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32 Things to Do in Fort Kochi — February 2026

32 Things to Do in Fort Kochi — February 2026

This is our Fort Kochi insider guide for you — 32 paw-picked experiences, updated regularly by the cats who call this place home. Whether you're here for the Biennale, the food, or just the light on the harbour at dusk, we've got you.

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Why 32? A cat's ear has 32 muscles. Each one helps us swivel, tilt, and tune into exactly what matters.

32 paw-picked experiences, updated every month by the cats who call this place home. Whether you're here for the Biennale, the food, or just the light on the harbour at dusk, we've got you.

Last updated: February 7, 2026

1. Kochi Art Biennale

India's Largest Contemporary Art Festival Biennale runs until March 31, 2026, across heritage venues in Fort Kochi, Mattancherry. This edition leans heavily into performance and process — you might walk into a warehouse and find art being made in front of you. With 66 artists from 20+ countries, this isn't just a gallery visit. It's an immersion.

See Ultimate Guide & Map to Biennale >

2. Grandmother of Performance Art

Hear Marina Abramović talk about her five-decade journey from post-war Yugoslavia to becoming one of the most influential living artists in the world. She'll talk about what drives her to push the limits of her body and presence, The Evening at📍Samudrika promises to be unforgettable. Abramović's 108-channel video installation Waterfall (2003) — featuring chanting monks and nuns — is on display at the nearby 📍Island Warehouse on Willingdon Island.

10 Feb 2026, 6:00–8:00 PM | Tickets >

3. Arka Kinari at Fort Kochi

A wife-and-husband duo sold their home to buy a sailing ship and have been living at sea since 2019! This ship that doubles as a floating stage is docking in Kochi as part of the Biennale, and you can watch the performance for from the waterfront. It's a 75-minute multimedia spectacle staged right from the ship's deck — think Javanese folk melodies colliding with psychedelic electronic beats, video projections mapped onto the sails, performers scaling the rigging, and the whole thing powered entirely by solar panels and wind. Time: 10:00 am – 11:30 am, Venue: 📍Kochi International Marina KTDC

9th ,10th Feb | @arkakirani >

4. Classical vs folk divide in Indian Dance

What could Indian dance become if it stopped policing who gets to move and how? This workshop by Amith K, a Mohiniyattam practitioner and scholar focuses on the erased histories of dance communities in Kerala, this session dismantles the "classical vs folk" divide. Through movement, shared readings, and group discussion, participants explore how caste, gender, and institutional power shaped the dance forms we now call "classical" — and imagine what a truly democratic stage might look like.

Feb 7–8, 2026 | Read Details >

5. Sound Performance by Ruhail Qaisar

Ruhail Qaisar is a self-taught artist from Leh, Ladakh, whose practice lives at the intersection of sound art, noise, found sculpture, and hauntology. His debut album 🎧 Fatima was described as "haunting". Expect full-spectrum power electronics — something intense, immersive, and unlike anything else on the Biennale schedule.

11 Feb, 5:30 PM | 📍 Aspinwall >

6. Students' Biennale

Where India's young artists show work that's often rawer and more urgent than the main exhibition. Showcases emerging artists from colleges across India. This is where you'll see what Indian art looks like in five years.

Till March 31st | See Details >

7. Mattancherry Food Walk

A 10–12 stop culinary crawl through the lanes where Gujarati samosas, Malabar biryani, and Punjab-thick lassi exist on the same street. Mattancherry isn't just one cuisine — it's layers of communities who arrived by sea and stayed, cooking what they knew.

13 Feb | Book Today >

8. Kitchen Alchemy by Children

What happens when you hand children the kitchen and ask them to tell the story? You get memories more honest than any recipe book. Kitchen Alchemy is a live, immersive installation where children are the primary narrators here, not adults. Through child-authored drawings, gestures, and non-linear storytelling, the installation turns turmeric stains and the grind of a mortar and pestle into art. Pair it with the Mattancherry Food Walk

1 Feb – 31 Mar 2026 | Details >

9. Archaeological Camera — Exhibition

Kerala has 2,600-year-old rock art, megalithic burial caves, and prehistoric petroglyphs — and most Keralites have never heard of them. This exhibition changes that. Across eight prehistoric sites in Kerala — from the cattle geoglyphs of Ettukudukka in Kannur to the red ochre rock paintings of Marayoor in the Western Ghats to the 2,600-year-old megalithic cave at Kakkodi discovered accidentally during house construction — Mohamed A's photographs stop being documentation and become artefacts in their own right.

Feb 2026, Fort Kochi | Details >

10. Nammu Haada "Our Songs"

Songs that grandmothers sang while grinding grain, rocking babies, and mourning the dead — carried 900 kilometres from North Karnataka's Deccan plateau to a 1667 Dutch bungalow in Fort Kochi. Led by vocalist Shilpa Mudbi, who left Bangalore to move to Kalaburgi and spend a decade learning over 60 vanishing folk forms from singers like her grandmother Gundamma, the Kalaburgi Kala Mandali ensemble brings wedding songs (sobane), lullabies (jogula), work songs, and mourning songs to Fort Kochi.

8 Feb, 8:00 PM, Fort Kochi | Details >

11. How to Sit With Conflict, Not Solve It

What if conflict isn't something to solve, but something to sit with? At this free workshop, facilitator Aishwarya Shrivastav guides you through sensing, listening, and collective making — not toward agreement, but toward understanding why you disagree. The session ends with participants creating a "Patchwork of Differences," where everyone contributes fragments of expression placed together without hierarchy or correction. No neat conclusions, no forced consensus — just the rare experience of being in a room where disagreement is treated as something productive.

12 Feb, 10AM – 12PM | Register >

12. Be inspired by the Women of Golden Bridge Pottery

In 1971, two travellers set up a coconut-leaf shed next to a railway line in Pondicherry. Fifty-five years later, the pottery they built has shaped nearly every serious ceramicist in India — and four of those artists are showing in Fort Kochi right now. Each absorbed a different version of the Golden Bridge experience, and the exhibition is a quiet study in how the same lineage produces four distinct voices in clay.

6–23 February 2026 | Details >

13. Mehboob Memorial Orchestra

Every Friday evening, singers of all ages, religions, and skill levels climb a narrow staircase near Aspinwall Junction and lose themselves in Bollywood classics, ghazals, and Malayalam melodies — keeping alive a Deccani musical tradition that's been part of Kochi's soundscape since the 1950s. "Friday Harmony" — an open karaoke-style gathering where anyone can walk in and sing. No language restrictions, no auditions.

Every Friday 6.30 PM | Details >

14. A Taste of Tibetan in Fort Kochi

Two tiny Tibetan kitchens sit within a minute's walk of each other near Fort Kochi's most famous church — and both carry stories of exile, migration, and recipes that crossed the Himalayas to reach coastal Kerala.

See Details & Plan >

15. India's First Water Metro

It's in Kochi, and it's the single best way to arrive in Fort Kochi: air-conditioned electric boats, reasoanbly priced tickets, and a backwater view that no luxury car can match. The Kochi Water Metro connects the mainland to Fort Kochi, Mattancherry, Vypin, and the backwater islands via a network of electric-hybrid boats that run roughly every 15–20 minutes during peak hours.

Route Map & Timings >

That's Your 15 out of the 32. Now Go Explore while we carefully curate the rest.

Fort Kochi doesn't need a tourist brochure. It needs someone who lives here to point you in the right direction. That's what we do — every day, an updated list of 32 things, one for every muscle in a cat's ear. We are sharp!

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Planning around the Biennale? Read our Complete Guide to the Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2025 for venue maps, daily schedules, and artist highlights.

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