The México Now Festival (MXNOW) is a November celebration of contemporary Mexican art and architecture, dance, film, music, photography, and more in New York City.
Everything they present is very Mexican, but often in ways you might never expect.
22nd México Now Festival 2026
This year’s festival of contemporary Mexican art and culture is filled with water, wind, rhythm, and sound. We’re in some form of the four classical elements defined by the festival perspective.
American Pachuco: The Legend of Luis Valdez
Documentary portrait of Chicano playwright and filmmaker Luis Valdez (Zoot Suit, La Bamba), directed by David Alvarado and narrated by Edward James Olmos as El Pachuco.
Instituto Cervantes
Midtown East, Manhattan
Tue, November 17, 2026 | 7pm
FREE
The venue has changed from CUNY Graduate Center.
Luis Valdez started with a flatbed truck and a farmworker picket line. In the 1960s his El Teatro Campesino performed in the fields, helping California farmworkers win their first union contract. From there he wrote Zoot Suit, the first Chicano play on Broadway, and later wrote and directed La Bamba. American Pachuco follows that whole arc with rarely seen footage from his theater and television work.
Olmos narrates in the El Pachuco voice he made famous in Zoot Suit. The film also brings in Cheech Marin, Lou Diamond Phillips, Dolores Huerta (passed away, October 28, 2026), and Linda Ronstadt. It plays in English and Spanish with English subtitles.
The film made its NYC premiere at IFC Center on February 3, 2026 as part of DOC NYC Winter Selects. Film Forum then opened the U.S. theatrical run in July. It won the Festival Favorite Award at Sundance and the Library of Congress Lavine/Ken Burns Prize for Film, and premiered on PBS American Masters on October 6, 2026.
Do love a Zoot Suit. They look good for dancing son Cubano, son Dominicano, and Tango Argentino. Dancers say you dance the suit, and it’s true.
Fábrica de Agua / Mexico City: New Futures
Architecture Panel
New York University (NYU)
Greenwich Village, Manhattan
Wed, November 18, 2026 | 6pm
FREE
México City was built on the Aztec capital México-Tenochtitlan, which was itself built on an island in Lake Texcoco. After the Spaniards stole everything they could and destroyed the rest, they built México City over the ruins and filled in the lake. Draining the land has caused water shortages and the city is sinking. Find out what is being done to save México City now.
33 1/3: Re. New Perspectives on Café Tacvba
Book presentation and conversation on Bloomsbury’s 33 1/3 volume about Mexican alternative band Café Tacvba’s 1994 album Re, with author Carmelo Esterrich, DJ and writer Gabriel Feijóo, and journalist Mayra Mangal.
Center for Fiction
Fort Greene, Brooklyn
Thu, November 19, 2026 | 6pm
FREE
Café Tacvba’s Re is one of those albums people measure their lives by, and this evening puts it in conversation. Esterrich’s book follows the record through its 20 original tracks, which move through mambo and ska, samba and salsa, punk and industrial, disco and Mexican banda. His argument is that the album transforms these genres rather than borrowing them. The band’s humor, irreverence, and post-punk roots all get their due.
The conversation is built around a milestone: Re is the first book in the 33 1/3 series devoted to Mexican music. Esterrich, a Puerto Rico native who teaches at Columbia College Chicago, is joined by Feijóo, a Mexico City-born music and culture writer, and Mangal, a longtime entertainment journalist formerly of People en Español. If Re was ever part of your soundtrack, this is a chance to hear why it endures.
If you’re of Mexican heritage or from the American Southwest, Café Tacvba’s Re is the music of home.
Beginning, Middle, End: Fragments from a Sonic Novel
Mexican writer Valeria Luiselli and sound designer Charles de Montebello present her new novel Beginning Middle End as a sonic experience, woven with field recordings from Sicily and the Aeolian Islands.
Center for Fiction
Fort Greene, Brooklyn
Thu, November 19, 2026 | 7:30pm
FREE
Imagine a novel you can hear. Luiselli and de Montebello recorded the sounds of Sicily and the Aeolian Islands: underwater currents, winds, volcanic eruptions, rainstorms, church bells, and fish markets. Those recordings run through the story the way a chorus would, with the elements standing in for human voices.
The goal is immersion. Listeners are meant to feel anchored in time and place by sound, so the book’s world comes to you through your ears as well as the page.
Luiselli, who was born in Mexico City, published the novel with Knopf this year. This evening turns it into something to be in the room with.
Patricia Brennan Trio
Concert by Mexican-born international jazz vibraphonist and composer
Americas Society
Upper East Side
Fri, November 20, 2026 | 7pm
FREE
Female Mexican composers are doing exciting world-class work now. Veracruz-born Brennan plays a tricked-out electronic vibraphone influenced by classical, jazz, Afro-Latin, and Afro-Mexican traditions.
The vibraphone is a modern version of the marimba, an African instrument embraced and adapted by Indigenous Peoples who replaced its gourd resonators with local cedar or cypress wood.
Brennan’s Veracruz birthplace brings to mind “La Bamba,” the classic Mexican wedding song that became a rock hit and movie (see American Pachuco above) whose origins perfectly illustrates Mexico’s African heritage. Veracruz is Mexico’s Caribbean gateway city on the road to the capital. As early as 1683, Kongo (Central African) musicians were singing “La Bamba” there.
“Bamba” is a Kongo word for heritage, geography, and physical strength. “La Bamba” is the song the Africans made up to make fun of their panicked enslavers after a pirate attack locked down the city and they refused to fight, but rebelled instead.
Over hundreds of years, this Kongo folk song blended with the Mexican baroque guitar, and Indigenous footwork patterns into son jarocho, the folk music and dance of Veracruz. And you probably thought it was just a Mexican wedding song. There are layers of history embedded in our culture, if you know where to look.
And it’s always nice to go to Americas Society. You meet really serious people there. Dress for success.
21st México Now Festival 2025
The México Now Festival of contemporary Mexican and Mexican American culture is November 5-8, 2025.
This year’s lineup features Mexican art, books, film, and music.
“Queen of Swords” is a virtual conversation with Mexican author Jazmina Barrera and translator Megan McDowell about the upcoming literary portrait of Elena Garro, an important figure in the Magical Realism literary movement. It’s at the Center for Fiction in Fort Greene, Brooklyn; on Wednesday, November 5, 2025 at 1pm. Free with RSVP.
Many people think of Magical Realism as a literary construct. It’s actually how el Pueblo Latino, common people in the Latin world, see life as caused by magical forces. Latin life is filled with real magic.
“Caricature and Revolution” is a conversation with Rafael Barajas “El Fisgón,” about how religious prints in the 1600s and satirical magazines in the late 1800s and early 1900s led to the Mexican Revolution. It’s at the Center for Fiction in Fort Greene, Brooklyn; on Wednesday, November 5, 2025 at 6pm. Free with RSVP.
One of the characteristics of being Latin in the Americas is a great sense of humor. Life is hard for many and one of the ways you survive is by making fun of it all. Many cultural traditions, including the modern Día de Muertos (Day of the Dead), where inspired by mockery. Interestingly, being made fun of is the one thing that dictators can’t stand. So let’s have fun and maybe draw some tacos.
The “Celebrate México Now Festival 2004-2024” presentation and panel discussion about the commemorative book by Rocio Echevarría, is at the Center for Fiction in Fort Greene, Brooklyn; on Wednesday, November 5, 2025 at 7:30pm. Free with RSVP.
Doris Anahí Muñoz is the founder of the Solidarity for Sanctuary concerts of music for social change. She is leading two events.
“Solidarity in Song: Music, Mutual Aid, and the Making of a Movement,” features Doris Anahí Muñoz talking online about using culture to advocate for social change on Thursday, November 6, 2025 at 1pm. Free with RSVP.
This really ties into New York Latin Culture Magazine’s mission. I started the Magazine to promote Latin culture in ways that show that we are more similar than we are different. People around the world and across time do similar things because we are human. In recognizing our common humanity, maybe we can stop being so mean to each other.
“Canciones de Mis Ancestros, a Tribute to the Ranchera Legacy,” has Doris Anahí Muñoz singing ranchera classics backed by Mariachi Real de México de Ramón Ponce. It’s at Joe’s Pub in NoHo, Manhattan; on Thursday, November 6, 2025 at 7pm. From $35.
Ranchera is more or less the Mexican blues. Mariachi is ranchera sung in festive Charro cowboy dress. One of the surprising things about ranchera/mariachi is how much it is loved beyond Mexico. No matter where I go in the Latin world, I’ll occasionally hear ranchera. It always makes me smile. People love the storytelling. Mariachi has become traditional for birthday celebrations. For me, it’s the music of home because I was born and raised in Mexican American communities in Southern California. I was raised in Chinatown and Olvera Street, the old Mexican street in Downtown Los Angeles. The sounds, sights, and smells of mariachi, china poblana dresses, and fresh tortillas being fried, will always be part of me. On special occasions, my parents used to take me to La Fonda de Los Camperos, the Mexican restaurant that was the first to put Mariachi on stage. As an adult, I got to promote them.
The show’s title “Songs of My Ancestors” recalls Linda Ronstadt’s hit album “Canciones de mi Padre” (Songs of My Father), which was the biggest selling non-English album up to that time. I was a professional singer in Los Angeles in the 1990s and used to sing some songs off that album. I love the romantic imagery of “Dos Arbolitos.” Come to think of it, ranchera is the music of my father too. He was Thai, but loved Trio los Panchos. He used to play their music so loud, that I hated it, but I love it now. Even though I’m not Mexican, ranchera and bolero is my family music. When I cook, it’s either Chinese or Mexican. I’m still that little kid from Chinatown and Olvera Street.
“Singing Stones: Celebrating the Ancient Americas” celebrates the Met Museum’s reopening of its Ancient Americas galleries with a concert of works by acclaimed Mexican classical music composer Gabriela Ortiz by Grammy-winning vocal ensemble Roomful of Teeth; and choral ensemble Coro Acardenchado singing canto cardenche, a form of Mexican a capella choral music. The event includes hand-drawn animated projections by Arturo Lópex Pío, and video of Central México’s Wirikuta desert, sacred to the Indigenous Wixárika people, by Mercedes Aquí and Paola Stefani. It’s in the Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan’s Upper East Side; on Friday, November 7, 2025 at 7pm. From $35.
This is a co-production of MetLiveArts and Carnegie Hall. Gabriela Ortiz is a major award-winning Mexican composer of contemporary classical music. This is sort of a sacred ceremony because many of the ancient objects in the Met’s collection are from tombs and religious sites. European art is just visual, but Indigenous art contains the spiritual essence of its creators and the gods that it honors. The gods were always present in ancient life.
Mexican art is a big influence on American art. The Whitney Museum of American Art said that the greatest influence on American art was not the Europeans, it was the Mexican muralists. At the Guggenheim Museum, curator Lauren Hinkson discovered that Joseph Albers, the Bauhaus art teacher of many famous American artists at Black Mountain and Yale, was greatly influenced by Aztec and Maya art and architecture.
“Con Alma” (With Soul) is the New York Premiere of the documentary film about the Covid-19 collaboration between Mexican jazz singer Magos Herrera and Italian classical composer Paola Prestini. The project grew into an album and concert series. The evening opens with a screening of the short film “Lamento” about Grammy-winning Guatemalan singer Gaby Moreno and Guatemalan American actor Tony Revolori sifting through childhood places that are disappearing into the sands of time. It’s at Espacio de Culturas at NYU (New York University) in Greenwich Village; on Saturday, November 8, 2025 at 5pm. Free with RSVP.
Mexican and Guatemalan culture are very similar. Southern Mexico and Guatemala were both ancient Maya lands.
20th México Now Festival 2024
The 20th México Now Festival 2024 is a celebration of contemporary Mexican arts; at Chelsea Factory in Chelsea, Manhattan; from November 20-24, 2024. Free with rsvp.
This year’s lineup features:
The common thread through all of this is community, an extension of family, the living heart of Latin culture.
Mexico has such great historic traditions that it is easy to miss what is happening there now. Many have reported that Mexico City arts are even more progressive than New York City arts. Mexico is young and the future belongs to the young.
Mexico is important because we are neighbors with a long, complicated familial relationship. We fight like brothers and sisters, because we are. Two-thirds of what became the United States was once Mexico. New York City has had a Caribbean focus since at least the 1920s, but most Latins in the United States are Mexican Americans. The Mexican American community used to be regionalized in the Southwest, but is now everywhere, and growing in New York City too. The United States is the second largest Spanish-speaking country after Mexico. And now that the era of globalization has ended, Mexico is our most important trading partner. Our future is together. It’s time to get to know each other better.
México Now Festival
The México Now Festival (MXNOW) was founded by culture producer Claudia Norman in 2004. It is New York City’s first and only independent festival of contemporary Mexican culture.
Most New Yorkers think our city is the best in the world, but people who know both México City and New York tell us that México City culture is actually more progressive. The key image is of El Museo Soumaya in México City, an art museum with over 30 centuries of art from México and around the world. So this encyclopedia of Mexican culture has some very ancient culture, yet is very modern. The México Now Festival is like that. It references some very old traditions, but in new ways.
The Museum is sponsored by Fundación Carlos Slim, the foundation of the Mexican businessman who was the world’s richest person from 2010-2013.