Teenagers can tell when a plan was picked for a younger sibling. This list keeps only the listings that still work at 13 and up: theater that takes on real subjects, dance and street culture, and exhibitions with enough edge to hold a teen's interest. Some are family shows that stretch into the early teens, so check the ages on each card. It updates as new listings arrive.
Body Worlds shows real human bodies preserved by plastination, a process invented by anatomist Gunther von Hagens, across seven levels on Damrak. The current exhibition, The Happiness Project, links what goes on inside the body to mood and health: hearts, lungs, nerves and muscles laid open, plus whole figures posed mid-movement.
The bodies are real, so it suits curious older kids more than squeamish ones.
Live actors in period costume lead visitors through eight interactive shows covering 750 years of Amsterdam's darkest history, with full sets and special effects.
Groups of up to 30 move from room to room, and the actors pull people from the crowd into the scenes. It is dark and loud, with jump scares, so it suits kids who like a fright and laugh it off afterward.
Moco is a private museum of modern and street art in Villa Alsberg, a 1904 townhouse on Museumplein opposite the Rijksmuseum. Rooms show Banksy, Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, Yayoi Kusama and KAWS, with works changing in rotation.
The digital and immersive rooms, full of mirrors and light, are the part kids tend to remember. Outside, the Moco Garden has sculptures by Banksy and KAWS.
The museum fills the canal house where Anne Frank and seven others hid from July 1942. Visitors climb steep stairs, pass behind the bookcase into the Secret Annex, and see Anne's room with the movie-star pictures she glued to the wall, plus her original red-checked diary.
The annex stays unfurnished at Otto Frank's request. The story is told through quotes, photos and video, and some images are hard to watch.
Klimhal Amsterdam opened in 1996 near Sloterdijk station and calls itself the biggest climbing hall in the Benelux. Its walls rise 21 meters and cover 3,300 square meters, with about 300 routes and 300 boulder problems indoors and out. A bar with indoor and outdoor seating sits beside the walls.
Backspace runs a set of themed escape rooms near Sloterdijk. The Time Machine is built for children: 8 to 15 kids play as one team, splitting into small groups to crack puzzles and fix a broken time machine, with a game master in the room giving hints.
Families can also book Budapest Express or Mindcrime, where staff turn the lights up and the sound effects down for younger players.
A'DAM Lookout fills the top two floors of the A'DAM Tower, 100 meters above the IJ. A lift with light and sound effects climbs 20 floors in 20 seconds to an indoor deck with binoculars and a rooftop skydeck with a 360-degree view over the canals and polders. Add-ons include 'Over the Edge', a swing that arcs out past the roof edge, and a 2.5-minute VR ride.
The Van Gogh Museum holds the largest collection of Vincent van Gogh's work anywhere, from Sunflowers to his self-portraits, drawings and letters.
Kids can pick up a treasure hunt sheet or a checklist of ten paintings at the Information Desk and tick each one off as they find it. Weekend painting workshops let them make a picture of their own afterward.
The Rijksmuseum is the national museum of the Netherlands, set in a castle-like building on Museumplein. Its 8,000 objects run from Rembrandt's Night Watch and Vermeer's Milkmaid to an airplane, dollhouses, hundreds of weapons and ship models.
Kids can pick up a Family Route booklet at the info desk or follow the Family Quest through the galleries, and on weekends there's a picnic area for packed lunches.
The inner harbor of the Marineterrein, a former navy yard, has been an official swimming spot since April 2025. A floating boardwalk closes off the water for laps or floating around on hot days. Water quality and temperature are posted online. Swimming is at your own risk, so it suits confident swimmers.
Nearby, a Sup Sup Club box rents paddleboards and a fitness garden has monkey bars.
Wind 'n Wheels is a land sailing park on a big open field on the IJdijk at the eastern tip of Zeeburgereiland. Kids wear a helmet, get a short lesson from an instructor, then steer a small wind-powered cart around the track.
Four kid-size carts suit younger riders, and a tandem cart lets a grown-up take a sibling too young to sail. Restaurant KAAP sits on the same grounds.
The Park Playground is a free-roam virtual reality arena in a business complex at the Houthavens. Groups put on wireless headsets and walk around a shared play field together, solving puzzles in an Egyptian pyramid, cracking an escape room or teaming up on a space mission. Hosts brief each group before play, and a bar serves drinks and snacks afterward. Younger kids get fewer choices, since most games include mild scares.
The Ruggeds, two-time Breaking world champions, perform Adrenaline, a high-energy show combining breakdance, acrobatics, and spontaneous movement set to breakbeat rhythms. Dancers swing through the audience and hang from the lights in a performance built on risk and physical precision. The show has played over 100 times globally, from New York to South Africa to China.
Nxt Museum shows new media art: room-sized light, sound and video installations that visitors walk through, sit in or lie down under. The current show, Pioneers of Media Art, runs through 10 spaces, pairing early video art from the 1970s with works by present-day studios.
The rooms are dark, with flashing lights and loud sound, which some kids love and some find too much.
NDSM Wharf is a former shipyard on the IJ, now a 10-hectare open site of artist studios, exhibition spaces, waterfront cafés and large public artworks. Kids can wander between graffiti-covered buildings, giant colorful sculptures and the old shipyard crane, and shoot hoops on the 3x3 basketball courts.
It suits curious older kids more than toddlers looking for a playground.
Monk is a bouldering hall: short climbing walls with no ropes or harnesses, over thick crash mats, with routes for first-timers up to strong climbers.
On Saturdays an open youth training takes non-members of any level, and trainers give each kid tips. Parents who don't climb can watch from the café, which looks onto the walls. Changing rooms, showers and free lockers are on site.
A wax museum on Dam Square with more than 90 life-size figures of pop stars, athletes, Dutch royals, DJs and Marvel heroes, spread over more than 10 themed areas.
Kids can touch the figures and pose with them, and try the interactive sets: a DJ booth, a catwalk, a karaoke café and a Van Gogh painting corner.
Teenagers can tell when a plan was picked for a younger sibling. This list keeps only the listings that still work at 13 and up: theater that takes on real subjects, dance and street culture, and exhibitions with enough edge to hold a teen's interest. Some are family shows that stretch into the early teens, so check the ages on each card. It updates as new listings arrive.
Body Worlds shows real human bodies preserved by plastination, a process invented by anatomist Gunther von Hagens, across seven levels on Damrak. The current exhibition, The Happiness Project, links what goes on inside the body to mood and health: hearts, lungs, nerves and muscles laid open, plus whole figures posed mid-movement.
The bodies are real, so it suits curious older kids more than squeamish ones.
Live actors in period costume lead visitors through eight interactive shows covering 750 years of Amsterdam's darkest history, with full sets and special effects.
Groups of up to 30 move from room to room, and the actors pull people from the crowd into the scenes. It is dark and loud, with jump scares, so it suits kids who like a fright and laugh it off afterward.
Moco is a private museum of modern and street art in Villa Alsberg, a 1904 townhouse on Museumplein opposite the Rijksmuseum. Rooms show Banksy, Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, Yayoi Kusama and KAWS, with works changing in rotation.
The digital and immersive rooms, full of mirrors and light, are the part kids tend to remember. Outside, the Moco Garden has sculptures by Banksy and KAWS.
The museum fills the canal house where Anne Frank and seven others hid from July 1942. Visitors climb steep stairs, pass behind the bookcase into the Secret Annex, and see Anne's room with the movie-star pictures she glued to the wall, plus her original red-checked diary.
The annex stays unfurnished at Otto Frank's request. The story is told through quotes, photos and video, and some images are hard to watch.
Klimhal Amsterdam opened in 1996 near Sloterdijk station and calls itself the biggest climbing hall in the Benelux. Its walls rise 21 meters and cover 3,300 square meters, with about 300 routes and 300 boulder problems indoors and out. A bar with indoor and outdoor seating sits beside the walls.
Backspace runs a set of themed escape rooms near Sloterdijk. The Time Machine is built for children: 8 to 15 kids play as one team, splitting into small groups to crack puzzles and fix a broken time machine, with a game master in the room giving hints.
Families can also book Budapest Express or Mindcrime, where staff turn the lights up and the sound effects down for younger players.
A'DAM Lookout fills the top two floors of the A'DAM Tower, 100 meters above the IJ. A lift with light and sound effects climbs 20 floors in 20 seconds to an indoor deck with binoculars and a rooftop skydeck with a 360-degree view over the canals and polders. Add-ons include 'Over the Edge', a swing that arcs out past the roof edge, and a 2.5-minute VR ride.
The Van Gogh Museum holds the largest collection of Vincent van Gogh's work anywhere, from Sunflowers to his self-portraits, drawings and letters.
Kids can pick up a treasure hunt sheet or a checklist of ten paintings at the Information Desk and tick each one off as they find it. Weekend painting workshops let them make a picture of their own afterward.
The Rijksmuseum is the national museum of the Netherlands, set in a castle-like building on Museumplein. Its 8,000 objects run from Rembrandt's Night Watch and Vermeer's Milkmaid to an airplane, dollhouses, hundreds of weapons and ship models.
Kids can pick up a Family Route booklet at the info desk or follow the Family Quest through the galleries, and on weekends there's a picnic area for packed lunches.
The inner harbor of the Marineterrein, a former navy yard, has been an official swimming spot since April 2025. A floating boardwalk closes off the water for laps or floating around on hot days. Water quality and temperature are posted online. Swimming is at your own risk, so it suits confident swimmers.
Nearby, a Sup Sup Club box rents paddleboards and a fitness garden has monkey bars.
Wind 'n Wheels is a land sailing park on a big open field on the IJdijk at the eastern tip of Zeeburgereiland. Kids wear a helmet, get a short lesson from an instructor, then steer a small wind-powered cart around the track.
Four kid-size carts suit younger riders, and a tandem cart lets a grown-up take a sibling too young to sail. Restaurant KAAP sits on the same grounds.
The Park Playground is a free-roam virtual reality arena in a business complex at the Houthavens. Groups put on wireless headsets and walk around a shared play field together, solving puzzles in an Egyptian pyramid, cracking an escape room or teaming up on a space mission. Hosts brief each group before play, and a bar serves drinks and snacks afterward. Younger kids get fewer choices, since most games include mild scares.
The Ruggeds, two-time Breaking world champions, perform Adrenaline, a high-energy show combining breakdance, acrobatics, and spontaneous movement set to breakbeat rhythms. Dancers swing through the audience and hang from the lights in a performance built on risk and physical precision. The show has played over 100 times globally, from New York to South Africa to China.
Nxt Museum shows new media art: room-sized light, sound and video installations that visitors walk through, sit in or lie down under. The current show, Pioneers of Media Art, runs through 10 spaces, pairing early video art from the 1970s with works by present-day studios.
The rooms are dark, with flashing lights and loud sound, which some kids love and some find too much.
NDSM Wharf is a former shipyard on the IJ, now a 10-hectare open site of artist studios, exhibition spaces, waterfront cafés and large public artworks. Kids can wander between graffiti-covered buildings, giant colorful sculptures and the old shipyard crane, and shoot hoops on the 3x3 basketball courts.
It suits curious older kids more than toddlers looking for a playground.
Monk is a bouldering hall: short climbing walls with no ropes or harnesses, over thick crash mats, with routes for first-timers up to strong climbers.
On Saturdays an open youth training takes non-members of any level, and trainers give each kid tips. Parents who don't climb can watch from the café, which looks onto the walls. Changing rooms, showers and free lockers are on site.
A wax museum on Dam Square with more than 90 life-size figures of pop stars, athletes, Dutch royals, DJs and Marvel heroes, spread over more than 10 themed areas.
Kids can touch the figures and pose with them, and try the interactive sets: a DJ booth, a catwalk, a karaoke café and a Van Gogh painting corner.
