.
- Astro Club Artist Facility - studio complex and community arts hub, annual block-party festival, mural jams, artist market.
Live comedy, theatre & music venues
- Rio Theatre - 409-seat independent cinema, built 1938, also runs live comedy, music, and events.
- Comedy After Dark - comedy club, stand-up with a full diner and cocktail bar.
- Venue Co-op - non-profit co-operative of artists, organizers, and music-lovers across Vancouver's DIY music and arts scene, runs and books community-owned venue space.
- The Rec Room - Burnaby Brentwood - large entertainment venue (games, live music, food) in Brentwood, just outside Vancouver proper.
- The Cultch - East Van presenting company, brings in touring theatre, dance, and music.
- The Fox Cabaret - periodic live shows, comedy, and events on Main St.
- Also mentioned: What Lab (indie DIY theatre/dance/music space), Little Mountain Gallery (indie comedy/theatre hybrid nights), theatre companies Rumble and Neworld.
Community & meetup directories
- Vancouver Community - directory of 248+ local groups across 40 categories: run clubs, book clubs, trivia nights, creative meetups, volunteering, and more.
Festivals
- Vancouver Fringe Festival - runs in September on Granville Island, unjuried, so it's a mixed bag of shows.
- Design Vancouver (designvancouver.org) - September design-focused event series.
- VIFF (Vancouver International Film Festival) - runs in the fall, with an Off-VIFF underground program in October.
Other event pages
A few more resources that came up in the thread and didn't fit neatly above:
- Preview Magazine - print and web resource listing gallery openings around the city.
- CreateAStir - Vancouver arts and culture events listing.
- Griffin Art Projects (North Van) and the West Vancouver Art Museum - both run regular contemporary art programming on the North Shore.
- The Belkin (UBC), Libby Leshgold Gallery (Emily Carr University), and the Museum of Anthropology (UBC) - campus galleries worth checking for openings.
- The Gibson (SFU) - runs events and talks, with a new exhibition opening most terms.
- The Vodville (Woodland & Venables) - a miniature movie theatre that posts local indie event flyers, gets a lot of foot traffic from the arts-curious crowd in the area.
- Stop Podcasting Yourself and The Town Show - podcasts that cover Vancouver's local indie comedy scene.