Weekend coming up and no plan yet? This list refreshes on its own, so it always shows family events running this Saturday and Sunday: kids' theater and puppet shows, museum workshops, seasonal festivals and outdoor days. We check each listing for ages, prices and booking, so you can pick something fast and get out the door.
Häpp! is a gentle dance show by ZebraDans about two friends, two wooden stools and the simple joy of dancing together. With soft live music, a bit of humor and a little magic, the friends make the stools float and spin.
There is very little talking, so kids who don't speak Swedish can follow it. It suits toddlers and preschoolers who do better with a calm show.
Kurt and Kio are bored, the stare-at-the-ceiling kind of bored, until Kio decides a fort will fix everything. They just don't have one. What follows is an adventure around the living room, told mostly through movement and humor by two mime-trained actors. It's based on Lisen Adbåge's Swedish children's book Kurt och Kio vill ha koja, and suits kids who like silliness more than a long story.
A family circus show by Swedish company Below Zero. Seven acrobats move across a set that suggests mountains, waves and a glacier, while two musicians play newly written folk music live, from whispering fiddles to drums and club beats.
Expect risky balancing acts, flips, a haute couture catwalk and bodies thrown meters into the air. It is told through bodies and music rather than words, so kids need no Swedish.
Birkagården, a culture house, brings a theater group or other children's performers to its stage each year. This fall's last show is Totoo trollkarl, a magic show led by a slightly goofy magician whose spells sometimes go wrong, which only makes it funnier. It is easy to follow and full of laughs, for kids and the adults who bring them.
Omfamnad is a hands-on exhibition at Kulturhuset where you can step inside a six-meter stone sculpture, lean on a giant textile octopus and wear the paintings. On Art Saturdays, one of the exhibition's artists walks kids and parents through their own work, then runs a making workshop built on it. Each Saturday has a different artist and a different project, so the sessions don't repeat.
Språkfesten (The Language Party) is Stockholm City Library's day about growing up with more than one language. Authors and illustrators read picture books aloud, often in two languages, and kids can ask them questions and get a book signed. A book fair carries children's books in Swedish and about 20 other languages. It suits multilingual families most; the main stage leans adult, so head for the kids' stage.
A fun, cheeky and above all messy science show with Beppe Singer, the award-winning presenter, author and teacher. Kids get to try some of his favorite experiments, taken straight from his books.
It suits curious kids who don't mind getting their hands dirty. The show is led in Swedish, so kids who don't follow it will get less out of it.
Two mimes and their puppets take toddlers down into a glittering underwater world of two seahorses, singing fish and a cheeky axolotl. Then a yellow boot comes bobbing by, and someone is hiding inside.
There is no talking at all. The story runs on movement, music and the set, like a picture book acted out, so kids who don't speak Swedish follow it as easily as anyone.
A day at the Swedish History Museum about how people have lived through climate change, from the ice ages on, and what that history can teach kids today.
Kids and adults go together: a guided look at prehistoric objects, a short talk on climate made for children, and a drawing workshop where everyone adds a picture or message about the future to a shared board.
Isol, the Argentine picture book author and illustrator, reads from some of her own books in Spanish and Swedish. Then everyone gets creative together, and the library serves fika.
It suits kids who follow Spanish or Swedish and like being read to. Isol won the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award (ALMA) in 2013, the world's largest prize for children's and youth literature.
A touring exhibition about James Cameron, the director of Titanic and Avatar, and his other life as a deep-sea explorer. Kids see props from his films, film projections, rare objects and the underwater cameras and technology he used to explore the ocean depths.
It suits kids curious about the deep sea, underwater technology or how films get made.
Klara has forgotten her name and can't find her way home. On her search she meets an egg that refuses to hatch, a wind that longs to be a stone and a tree that wishes it were water. It's a short, dreamlike opera in the spirit of Alice in Wonderland, sung in Swedish, with music by composer Andrea Tarrodi. Critics and young audiences loved its 2024 premiere.
Soft textiles, sculptural furniture and handmade objects fill this design exhibition, including a giant plush orangutan and armchairs with bear ears. More than 100 designers from 23 countries show work about play and making things by hand. Two Dutch designers planned the rooms with their children, Ko and Puk. It is a gallery show, not a play area, so it suits kids who like looking closely at strange, colorful things.
Gräv (Dig) is a new puppet musical by Miriam Forsberg. Every morning Billie walks past a building site on the way to preschool, until one day the digger turns and looks back. A friendship grows from feeling different, and Billie's fascination brings back the digger's lost spark.
Songs carry the story. The director calls it a tribute to kids with special interests, so it lands well with machine-obsessed preschoolers.
One of Sweden's biggest Christmas fairs fills Taxinge Slott in Sörmland, with more than 100 Swedish craftspeople selling handmade work. It's a day for ticking off Christmas gifts while kids wander the stalls with you.
The castle calls itself Kakslottet, the cake castle, and has its own café for fika. It's a browsing day, so it suits kids happy to look around more than ones expecting a program of activities.
London's Natural History Museum runs this yearly wildlife photo competition, and this is the exhibition of the results: 100 photos picked from 65,403 entries from 121 countries. Kids get a dung beetle shot at eye level by the young winner, along with animal moments few people ever see. It is all looking and no touching, so it suits animal fans more than toddlers who need to move.
A drop-in workshop at Liljevalchs, the art gallery on Djurgården, where kids make their own mask with educators and artists on hand to guide them. The idea comes from Ylva Snöfrid's exhibition The House of the Muses, where masks are part of her rituals. The starting question: who are you, and who would you like to be? You can also try the show's Exquisite Corpse ritual.
A hands-on chemistry session in the workshop of the Nobel Prize Museum, in the middle of Gamla Stan. Kids run two experiments: they start a chemical reaction inside a plastic glove and make a substance that wasn't there before, then use what the museum calls "fart juice" to watch liquids change in front of them. It suits kids who like to mix things and see what happens.
The museum switches off the lights in its Gold Room, and kids explore the ancient treasures with a headlamp as their only light. The guide ties the objects to Viking-age tales, following Beowulf through his fights with the swamp monster Grendel and the dragon.
A good fit for kids who like myths and legends. The room is dark, though the tour itself has no scare effects.
A hands-on craft workshop at the Swedish History Museum, where kids make their own Viking-style bracelet. Vikings wore arm rings, mostly silver or bronze, and the old sagas tell of heroes swearing oaths on them or earning one as a reward for something brave.
Each kid decides what their own ring stands for, and the real ones are on show in the museum's Viking World exhibition.
A program the Royal Swedish Opera runs for kids, and what happens changes by date. Kids try on costumes from the opera's costume store during a tour of the opera house, discover their voice in a short opera-singing session, or sit in on a musical story time in the scenery workshops.
The try-out sessions suit kids who are fine being away from their parent for a short while.
A pig who can only say "moo" baffles the other farm animals, then falls for a curious goat and goes silent. Two actors tell the story through mime, movement and music, with no spoken lines, so kids follow it in any language.
A gentle romantic comedy about being different and being liked as you are. It suits preschoolers who enjoy silly animals more than older kids after a big plot.
Mamma Moo, the cow from Jujja Wieslander and Sven Nordqvist's Swedish picture books, plans a Christmas surprise for the farmer: she'll jump until her milk turns to whipped cream. Crow, meanwhile, rushes home to sort out presents for himself, in case nobody else gives him any. It's a funny, warm play about friendship and what counts at Christmas.
#Stockholmsjul turns streets and squares across central Stockholm into a walk of Christmas lights, a million LEDs in all. Swedish Christmas figures get a modern look: moose, reindeer, deer, spruces, cones, angels and a giant mistletoe.
Kids can help pick the route on the free light map and spot the animals along the way. It suits families happy to walk a while in the cold.
Dröse & Norberg's own stage version of The Jungle Book, with Mowgli, Baloo, Bagheera, Kaa and Shere Kahn alongside a troop of monkeys and their King Gibbon. It mixes original songs, humor and acrobatics, played by a large cast of Swedish musical performers in big fur-and-feather costumes. The show has drawn over 200,000 people and suits kids who can sit through a full-length theater show with an intermission.
Astrid Lindgren's Emil comes to life as a family musical at Intiman, a small theater on Odenplan where every seat is close to the stage. Kids meet Emil, Ida, Alfred, Lina and Lukas the horse, and watch one prank follow another, each ending with an angry Papa and another wooden figure carved in the shed.
It's performed in Swedish, so it lands best with kids who already know the stories.
Children and adults work side by side in the museum's Workshop, making their own memory boxes with paint and collage. The theme comes from the exhibition of Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian, whose Heartache Boxes are small sculptures holding memories from her life. It suits families who would rather make something together than walk through galleries.
A solo physical theater show for toddlers and preschoolers about how hard it is to learn something new, and how proud you feel when you suddenly can. Per Dahlström sweeps, stumbles, whistles and rides a unicycle, losing heart along the way until a small green horn turns into a cheeky bird that won't let him quit. It suits kids learning to try again when something goes wrong.
Weekend coming up and no plan yet? This list refreshes on its own, so it always shows family events running this Saturday and Sunday: kids' theater and puppet shows, museum workshops, seasonal festivals and outdoor days. We check each listing for ages, prices and booking, so you can pick something fast and get out the door.
Häpp! is a gentle dance show by ZebraDans about two friends, two wooden stools and the simple joy of dancing together. With soft live music, a bit of humor and a little magic, the friends make the stools float and spin.
There is very little talking, so kids who don't speak Swedish can follow it. It suits toddlers and preschoolers who do better with a calm show.
Kurt and Kio are bored, the stare-at-the-ceiling kind of bored, until Kio decides a fort will fix everything. They just don't have one. What follows is an adventure around the living room, told mostly through movement and humor by two mime-trained actors. It's based on Lisen Adbåge's Swedish children's book Kurt och Kio vill ha koja, and suits kids who like silliness more than a long story.
A family circus show by Swedish company Below Zero. Seven acrobats move across a set that suggests mountains, waves and a glacier, while two musicians play newly written folk music live, from whispering fiddles to drums and club beats.
Expect risky balancing acts, flips, a haute couture catwalk and bodies thrown meters into the air. It is told through bodies and music rather than words, so kids need no Swedish.
Birkagården, a culture house, brings a theater group or other children's performers to its stage each year. This fall's last show is Totoo trollkarl, a magic show led by a slightly goofy magician whose spells sometimes go wrong, which only makes it funnier. It is easy to follow and full of laughs, for kids and the adults who bring them.
Omfamnad is a hands-on exhibition at Kulturhuset where you can step inside a six-meter stone sculpture, lean on a giant textile octopus and wear the paintings. On Art Saturdays, one of the exhibition's artists walks kids and parents through their own work, then runs a making workshop built on it. Each Saturday has a different artist and a different project, so the sessions don't repeat.
Språkfesten (The Language Party) is Stockholm City Library's day about growing up with more than one language. Authors and illustrators read picture books aloud, often in two languages, and kids can ask them questions and get a book signed. A book fair carries children's books in Swedish and about 20 other languages. It suits multilingual families most; the main stage leans adult, so head for the kids' stage.
A fun, cheeky and above all messy science show with Beppe Singer, the award-winning presenter, author and teacher. Kids get to try some of his favorite experiments, taken straight from his books.
It suits curious kids who don't mind getting their hands dirty. The show is led in Swedish, so kids who don't follow it will get less out of it.
Two mimes and their puppets take toddlers down into a glittering underwater world of two seahorses, singing fish and a cheeky axolotl. Then a yellow boot comes bobbing by, and someone is hiding inside.
There is no talking at all. The story runs on movement, music and the set, like a picture book acted out, so kids who don't speak Swedish follow it as easily as anyone.
A day at the Swedish History Museum about how people have lived through climate change, from the ice ages on, and what that history can teach kids today.
Kids and adults go together: a guided look at prehistoric objects, a short talk on climate made for children, and a drawing workshop where everyone adds a picture or message about the future to a shared board.
Isol, the Argentine picture book author and illustrator, reads from some of her own books in Spanish and Swedish. Then everyone gets creative together, and the library serves fika.
It suits kids who follow Spanish or Swedish and like being read to. Isol won the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award (ALMA) in 2013, the world's largest prize for children's and youth literature.
A touring exhibition about James Cameron, the director of Titanic and Avatar, and his other life as a deep-sea explorer. Kids see props from his films, film projections, rare objects and the underwater cameras and technology he used to explore the ocean depths.
It suits kids curious about the deep sea, underwater technology or how films get made.
Klara has forgotten her name and can't find her way home. On her search she meets an egg that refuses to hatch, a wind that longs to be a stone and a tree that wishes it were water. It's a short, dreamlike opera in the spirit of Alice in Wonderland, sung in Swedish, with music by composer Andrea Tarrodi. Critics and young audiences loved its 2024 premiere.
Soft textiles, sculptural furniture and handmade objects fill this design exhibition, including a giant plush orangutan and armchairs with bear ears. More than 100 designers from 23 countries show work about play and making things by hand. Two Dutch designers planned the rooms with their children, Ko and Puk. It is a gallery show, not a play area, so it suits kids who like looking closely at strange, colorful things.
Gräv (Dig) is a new puppet musical by Miriam Forsberg. Every morning Billie walks past a building site on the way to preschool, until one day the digger turns and looks back. A friendship grows from feeling different, and Billie's fascination brings back the digger's lost spark.
Songs carry the story. The director calls it a tribute to kids with special interests, so it lands well with machine-obsessed preschoolers.
One of Sweden's biggest Christmas fairs fills Taxinge Slott in Sörmland, with more than 100 Swedish craftspeople selling handmade work. It's a day for ticking off Christmas gifts while kids wander the stalls with you.
The castle calls itself Kakslottet, the cake castle, and has its own café for fika. It's a browsing day, so it suits kids happy to look around more than ones expecting a program of activities.
London's Natural History Museum runs this yearly wildlife photo competition, and this is the exhibition of the results: 100 photos picked from 65,403 entries from 121 countries. Kids get a dung beetle shot at eye level by the young winner, along with animal moments few people ever see. It is all looking and no touching, so it suits animal fans more than toddlers who need to move.
A drop-in workshop at Liljevalchs, the art gallery on Djurgården, where kids make their own mask with educators and artists on hand to guide them. The idea comes from Ylva Snöfrid's exhibition The House of the Muses, where masks are part of her rituals. The starting question: who are you, and who would you like to be? You can also try the show's Exquisite Corpse ritual.
A hands-on chemistry session in the workshop of the Nobel Prize Museum, in the middle of Gamla Stan. Kids run two experiments: they start a chemical reaction inside a plastic glove and make a substance that wasn't there before, then use what the museum calls "fart juice" to watch liquids change in front of them. It suits kids who like to mix things and see what happens.
The museum switches off the lights in its Gold Room, and kids explore the ancient treasures with a headlamp as their only light. The guide ties the objects to Viking-age tales, following Beowulf through his fights with the swamp monster Grendel and the dragon.
A good fit for kids who like myths and legends. The room is dark, though the tour itself has no scare effects.
A hands-on craft workshop at the Swedish History Museum, where kids make their own Viking-style bracelet. Vikings wore arm rings, mostly silver or bronze, and the old sagas tell of heroes swearing oaths on them or earning one as a reward for something brave.
Each kid decides what their own ring stands for, and the real ones are on show in the museum's Viking World exhibition.
A program the Royal Swedish Opera runs for kids, and what happens changes by date. Kids try on costumes from the opera's costume store during a tour of the opera house, discover their voice in a short opera-singing session, or sit in on a musical story time in the scenery workshops.
The try-out sessions suit kids who are fine being away from their parent for a short while.
A pig who can only say "moo" baffles the other farm animals, then falls for a curious goat and goes silent. Two actors tell the story through mime, movement and music, with no spoken lines, so kids follow it in any language.
A gentle romantic comedy about being different and being liked as you are. It suits preschoolers who enjoy silly animals more than older kids after a big plot.
Mamma Moo, the cow from Jujja Wieslander and Sven Nordqvist's Swedish picture books, plans a Christmas surprise for the farmer: she'll jump until her milk turns to whipped cream. Crow, meanwhile, rushes home to sort out presents for himself, in case nobody else gives him any. It's a funny, warm play about friendship and what counts at Christmas.
#Stockholmsjul turns streets and squares across central Stockholm into a walk of Christmas lights, a million LEDs in all. Swedish Christmas figures get a modern look: moose, reindeer, deer, spruces, cones, angels and a giant mistletoe.
Kids can help pick the route on the free light map and spot the animals along the way. It suits families happy to walk a while in the cold.
Dröse & Norberg's own stage version of The Jungle Book, with Mowgli, Baloo, Bagheera, Kaa and Shere Kahn alongside a troop of monkeys and their King Gibbon. It mixes original songs, humor and acrobatics, played by a large cast of Swedish musical performers in big fur-and-feather costumes. The show has drawn over 200,000 people and suits kids who can sit through a full-length theater show with an intermission.
Astrid Lindgren's Emil comes to life as a family musical at Intiman, a small theater on Odenplan where every seat is close to the stage. Kids meet Emil, Ida, Alfred, Lina and Lukas the horse, and watch one prank follow another, each ending with an angry Papa and another wooden figure carved in the shed.
It's performed in Swedish, so it lands best with kids who already know the stories.
Children and adults work side by side in the museum's Workshop, making their own memory boxes with paint and collage. The theme comes from the exhibition of Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian, whose Heartache Boxes are small sculptures holding memories from her life. It suits families who would rather make something together than walk through galleries.
A solo physical theater show for toddlers and preschoolers about how hard it is to learn something new, and how proud you feel when you suddenly can. Per Dahlström sweeps, stumbles, whistles and rides a unicycle, losing heart along the way until a small green horn turns into a cheeky bird that won't let him quit. It suits kids learning to try again when something goes wrong.
