Abierto València 2026: galleries, routes and concerts
LAVAC, the Association of Contemporary Art Galleries of the Valencian Community, hosts its major contemporary art week from September 17 to 25. The event features galleries, routes and concerts showcasing contemporary art in all its forms.
Commercial art galleries here keep office hours for most of the year: Tuesday to Saturday, closed over the middle of the day, and shut altogether for much of August. Abierto València is the moment that pause ends. From 17 to 25 September the galleries of LAVAC, the Valencian contemporary gallery association, open the season together, with routes and concerts around it, and entry costs nothing.
How a gallery week works
The pattern is always the same: simultaneous openings in the early evening, people walking from one room to the next, artists present. If you have never gone into a commercial gallery, the useful thing to know is that you can simply walk in. There is no ticket desk, nobody asks who you are, and there is no expectation that you buy anything. The only constraint is each gallery's own opening hours, which vary. Which galleries take part, and the timings of the routes and concerts, are published on the official page.
Where the galleries are
Most sit in the old town, concentrated in El Carme, with a second cluster in Russafa. Each cluster is walkable inside itself and the two are about twenty minutes apart on foot, or a few metro stops. Do one neighbourhood, then the other; criss-crossing the city wastes the evening.
What else to see the same day
The big institutions run to their own calendar and make good ballast: the IVAM and the Centre del Carme are five minutes apart, the Hortensia Herrero art centre is in the historic core, and Bombas Gens, further north, occupies a converted factory worth the walk on its own.
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