Your Tallinn hit list: the top 5 events this week

26 May 2026 – 31 May 2026

Not sure where to be this week? Every week, in partnership with Gamma, we present a hand-picked selection of the five most compelling events taking place in and around Tallinn – it’s time to plan your week with purpose.

Night of ideas: AI and society

French Institue of Estonia, Kuninga 4, Tallinn

Tuesday 26 May, from 7.30pm

Artificial intelligence is no longer a distant promise or a dystopian plotline – it is already reshaping how we learn, work, govern and take part in public life. This timely panel brings together two leading voices at the crossroads of AI, governance and society to ask what that transformation means for people, institutions and democracy.

Piret Hirv, head of the Data Governance Competence Centre at the e-Governance Academy, brings deep expertise in AI, data governance and public services. Myriam Raymond, a lecturer and researcher at the University of Angers, turns the spotlight on the human side of the equation – from AI workers and responsible AI to digital governance and the changing nature of work in the platform age.

The discussion will be moderated by Kristen Davis, founder of CinqC and a seasoned chair of high-level conversations on AI, democracy, disinformation and cybersecurity, whose work includes the Tallinn Digital Summit and Latitude59.

Expect a lively, clear-eyed conversation on the social, economic and democratic impact of AI across education, access to information, work and civic participation. The event is held in English and will be followed by an open audience exchange, including questions and interactive polls.

In other words: exactly the sort of current-affairs conversation worth leaving the house for.

Service Design Day

National Library of Estonia, Endla 3, Tallinn

Tuesday 29 May, from 8.30am

Service Design Day is back – and this year, the big question is impossible for the design world to dodge: what happens to service design and innovation when artificial intelligence can prototype, test and launch concepts faster than any human team?

As AI collapses the distance between idea and live product, the emphasis shifts from slow-burn exploratory research to rapid experimentation. Suddenly, the bottleneck is no longer the technology – it is us. Can organisations move fast enough? Can customers? And where does that leave the designers whose job has long been to make sense of human needs before turning them into services that work?

This year’s international line-up takes those questions head-on, with Klara Leander, Nordic managing partner at EY Doberman; Sofia Strömmer, behavioural science manager at Oura; Ville Immonen, vice president of service design at DBS Bank; Maria Uhari-Pakklin, director of design at SOK Group; and Peter Fagerström, founder of Educraftor.

Expect a timely, high-level conversation on what AI means for design, innovation and the increasingly blurry space between human insight and machine-led speed.

Tallinn Craft Beer weekend

Kultuurikatel, Põhja puiestee 27a, Tallinn

From Friday, 29 May to Saturday, 30 May

Tallinn Craft Beer Weekend has spent the past decade earning its place among Europe’s most exciting craft beer festivals – and its 10th anniversary line-up does very little to suggest the hype has gone flat.

Across two days, more than 370 beers will be poured by an extraordinary cast of guest breweries from the United States, the UK, Scandinavia, Germany, Spain, France, Greece, Poland, Hungary, Latvia and beyond. The bill includes heavy hitters such as Cloudwater, Mikkeller, Other Half, Side Project, Verdant, Lervig, Fuerst Wiacek and Sante Adairius, alongside a proud Estonian showing from Põhjala, Pühaste, Pöide, Humalakoda and others.

The format is pleasingly simple: buy a ticket, get a festival glass and taste as much as you like until the kegs run dry. No tokens, no fiddly extras – just a serious amount of beer and a room full of people pretending they can still detect “notes of gooseberry” by the end of the evening.

One-day tickets cost €90, while a two-day pass is €140.

Festival Tango Elegante

Pärnu 160, Talllinn

From Friday, 29 May to Sunday, 31 May

Festival Tango Elegante brings Argentine tango to the cobbled streets and medieval courtyards of Tallinn’s Old Town for three days of dancing, learning and late-night connection.

The festival features seven workshops led by two acclaimed couples from Argentina: Lucas Guevara and Daniela Bravo, finalists at the World Tango Championship in Buenos Aires, and Andrés Sosa and Letitia Simone, professional dancers and teachers with more than 25 years of combined experience between Argentina and London.

Workshops range from the essentials of embrace and improvisation for beginners to colgadas, boleos, volcadas and ganchos for intermediate and advanced dancers. By night, the focus shifts to the milongas: three evenings of social dancing into the early hours, each featuring a live show and international DJs, including Aldo Villanueva and Fredrik Agell from Sweden, Alejandro from Argentina and Anna Koroleva from Ukraine.

Across the weekend, there are more than 20 hours of dancing, with water, coffee, snacks and fresh fruit provided at every milonga – because even the most romantic evening still benefits from hydration.

No partner is needed for the milongas, and free guided tours of Tallinn’s Old Town are available throughout the weekend for those keen to explore between dances.

Register here – and don’t forget your dancing shoes.

Laine Label Night: Majazz Project

Uus Laine, Vana-Kalamaja 1, Tallinn

Friday, 29 May from 7pm

Founded by Mo’min Swaitat in 2019, the Palestinian Sound Archive is more than a record collection – it is an act of cultural preservation, resistance and remembrance.

Through re-releases, club nights, radio sets, audio-visual installations and live storytelling sessions, the archive preserves Palestinian audio history while placing the music firmly within its cultural, social and political context. Over five years, the project has uncovered hundreds of stories of Palestinian artists who made, shared and protected music through displacement, censorship, exile, persecution and the First and Second Intifadas. These histories – not just the sounds themselves – are what the archive works to safeguard.

This Tallinn event explores archival practice as a decolonial act of resistance, sharing sounds and images that document Palestinian heritage, celebration and resilience. Local support comes from Shah Rud – formerly known as Yallah – a Kurdish DJ and promoter based in Tallinn, co-founder of the queer nightlife hub Hungr and curator of the Shelter platform. Her sound moves between shaabi, techno, gqom and percussive club textures.

Also on the bill is Kalor Bagh, bringing high-voltage South Asian energy through bass, garage and bhangra, while Araukaaria, an emerging alternative rock band from Viljandi led by Argentine producer and frontman José “Pepi” Prieto, rounds out the evening. Their music blends echoes of Pink Floyd and Radiohead with Sumo and Soda Stereo, layered with Argentine folk and sung in both English and Spanish.

Expect a night where club culture, memory and political history meet – not as nostalgia, but as something defiantly alive.

Brought to you in collaboration with Gamma. Want more like this? Get Tallinn’s best events delivered straight to your inbox – three times a week, totally free. Just hit subscribe to join the Gamma newsletter.