Rain, cold or an early dusk, and the playground is off the table. This is the list we check first: family theater, puppet shows, circus and hands-on workshops, all under a roof and sorted by what's coming up soonest. Open each listing for times, tickets and the language of the show, since plenty are performed in Czech.
More than 100 models built from nearly 15 million LEGO bricks fill 1,500 square meters of a shopping center. Kids walk past a full-size Ferrari F40, a 60-meter Great Wall of China and a Star Wars-inspired zone, then build their own creations in a big free-play area.
It suits kids who already build with bricks. None of the models have been shown here before.
Pat and Mat are the Czech puppet handymen whose home repairs always go wrong, and this exhibition marks 50 years since they first appeared. The main rooms suit older kids: original film dioramas, props, and an animation workshop where you try the basics yourself. Younger kids head to the play room in the castle cellar, where a cinema also shows one of the feature films.
Cirkus Humberto is a traditional Czech family circus that tours the country with its own big top, the largest in the Czech Republic. This season's program mixes animal acts (horses, camels, zebras, a pride of Somali lions, Indian elephants and Matěj the bear) with aerial ropes and straps, juggling, a hula-hoop dancer and the Duo Warriors on the wheel of death. Mr. Chap's clown routines run between acts.
A puppet show about Prague's Astronomical Clock, staged at Říše loutek, a mechanical puppet theater that has run inside the Municipal Library for a hundred years. The story follows the clock as keeper of time: Death ringing his bell, the twelve apostles, and the city's legends.
Shadow puppets, marionettes and glove puppets, some spooky and some comic, tell it through pictures and music, so kids from anywhere can follow.
A ghost comedy based on Tim Burton's cult film. Lydia, still grieving her mother, moves into a house already haunted by a gentle couple, and the chaotic demon Beetlejuice makes everything worse. Expect big effects, dance, energetic songs and black humor. It is a full Broadway-style production on the theater's main stage, and it suits kids who like spooky and silly more than sweet.
A morning concert for babies and toddlers where the music turns into animals: who stomps like an elephant, who hops like a kangaroo, who hides in a shell. The Gaudioso wind quartet leads a musical carnival of animals and dancing.
It suits families who want a first taste of live classical music without a long sit. The setting is the Great Hall of the New Town Hall on Charles Square.
GEOLAB is a geography game room run by Charles University's science faculty, part of its Geography Days. Kids and parents hunt for mistakes on maps, work out what satellite images show, and match population pyramids to the right countries. The games go well past capital cities, so it suits curious school-age kids more than preschoolers.
The Dům čtení branch of Prague's city library turns into a dance floor for this lesson. Kids warm up together, then learn a short routine. It suits kids who like to move and want to try dance without committing to a term of classes.
Two hares, Ludvík and Lujsa, explore the world through its small details. One likes to collect, the other likes to hunt. Puppets, light and music carry a gentle story about which treasures to keep and which to let go. It is made for small children and the grown-ups beside them, and it is led in Czech.
Circus Nights is a festival of new circus held in towns across Czechia and Slovakia, part of the international La Nuit du Cirque. Here the program spreads over several stages and mixes professional shows with open workshops and training for the public.
It suits kids who want to try circus skills, not only watch: juggling, balancing and acrobatics are on offer. Cirk La Putyka also brings its show Okamžik.
A storyteller tells spooky and mysterious tales out loud at the city library's Černý Most branch, and parents and kids listen together. It suits kids who can follow a longer story and enjoy a scare.
A solo show by performer Daniel Kvašňovský that blends new circus, clowning and physical theater. His character steps on stage set on giving the performance of his life, and it keeps going sideways, funny one moment and touching the next. The setting is a winter solstice somewhere between a circus tent and a sheepfold, with a thread of Slovak folk. Expect no red noses or giant shoes.
Tramtárie is a playful Czech show stitched together from scraps of nonsense poems and set to live music. Actors pop up, run past, whisper, splash and make things vanish in a world of words, colors, magic and laughter.
There is no lesson to learn here: the point is permission to be silly. The verses repeat until they stick, and parents say kids go home singing them.
A puppet fairy tale from Divadlo b, based on Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid. Evelína can't wait for her fifteenth birthday, when she can look at the human world for the first time, but the wish brings trouble with it.
It is a spoken story performed in Czech, so it suits kids who follow the language and enjoy a classic tale told with puppets.
Princ a Večernice is the stage version of the classic Czech fairy tale film. Young Prince Velen marries off his three sisters to the rulers of sun, moon and wind, falls for their sister Večernice, then has to leave the castle and find his own courage on the road. Standing in his way are robbers, false merchants and the cruel Mrakomor, ruler of bad weather. Expect suspense and gentle humor.
Hansel and Gretel as a puppet show by the Říše loutek company. The children wander off while picking strawberries and find a house made of gingerbread, where a witch plans to fatten Hansel up. The grumpy old man who lives with her dislikes children but befriends Hansel and stops her. Two dwarf puppets guide the story. The sets and puppets were made by the family of a late Czech artist.
A family concert where the Prague Symphony Orchestra plays alongside actors, dancers and young performers from Prague music and ballet schools. Two guides lead kids through a fairy-tale adventure of dragons, princesses and magic, with plenty of laughs on the way. It suits curious kids meeting an orchestra for the first time.
A dance revue play about Josephine Baker, the Broadway dancer who made Paris her home, spied against the Nazis in World War II and fought racism all her life. Radka Pavlovčinová plays her through charleston, songs and quick costume changes, with a talkative one-man orchestra and a cheetah named Chiquita.
It suits teens ready to talk about discrimination and about using their own voice.
A puppet play that ties kids' lives today to the dark old legends of Prague. Time stops on the Old Town astronomical clock, an ancient curse wakes, and a creature trapped between the seconds walks into the present. Hurvínek's wish sets it off. There are laughs, but the mood gets eerie, and the story is about love, memory and what can't be undone. Not a light comedy for younger kids.
A stage version of the famous Czech bedtime cartoon about a small dog, a present for a girl named Ája, who grows into a giant. Kids watch Fík sit at a school desk, star in a circus ring, drive a car and travel the world, only to find home is best.
A funny show about friendship and courage, spoken in Czech, so it suits kids who follow the language.
A live lecture show where a presenter runs experiments with liquid nitrogen at minus 196°C. Kids see how far a chilled balloon shrinks, what happens to an LED at that temperature, whether a splash of liquid nitrogen is dangerous, and why supercooled materials can levitate in a magnetic field. Popular with school groups and the public, it suits kids curious about science who can follow a talk.
Aplaus prosím is Europark's Sunday theater series. Professional Czech troupes take turns on a stage inside the shopping center, and the troupe and story change every week. The shows are short, so it fits around lunch or a quick shop. The fairy tales are told in Czech, so kids who don't follow the language may lose the thread.
A classic Czech puppet tale. Princess Majdalenka ends up in hell by mistake, and Kašpárek, the cheeky jester of Czech puppetry, sets off with his friend Honza to free her by outwitting the devils.
It plays at Divadlo Říše loutek, a puppet theater in the Municipal Library building in the Old Town. A good first theater outing for preschoolers.
A sing-along concert led by composer Jaroslav Uhlíř, with a live band and singer Jana Bittnerová. The set runs through the Uhlíř and Svěrák songbook, from "Holubí dům" and "Severní vítr" to tunes from the fairy-tale films Ať žijí duchové! and Lotrando a Zubejda. Kids can join in, and parents and grandparents will know most of the words.
A one-performer theater show about Františka, who can't wait to meet her little brother, still hiding in Mom's belly. Her search for answers about the nine months before birth is playful, gentle and educational. It suits a child expecting a sibling, or any kid asking where babies come from.
Hrrr na ně! ("Charge at them!") is a new play for kids about the Hussites, the 15th-century Czech rebels led by Jan Žižka. Two actors from 3D company tell the story with jokes, songs and duels, and kids find out why Žižka's name is still known today. It is played for laughs, not as a history lesson, and it suits kids who can follow Czech.
A new Czech play about Manka, a girl who loves to paint, in the smoky factory streets of old Smíchov. When an old man tells her about a mysterious painting hidden in the Church of St. Nicholas, she crosses into Malá Strana, the neighborhood next door that Smíchov kids avoid. A story of courage and friendship, inspired by writer Jakub Arbes and artist Toyen, played by two actors.
Libozvuky is an interactive music show from Divadlo Minor, directed by Jiří Adámek. Actors and musicians build a landscape of sound, then use light and voices to conjure a creature on stage. There are no seats: kids sit on the floor beside a long wooden walkway, and children often call out what they see and edge closer to the actors. Marek Doubrava's score won the 2015 Theatre Critics' Award.
Krysáci, the rat friends from the Czech Večerníček bedtime series and books, move to the stage in this fairy tale by Divadlo pohádek. Hubert and Hodan, Eda the lab mouse from Prague and Ludvík the plaster gnome share an unusual home in a forgotten corner of a dump in Vizovice.
Instead of a screen, kids get live actors and a real stage. Libor Jeník wrote and directed it.
A stage version of the 1980 Czech TV fairy tale. A dragon has moved in just outside the kingdom, Princess Lenka is in danger, and it falls to young Martin and his brother Honza, the so-called fool, to prove that beating a dragon takes more than shiny armor.
The Svěrák and Uhlíř songs are ones Czech kids, parents and grandparents all know, and the cast sings them on stage. Performed in Czech.
A bathtub is the whole stage in this Divadlo Minor show about the rules parents repeat every day ("Don't run or you'll fall", "The bed is not a trampoline"). Mom and Dad turn out to be big kids themselves, with live music and animation projected on stage. In the second half, kids join in, shooting ping-pong balls into a sink and building marble runs from plumbing pipes.
Two club model railways, built at 1:45 and 1:32 scale, run trains past a replica station, villages and tunnels. Kids watch engines pull passenger and freight cars through detailed miniature scenery. It suits train fans who like spotting details, from steam engines to modern electric locomotives.
After falling out of a tree, Ema is stuck in a hospital bed with white walls and nothing to do. Out of that boredom, her room turns into a jungle, the sea and outer space, with guides from a monkey to Albert Einstein. The play mixes music, movement, projections and animation, and a group of primary-school kids who helped shape it also appear on stage.
The Říše loutek ensemble stages Božena Němcová's classic Czech fairy tale with string marionettes: gold is rare and salt is ordinary, until the salt runs out and the whole kingdom is in trouble.
The company has played this basement theater under the Municipal Library since it opened in 1928. The art deco hall has a starry ceiling and height-adjustable seats for small children.
Prague 7's yearly Saint Nicholas afternoon at the Výstaviště fairgrounds. Kids skate in the Small Sports Hall, in their own skates or rental ones. Then they head to the nearby Ateliér for a pre-Christmas craft, a photo-booth picture to take home and a small Saint Nicholas gift.
The two hapless handymen from the Czech cartoon step off the screen and onto the stage, played by two actors. On vacation they still can't leave their tools alone: they tinker on the seabed, in outer space and in a hotel room they rebuild to look like their workshop at home. Petr Skoumal's familiar theme tune runs through the whole show.
A St. Nicholas afternoon built around old folk customs. Kids learn the Mikuláš tradition, then make a little devil from dried plums or a straw chain for the Christmas tree. The finale is a face-to-face chat with St. Nicholas, an angel and a devil. It suits families with preschoolers and school-age kids who enjoy crafts and costumes.
Čarodějnice Bordelína is the heroine of Sandra Dražilová Zlámalová's Czech children's books, and this stage musical brings her to life with songs, dance numbers and lavish staging. The theater bills it as a funny fairy tale for kids and their parents.
Her world includes an owl, a squirrel, a hare named Cyril, another witch and a wizard. It suits families who follow Czech, especially kids who know the books.
Each spring, Open House Praha unlocks dozens of Prague buildings that normally stay closed: palaces, embassies, monasteries, old waterworks, stadiums and new apartment blocks. Families wander in, follow volunteer guides and poke around spaces most locals never see.
The festival also runs a children's program, so younger visitors get their own way in. Best for curious kids who like exploring; toddlers may tire of the lines at the most popular buildings.
Rain, cold or an early dusk, and the playground is off the table. This is the list we check first: family theater, puppet shows, circus and hands-on workshops, all under a roof and sorted by what's coming up soonest. Open each listing for times, tickets and the language of the show, since plenty are performed in Czech.
More than 100 models built from nearly 15 million LEGO bricks fill 1,500 square meters of a shopping center. Kids walk past a full-size Ferrari F40, a 60-meter Great Wall of China and a Star Wars-inspired zone, then build their own creations in a big free-play area.
It suits kids who already build with bricks. None of the models have been shown here before.
Pat and Mat are the Czech puppet handymen whose home repairs always go wrong, and this exhibition marks 50 years since they first appeared. The main rooms suit older kids: original film dioramas, props, and an animation workshop where you try the basics yourself. Younger kids head to the play room in the castle cellar, where a cinema also shows one of the feature films.
Cirkus Humberto is a traditional Czech family circus that tours the country with its own big top, the largest in the Czech Republic. This season's program mixes animal acts (horses, camels, zebras, a pride of Somali lions, Indian elephants and Matěj the bear) with aerial ropes and straps, juggling, a hula-hoop dancer and the Duo Warriors on the wheel of death. Mr. Chap's clown routines run between acts.
A puppet show about Prague's Astronomical Clock, staged at Říše loutek, a mechanical puppet theater that has run inside the Municipal Library for a hundred years. The story follows the clock as keeper of time: Death ringing his bell, the twelve apostles, and the city's legends.
Shadow puppets, marionettes and glove puppets, some spooky and some comic, tell it through pictures and music, so kids from anywhere can follow.
A ghost comedy based on Tim Burton's cult film. Lydia, still grieving her mother, moves into a house already haunted by a gentle couple, and the chaotic demon Beetlejuice makes everything worse. Expect big effects, dance, energetic songs and black humor. It is a full Broadway-style production on the theater's main stage, and it suits kids who like spooky and silly more than sweet.
A morning concert for babies and toddlers where the music turns into animals: who stomps like an elephant, who hops like a kangaroo, who hides in a shell. The Gaudioso wind quartet leads a musical carnival of animals and dancing.
It suits families who want a first taste of live classical music without a long sit. The setting is the Great Hall of the New Town Hall on Charles Square.
GEOLAB is a geography game room run by Charles University's science faculty, part of its Geography Days. Kids and parents hunt for mistakes on maps, work out what satellite images show, and match population pyramids to the right countries. The games go well past capital cities, so it suits curious school-age kids more than preschoolers.
The Dům čtení branch of Prague's city library turns into a dance floor for this lesson. Kids warm up together, then learn a short routine. It suits kids who like to move and want to try dance without committing to a term of classes.
Two hares, Ludvík and Lujsa, explore the world through its small details. One likes to collect, the other likes to hunt. Puppets, light and music carry a gentle story about which treasures to keep and which to let go. It is made for small children and the grown-ups beside them, and it is led in Czech.
Circus Nights is a festival of new circus held in towns across Czechia and Slovakia, part of the international La Nuit du Cirque. Here the program spreads over several stages and mixes professional shows with open workshops and training for the public.
It suits kids who want to try circus skills, not only watch: juggling, balancing and acrobatics are on offer. Cirk La Putyka also brings its show Okamžik.
A storyteller tells spooky and mysterious tales out loud at the city library's Černý Most branch, and parents and kids listen together. It suits kids who can follow a longer story and enjoy a scare.
A solo show by performer Daniel Kvašňovský that blends new circus, clowning and physical theater. His character steps on stage set on giving the performance of his life, and it keeps going sideways, funny one moment and touching the next. The setting is a winter solstice somewhere between a circus tent and a sheepfold, with a thread of Slovak folk. Expect no red noses or giant shoes.
Tramtárie is a playful Czech show stitched together from scraps of nonsense poems and set to live music. Actors pop up, run past, whisper, splash and make things vanish in a world of words, colors, magic and laughter.
There is no lesson to learn here: the point is permission to be silly. The verses repeat until they stick, and parents say kids go home singing them.
A puppet fairy tale from Divadlo b, based on Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid. Evelína can't wait for her fifteenth birthday, when she can look at the human world for the first time, but the wish brings trouble with it.
It is a spoken story performed in Czech, so it suits kids who follow the language and enjoy a classic tale told with puppets.
Princ a Večernice is the stage version of the classic Czech fairy tale film. Young Prince Velen marries off his three sisters to the rulers of sun, moon and wind, falls for their sister Večernice, then has to leave the castle and find his own courage on the road. Standing in his way are robbers, false merchants and the cruel Mrakomor, ruler of bad weather. Expect suspense and gentle humor.
Hansel and Gretel as a puppet show by the Říše loutek company. The children wander off while picking strawberries and find a house made of gingerbread, where a witch plans to fatten Hansel up. The grumpy old man who lives with her dislikes children but befriends Hansel and stops her. Two dwarf puppets guide the story. The sets and puppets were made by the family of a late Czech artist.
A family concert where the Prague Symphony Orchestra plays alongside actors, dancers and young performers from Prague music and ballet schools. Two guides lead kids through a fairy-tale adventure of dragons, princesses and magic, with plenty of laughs on the way. It suits curious kids meeting an orchestra for the first time.
A dance revue play about Josephine Baker, the Broadway dancer who made Paris her home, spied against the Nazis in World War II and fought racism all her life. Radka Pavlovčinová plays her through charleston, songs and quick costume changes, with a talkative one-man orchestra and a cheetah named Chiquita.
It suits teens ready to talk about discrimination and about using their own voice.
A puppet play that ties kids' lives today to the dark old legends of Prague. Time stops on the Old Town astronomical clock, an ancient curse wakes, and a creature trapped between the seconds walks into the present. Hurvínek's wish sets it off. There are laughs, but the mood gets eerie, and the story is about love, memory and what can't be undone. Not a light comedy for younger kids.
A stage version of the famous Czech bedtime cartoon about a small dog, a present for a girl named Ája, who grows into a giant. Kids watch Fík sit at a school desk, star in a circus ring, drive a car and travel the world, only to find home is best.
A funny show about friendship and courage, spoken in Czech, so it suits kids who follow the language.
A live lecture show where a presenter runs experiments with liquid nitrogen at minus 196°C. Kids see how far a chilled balloon shrinks, what happens to an LED at that temperature, whether a splash of liquid nitrogen is dangerous, and why supercooled materials can levitate in a magnetic field. Popular with school groups and the public, it suits kids curious about science who can follow a talk.
Aplaus prosím is Europark's Sunday theater series. Professional Czech troupes take turns on a stage inside the shopping center, and the troupe and story change every week. The shows are short, so it fits around lunch or a quick shop. The fairy tales are told in Czech, so kids who don't follow the language may lose the thread.
A classic Czech puppet tale. Princess Majdalenka ends up in hell by mistake, and Kašpárek, the cheeky jester of Czech puppetry, sets off with his friend Honza to free her by outwitting the devils.
It plays at Divadlo Říše loutek, a puppet theater in the Municipal Library building in the Old Town. A good first theater outing for preschoolers.
A sing-along concert led by composer Jaroslav Uhlíř, with a live band and singer Jana Bittnerová. The set runs through the Uhlíř and Svěrák songbook, from "Holubí dům" and "Severní vítr" to tunes from the fairy-tale films Ať žijí duchové! and Lotrando a Zubejda. Kids can join in, and parents and grandparents will know most of the words.
A one-performer theater show about Františka, who can't wait to meet her little brother, still hiding in Mom's belly. Her search for answers about the nine months before birth is playful, gentle and educational. It suits a child expecting a sibling, or any kid asking where babies come from.
Hrrr na ně! ("Charge at them!") is a new play for kids about the Hussites, the 15th-century Czech rebels led by Jan Žižka. Two actors from 3D company tell the story with jokes, songs and duels, and kids find out why Žižka's name is still known today. It is played for laughs, not as a history lesson, and it suits kids who can follow Czech.
A new Czech play about Manka, a girl who loves to paint, in the smoky factory streets of old Smíchov. When an old man tells her about a mysterious painting hidden in the Church of St. Nicholas, she crosses into Malá Strana, the neighborhood next door that Smíchov kids avoid. A story of courage and friendship, inspired by writer Jakub Arbes and artist Toyen, played by two actors.
Libozvuky is an interactive music show from Divadlo Minor, directed by Jiří Adámek. Actors and musicians build a landscape of sound, then use light and voices to conjure a creature on stage. There are no seats: kids sit on the floor beside a long wooden walkway, and children often call out what they see and edge closer to the actors. Marek Doubrava's score won the 2015 Theatre Critics' Award.
Krysáci, the rat friends from the Czech Večerníček bedtime series and books, move to the stage in this fairy tale by Divadlo pohádek. Hubert and Hodan, Eda the lab mouse from Prague and Ludvík the plaster gnome share an unusual home in a forgotten corner of a dump in Vizovice.
Instead of a screen, kids get live actors and a real stage. Libor Jeník wrote and directed it.
A stage version of the 1980 Czech TV fairy tale. A dragon has moved in just outside the kingdom, Princess Lenka is in danger, and it falls to young Martin and his brother Honza, the so-called fool, to prove that beating a dragon takes more than shiny armor.
The Svěrák and Uhlíř songs are ones Czech kids, parents and grandparents all know, and the cast sings them on stage. Performed in Czech.
A bathtub is the whole stage in this Divadlo Minor show about the rules parents repeat every day ("Don't run or you'll fall", "The bed is not a trampoline"). Mom and Dad turn out to be big kids themselves, with live music and animation projected on stage. In the second half, kids join in, shooting ping-pong balls into a sink and building marble runs from plumbing pipes.
Two club model railways, built at 1:45 and 1:32 scale, run trains past a replica station, villages and tunnels. Kids watch engines pull passenger and freight cars through detailed miniature scenery. It suits train fans who like spotting details, from steam engines to modern electric locomotives.
After falling out of a tree, Ema is stuck in a hospital bed with white walls and nothing to do. Out of that boredom, her room turns into a jungle, the sea and outer space, with guides from a monkey to Albert Einstein. The play mixes music, movement, projections and animation, and a group of primary-school kids who helped shape it also appear on stage.
The Říše loutek ensemble stages Božena Němcová's classic Czech fairy tale with string marionettes: gold is rare and salt is ordinary, until the salt runs out and the whole kingdom is in trouble.
The company has played this basement theater under the Municipal Library since it opened in 1928. The art deco hall has a starry ceiling and height-adjustable seats for small children.
Prague 7's yearly Saint Nicholas afternoon at the Výstaviště fairgrounds. Kids skate in the Small Sports Hall, in their own skates or rental ones. Then they head to the nearby Ateliér for a pre-Christmas craft, a photo-booth picture to take home and a small Saint Nicholas gift.
The two hapless handymen from the Czech cartoon step off the screen and onto the stage, played by two actors. On vacation they still can't leave their tools alone: they tinker on the seabed, in outer space and in a hotel room they rebuild to look like their workshop at home. Petr Skoumal's familiar theme tune runs through the whole show.
A St. Nicholas afternoon built around old folk customs. Kids learn the Mikuláš tradition, then make a little devil from dried plums or a straw chain for the Christmas tree. The finale is a face-to-face chat with St. Nicholas, an angel and a devil. It suits families with preschoolers and school-age kids who enjoy crafts and costumes.
Čarodějnice Bordelína is the heroine of Sandra Dražilová Zlámalová's Czech children's books, and this stage musical brings her to life with songs, dance numbers and lavish staging. The theater bills it as a funny fairy tale for kids and their parents.
Her world includes an owl, a squirrel, a hare named Cyril, another witch and a wizard. It suits families who follow Czech, especially kids who know the books.
Each spring, Open House Praha unlocks dozens of Prague buildings that normally stay closed: palaces, embassies, monasteries, old waterworks, stadiums and new apartment blocks. Families wander in, follow volunteer guides and poke around spaces most locals never see.
The festival also runs a children's program, so younger visitors get their own way in. Best for curious kids who like exploring; toddlers may tire of the lines at the most popular buildings.
