Every time we land somewhere new, the same question comes up over dinner on the first night: what’s actually on here this week?
Say it’s Berlin. There might be a ballet at the Staatsoper, or something stranger at a contemporary dance space in Kreuzberg. An exhibition that opened on Thursday. A DJ we’d travel for, playing at two in the morning. A small festival three U-Bahn stops away that we’d have gone to — if we’d known it existed.
Finding a hotel or a restaurant in an unfamiliar city is solved. Finding out what is happening while you’re there still isn’t.
Google helps more than it used to: the AI overview will summarize a few things, and then hand you a list of local sites to click through, half of them in a language you don’t read. We used to go straight to Time Out, and in London or New York that still works — but it doesn’t cover every city, and where its local team is thin, so is the listing.
The rest is scattered by type. Concerts sit on Songkick. Electronic music lives on Resident Advisor. The big shows go through Ticketmaster. A museum may publish an exhibition on nothing but its own calendar. Smaller things surface on Eventbrite, or only on Instagram. And the city’s own tourism site often knows about something none of them list.
So here’s what Locals Insider look at: what each event aggregator does well for concert calendars, dates, and tickets.
Concerts, Clubs or Ballet? Where to Look for Each Kind of Event
Togoist: One Calendar for the Dates You’re in Town
Concerts, theater, ballet, museums and nightlife in 52 cities
New! Best for: seeing several kinds of events in one place
Togoist takes a travel-first approach. Instead of starting with an artist or an event, you start with the city and the dates you’ll actually be there, and it pulls together concerts, theater, comedy, ballet and dance, museums and nightlife.
That sounds like a small distinction. It matches how trips actually get planned. You don’t know who’s playing in Copenhagen next Saturday — you know you’ll be in Copenhagen next Saturday, and you’d rather see something than scroll.
It has quick searches for tonight, tomorrow, this weekend and this week, plus date-range searches for arrival and departure. Use it as a first sweep: find something interesting, then dig into the venue or artist elsewhere.
App: none — it’s a website, which suits a planning tool you use on a laptop before you fly.
Pros: starts from your dates rather than an artist, which is how trips actually work; puts concerts, theater, ballet, museums and nightlife on one screen; quick filters for tonight, tomorrow and the weekend.
Cons: coverage is still limited — 52 cities across 19 countries, with more promised; the listings come from Ticketmaster’s inventory, so independent theaters, small venues and promoter-run nights don’t appear. Treat it as the first sweep, not the full picture.
Time Out: City Guides & Editorial Filter
Exhibitions, festivals and openings, chosen by a local team
Best for: deciding what’s actually worth your evening
Time Out has been answering “what should we do tonight?” since long before smartphones, and its strength isn’t the listings — it’s selection.
Where its local coverage is strong, you’ll find exhibitions, festivals, new theater, concerts, food events and pop-ups sitting alongside restaurant and bar recommendations. That’s the difference between a calendar and a recommendation.
Coverage varies enormously by city, though. In London, Paris or New York it’s invaluable; elsewhere another source will serve you better. We cover its range and its city editions in our guide to travel magazines worth reading.
App: none you need — the site works on a phone, and its apps have come and gone over the years.
Pros: real editorial judgement rather than a raw feed; covers exhibitions, food and nightlife in one place; free to read.
Cons: coverage is deep in a handful of cities and thin everywhere else; listings sit alongside sponsored content and affiliate links, so “best of” isn’t always independent; strongest on the mainstream, weakest on the underground.
Songkick: When It’s About the Music
Every concert in town, sorted by date, includes small rooms up to 200 sits
Best for: concerts and tour dates
If the question is who’s playing while I’m in town, Songkick is the first place to look. Pick a city and a date range and you can scan everything from stadium tours to a band playing to 200 people.
It’s just as useful before you book. Rather than finding out afterward that an artist you love played two streets from your hotel, check the calendar while you’re still choosing dates.
App: iOS and Android, free, and it syncs with Spotify, Apple Music or your library to track the artists you actually listen to.
Pros: clean city-and-date browsing; tracks tours before they’re announced widely; good coverage from arenas down to mid-size venues.
Cons: smaller DIY and promoter-run shows often never make it on; ticket links can lead to resale sites at inflated prices; nothing outside live music.
Bandsintown: Follow the Artists You Already Like
Music events, concerts with AI assistant and notifications tied to your streaming library
Best for: personalized concert discovery
Bandsintown comes at the same problem from the other end: it connects the artists you follow with shows happening near you, wherever you happen to be.
Songkick is better for browsing a city cold. Bandsintown earns its place once you already have a long list of musicians you’d happily go and see.
App: iOS and Android, free. The app is the product here — the alerts are the reason to install it.
Pros: syncs with your streaming library, so it surfaces artists you’d actually go and see; useful for frequent travelers who can’t track every tour.
Cons: needs an account and a music profile to be worth anything; poor for browsing a city cold; heavy on marketing emails and push notifications.
Resident Advisor: The Nightlife Calendar for Clubs, Electronic Music and Dj Parties
Electronic music listings and tickets, city by city
Best for: clubs, DJs and electronic music
In any city with a serious electronic scene, Resident Advisor is hard to replace. Berlin, London, Amsterdam, Barcelona and dozens more have deep listings covering clubs, promoters and parties.
Its real value is below the famous names. Small promoters and one-off parties appear here, which makes RA far more revealing than searching “best clubs in Berlin.”
That distinction matters more than people realize: a great club isn’t great every night. The party, the promoter and the lineup usually matter more than the room. If nightlife is part of the trip, check the calendar for your dates rather than picking a club from a guidebook. For Berlin specifically, the venues in our Berlin guides — chosen by people who live there — are a better starting list than any ranking.
App: RA Guide, on iOS and Android, free, with your tickets inside it.
Pros: unmatched depth on club nights, promoters and lineups; shows the small parties guidebooks never reach; a genuine community rather than a listings feed.
Cons: electronic music and almost nothing else; near-useless in cities without a scene; booking fees on top of ticket prices.
DICE: Independent Gigs, Cool Bands and Club Nights
Gigs and club nights, with waiting lists when shows sell out
Best for: smaller venues and independent music
DICE sits between discovery and ticketing, and it’s strongest on independent concerts, club nights and the venues that don’t sell through the big platforms.
There’s overlap with Resident Advisor and Songkick, which is exactly why checking more than one is worth the five minutes. A 400-capacity show often appears on DICE and nowhere else.
Worth knowing: Fever acquired DICE in June 2025, so two of the platforms on this list now share an owner. They still run as separate apps with different listings, but don’t treat them as independent second opinions.
App: iOS and Android, and effectively required — tickets are mobile-only and live in the app.
Pros: no hidden fees at checkout; waiting lists when a show sells out and a resale system that stops touting; strong on independent venues.
Cons: only as good as its local adoption, so coverage collapses outside its main cities; tickets live in the app, so you need it installed and charged; now owned by Fever, which narrows how independent the two really are.
Ticketmaster: Arena Shows, Official Tickets, Musicals and Touring Productions
Official tickets for the biggest events in the city
Best for: major concerts, theater, comedy and touring shows
Ticketmaster isn’t where you find the soul of a city, but it’s hard to ignore. For arena concerts, touring productions, musicals and comedy, its city calendars give you the picture quickly, and depending on the country it’s also useful for ballet, classical music and theater.
The limitation is built in: a calendar built around one ticketing ecosystem can never show everything in a city. One piece of the puzzle, not the puzzle.
App: iOS and Android, free, and increasingly necessary, since many venues now use rotating mobile-only tickets.
Pros: the most complete listing of major concerts, musicals and touring productions; official tickets, so no counterfeits.
Cons: service fees that can add a fifth to the price, and dynamic pricing that moves with demand; it only shows what it sells, so a city can look empty when it isn’t.
Eventbrite: Workshops, Tastings and Community Events in Cities
The long tail — walks, talks, supper clubs and pop-ups
Best for: talks, workshops, tastings and community events
If you are alone in the city and need a community, this is where Eventbrite gets interesting once you’re past conventional sightseeing: photography walks, wine tastings, design talks, small concerts, supper clubs, events run by independent cultural spaces.
Quality swings wildly, and a commercial workshop can sit right beside something genuinely good. That messiness is the point — it turns up the kind of event no guidebook would ever carry.
App: iOS and Android, free, with tickets you can save to your phone wallet.
Pros: the long tail nothing else carries — tastings, walks, talks, supper clubs; most listings are free or cheap to attend.
Cons: unfiltered, so sales seminars sit beside genuinely good events; search is noisy and dated listings linger; quality is impossible to judge before you book.
Fever: Experiences You Can Book Tonight
Candlelight concerts, immersive shows and exhibitions
Best for: exhibitions, immersive shows and things to book tonight
Fever is strongest in big cities and concentrates on experiences you can book immediately: candlelight concerts, immersive productions, exhibitions, pop-ups.
It’s for when you want something to do rather than a scene to follow. The selection leans commercial, so pair it with museum calendars and local editorial rather than relying on it alone.
App: iOS, Android and web, free, with mobile-only tickets.
Pros: everything is bookable immediately, which suits a spontaneous evening; strong on exhibitions and immersive shows.
Cons: heavily commercial and heavily advertised; the same formats — candlelight concerts, immersive Van Gogh — repeat city to city, so it tells you little about where you actually are.
Meetup: Events Where You Meet People, Not Just Watch
Language exchanges, hikes, photo walks and book clubs
Best for: social and community events
Not everything worth doing happens on a stage. Meetup covers language exchanges, hiking groups, photography walks, book clubs, professional gatherings and a hundred niche communities.
For solo travelers, and for anyone staying weeks rather than days, it beats another list of attractions. You’re not finding something to look at — you’re finding people doing something you’re interested in.
App: iOS and Android, free to attend. Only organizers pay.
Pros: the only one here built around meeting people; excellent for solo travelers and longer stays.
Cons: many groups are dormant, with events listed that never happen; skews professional and expat rather than local; organizers sometimes charge.
Go Straight to the Institutions
Every aggregator has the same flaw: it can only show what it knows about.
For ballet, opera, classical music and serious theater, go to the source. Visiting Vienna? Check the opera houses. Milan? La Scala. Copenhagen? The Royal Danish Theatre. Paris? The major houses individually.
The same is true of art. A museum’s own calendar tells you far more than any platform, including late openings, talks, performances and temporary shows. It’s how Vyacheslav Gnedchik finds what’s on in Budapest — and he dances at the national ballet.
Pros: the only fully accurate source — every performance, talk, late opening and temporary show, with real availability.
Cons: one site per venue, which is slow work; often only in the local language; no way to see what else is on that night.
Check the Official City Calendar
Tourism board websites are rarely the most beautiful corner of the internet, but their event calendars are often the most complete. Local tourism organizations get information directly from museums, theaters, venues and festival organizers.
Search “[city] official tourism events” and you’ll usually find a layer of exhibitions, festivals and seasonal events that the international platforms missed entirely.
Pros: fed directly by museums, theaters and festival organizers, so it catches what the international platforms miss; free and non-commercial.
Cons: dated interfaces and clumsy filters; frequently local-language only; rarely updated for last-minute changes.
Instagram, Still
Some of the best things never reach an event site at all. Galleries announce openings on Instagram. Restaurants post guest-chef dinners in Stories. Clubs post lineups. Independent spaces publish their programs there first.
Once you’ve found a venue you like, following it is more useful than following another city-events account. The hard part is finding those venues — which is what our local guides are for.
Pros: where the smallest and best things are announced first, often days ahead; you see the room before you go.
Cons: no way to search by date, and the algorithm decides what you see; you have to know the venue already, which is the hard part.
Which One Should You Use?
There isn’t a single answer, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something.
For a weekend somewhere new, start with Togoist or the official city calendar for a broad view. Then go deeper: Songkick and Bandsintown for concerts, Resident Advisor and DICE for nightlife and independent music, Ticketmaster for the big productions, Eventbrite for the small ones, Time Out where its local coverage is strong. And if ballet, opera or art is the point of the trip, always check the institution itself.
| If you want… | Start with |
|---|---|
| Everything happening during your dates | Togoist |
| Editorial recommendations | Time Out |
| Concerts | Songkick / Bandsintown |
| DJs and electronic music | Resident Advisor |
| Independent gigs and clubs | DICE |
| Major concerts and shows | Ticketmaster |
| Smaller local events | Eventbrite |
| Bookable experiences | Fever |
| Social and community events | Meetup |
| Ballet and opera | The company’s own site |
| Exhibitions | Museum and gallery calendars |
| Local festivals | Official tourism website |
One last thing worth doing before you fly: download what you need offline. Signal in a basement club is nonexistent, and roaming data disappears fastest on exactly the night you need a ticket QR code — our guide to eSIM deals covers that, and our AI trip planners piece covers building the rest of the day around whatever you find.
The best evening of a trip is usually something that wasn’t there last time you visited, and won’t be there the next. It’s worth the five minutes of looking. For more of what we keep on our phones, see our travel apps guides.
