<\/p>\n
Across Minneapolis, Saint Paul, and the surrounding suburbs, the weekend of March 14 to 15 delivers one of the more culturally dense stretches of the early year: a major culinary festival at Target Field, Irish heritage programming in downtown Saint Paul, Shakespeare at the Guthrie, a deep Sunday music slate, an NHL home game in Saint Paul, repertory cinema in 35mm, a youth film festival inside a public library, and a sold-out benefit concert that says something important about what this city believes music can do.<\/strong><\/p>\n With St. Patrick’s Day arriving Tuesday, March 17, this weekend also serves as the informal public kickoff to one of the most celebratory stretches of the month. Below is MinneapoliMedia’s curated guide to notable events across the metro.<\/p>\n Major Festivals and Featured Events<\/strong><\/p>\n Venue:<\/strong> Target Field Address:<\/strong> 1 Twins Way, Minneapolis Dates:<\/strong> March 13 to March 15, 2026<\/p>\n Minnesota Monthly’s Food & Wine Experience turns 31 this year, which is long enough that the event has outlasted several of the trends it once celebrated. The Sunday grand tasting runs from 1 to 5 p.m. at Target Field: unlimited food and beverage sampling, a commemorative tasting glass, music and entertainment, and access across the full concourse, all of it framed by skyline views over a ballpark that won’t see baseball for weeks yet. The VIP entry opens at noon. It is one of the clearest signs that the Twin Cities’ spring festival season is beginning to stir.<\/p>\n Tickets and event information: https:\/\/www.minnesotamonthly.com<\/a><\/p>\n Sunday Grand Tasting<\/strong> 1:00 PM to 5:00 PM VIP Entry: 12:00 PM<\/p>\n Price<\/strong> General Admission: $100 plus tax and fees VIP Admission: $135 plus tax and fees<\/p>\n Notes<\/strong> 21+ only. Valid ID required. Tickets are non-refundable and non-transferable.<\/p>\n Cultural Events<\/strong><\/p>\n Venue:<\/strong> Landmark Center Address:<\/strong> 75 W 5th St, Saint Paul<\/p>\n One of the most enduring St. Patrick’s season traditions in the metro, the Day of Irish Dance fills Landmark Center with youth academies, performance groups, musicians, and heritage programming for a full day devoted to Irish culture. Produced by Irish Arts Minnesota in partnership with Landmark Center, the event runs from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and includes dance performances through the afternoon, music from the Center for Irish Music, and children’s programming that includes storytelling and beginner-friendly activities.<\/p>\n At $9 for adults and $7 for youth and seniors, it is one of the most accessible cultural events of the weekend and one of the most grounded.<\/p>\n Event information: https:\/\/www.landmarkcenter.org<\/a><\/p>\n Time<\/strong> 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM<\/p>\n Price<\/strong> Adults: $9 Youth and seniors: $7<\/p>\n Notes<\/strong> Family friendly. Programming runs throughout the day rather than as a single sit-down performance.<\/p>\n Theater and Performing Arts<\/strong><\/p>\n Venue:<\/strong> Guthrie Theater, Wurtele Thrust Stage Address:<\/strong> 818 S 2nd St, Minneapolis<\/p>\n Joe Dowling’s production of Macbeth<\/em> at the Guthrie’s Wurtele Thrust gives the weekend its most formally serious theatrical offering. The play is about a man who hears something that confirms what he already wanted to do, and then finds ever more elaborate justifications for doing it. The witches don’t make Macbeth anything. They give him permission he was already looking for. Staged in one of the Twin Cities’ most distinctive theatrical spaces, with the audience on three sides of the action and close enough to watch a face, Shakespeare’s study of ambition and political ruin does not feel distant or academic. It feels current.<\/p>\n Tickets and show information: https:\/\/www.guthrietheater.org<\/a><\/p>\n Showtimes<\/strong> Saturday: 7:30 PM Sunday: 1:00 PM and 7:00 PM<\/p>\n Price<\/strong> Tickets start at $47. Prices vary by performance and availability.<\/p>\n Venue:<\/strong> Orchestra Hall Address:<\/strong> 1111 Nicollet Mall, Minneapolis<\/p>\n The Minnesota Orchestra’s Symphonic Storytelling program gives the weekend a major classical offering built around accessibility and imagination. Designed as part of the orchestra’s family and sensory-friendly programming, the concert connects listeners to orchestral music through story and mood, which is perhaps a more honest description of what orchestral music has always done. A strong Sunday afternoon option for households that want something polished and substantial without the length or formality of a full evening program.<\/p>\n Tickets and event information: https:\/\/www.minnesotaorchestra.org<\/a><\/p>\n Showtime<\/strong> Sunday: 2:00 PM<\/p>\n Price<\/strong> Ticket prices vary by seating and availability.<\/p>\n Live Music<\/strong><\/p>\n Venue:<\/strong> Dakota Address:<\/strong> 1010 Nicollet Mall, Minneapolis<\/p>\n Dessa’s Sunday return to the Dakota gives the weekend one of its most recognizably Minneapolis bookings. The hometown artist, known for blending hip hop, essayistic reflection, and sharp lyrical storytelling, plays both an early and late set, with Lady Midnight joining the bill. Her work asks the listener to pay attention. In a dinner-club room where proximity is part of the design, that ask feels entirely appropriate. The early set sold especially strongly, underscoring the continued local draw of one of the city’s most distinctive voices.<\/p>\n Event information and tickets: https:\/\/www.dakotacooks.com<\/a><\/p>\n Showtimes<\/strong> 7:00 PM 10:00 PM<\/p>\n Price<\/strong> Ticket prices vary by seating and availability.<\/p>\n Notes<\/strong> Dinner-club setting.<\/p>\n Venue:<\/strong> The Cedar Cultural Center Address:<\/strong> 416 Cedar Ave S, Minneapolis<\/p>\n The Roma Di Luna benefit show at The Cedar, tied to immigrant legal defense and mutual aid work and featuring Mary Hanson Scott and Crystal Myslajek, sold out before this guide was published. That fact deserves more than a parenthetical note. A benefit show selling out at one of the city’s most beloved venues is a statement about what this audience believes music can do, about what people here are willing to show up for with money in hand and no expectation of anything except the thing itself. The Cedar has always been a room where art and civic purpose share a wall. This weekend, they share a stage.<\/p>\n Event information: https:\/\/www.thecedar.org<\/a><\/p>\n Doors:<\/strong> 4:30 PM Show:<\/strong> 5:30 PM<\/p>\n Price<\/strong> $25 advance \/ $30 day of show<\/p>\n Notes<\/strong> All ages. Seated. Sold out as of current venue listing.<\/p>\n Venue:<\/strong> First Avenue, Mainroom Address:<\/strong> 701 N 1st Ave, Minneapolis<\/p>\n Lucero celebrates 20 years of Nobody’s Darlings<\/em> by performing the album in full before moving into additional songs from the catalog, with Otis Gibbs also on the bill. Roots-rock anniversary shows can become nostalgia exercises, hermetically sealed from the present tense. Lucero’s music has never had that problem. The band writes about losing and persisting with enough specificity that the songs do not date. They accumulate. Twenty years of that kind of material in the Mainroom is not a museum piece. It is an argument about endurance.<\/p>\n Tickets and event information: https:\/\/www.first-avenue.com<\/a><\/p>\n Doors:<\/strong> 6:30 PM Show:<\/strong> 7:30 PM<\/p>\n Notes<\/strong> 18+.<\/p>\n Venue:<\/strong> Fine Line Address:<\/strong> 318 N 1st Ave, Minneapolis<\/p>\n Rochelle Jordan’s Sunday show has moved from the 7th St Entry to the Fine Line, a venue upgrade that tells its own story about demand. All previously purchased tickets are honored. Jordan’s alt-R&B and electronic sound makes this one of the weekend’s more contemporary downtown bookings, and the Fine Line is a room where the architecture of a performance takes shape in ways the smaller venue couldn’t have offered.<\/p>\n Tickets and event information: https:\/\/www.first-avenue.com<\/a><\/p>\n Doors:<\/strong> 6:30 PM Show:<\/strong> 7:30 PM<\/p>\n Price<\/strong> Tickets start at $32.<\/p>\n Notes<\/strong> All ages.<\/p>\n Venue:<\/strong> The Fillmore Minneapolis Address:<\/strong> 525 N 5th St, Minneapolis<\/p>\n Humbe’s Minneapolis stop adds a strong Latin pop entry to the weekend calendar. For the metro’s live music scene, the date reflects the continued growth of Spanish-language touring acts in rooms that were once programmed far more narrowly. It is one of the weekend’s clearer examples of how broad the city’s music audience has become.<\/p>\n Tickets and event information: https:\/\/www.fillmoremn.com<\/a><\/p>\n Showtime<\/strong> Sunday: 6:00 PM<\/p>\n Price<\/strong> Ticket prices vary by availability.<\/p>\n Film<\/strong><\/p>\n Venue:<\/strong> Pohlad Hall, Minneapolis Central Library Address:<\/strong> 300 Nicollet Mall, Minneapolis<\/p>\n The Minneapolis screening of the 15th annual 90-Second Newbery Film Festival is the weekend’s least complicated great event. Young filmmakers retell Newbery Medal-winning books in 90 seconds each. The concept is simple. The execution, every year, is joyful and genuinely surprising. The Minneapolis event takes place in Pohlad Hall, hosted by authors James Kennedy and Jacqueline West, and admission is free with reservation. Bring children. Bring the children’s books they love. Let a ten-year-old filmmaker show them something they didn’t expect.<\/p>\n Event information and free reservations: https:\/\/www.90secondnewbery.com<\/a><\/p>\n Time<\/strong> Sunday: 2:00 PM<\/p>\n Price<\/strong> Free with reservation.<\/p>\n Notes<\/strong> All ages.<\/p>\n Venue:<\/strong> Trylon Cinema Address:<\/strong> 2820 E 33rd St, Minneapolis<\/p>\n The Trylon screens Akira Kurosawa’s The Bad Sleep Well<\/em> Sunday at 8 p.m. as part of its Bad Company series. Kurosawa made this film in 1960, asking what happens when institutional corruption becomes indistinguishable from institutional function, when the people inside a system are not villains exactly but participants, which is worse. The film is a procedural and an elegy at the same time. It moves carefully and then hits hard. Seeing it in 35mm in a small room is not a nostalgic experience. It is the correct one.<\/p>\n Screening information: https:\/\/www.trylon.org<\/a><\/p>\n Showtime<\/strong> Sunday: 8:00 PM<\/p>\n Ticket<\/strong> prices vary by theater policy and availability.<\/p>\n Sports<\/strong><\/p>\n Venue:<\/strong> Grand Casino Arena at Xcel Energy Center Address:<\/strong> 199 W Kellogg Blvd, Saint Paul<\/p>\n The Minnesota Wild host the New York Rangers on Saturday evening in Saint Paul. General gates open 75 minutes before puck drop, with Gate 5 opening 90 minutes early for suite and club ticket holders. For readers looking to build a full Saturday around downtown Saint Paul, this is the weekend’s major in-arena sports event.<\/p>\n Tickets and game information: https:\/\/www.nhl.com\/wild<\/a><\/p>\n Game Time<\/strong> Saturday: 5:00 PM<\/p>\n Price<\/strong> Ticket prices vary by section and resale market activity.<\/p>\n Family Activities<\/strong><\/p>\n Venue:<\/strong> Science Museum of Minnesota Address:<\/strong> 120 W Kellogg Blvd, Saint Paul<\/p>\n For families who want a reliable daytime anchor rather than a one-hour show, the Science Museum remains one of the strongest choices in the metro. Weekend hours extend to 8 p.m. Saturday and 5 p.m. Sunday, with hands-on exhibits, Science Live demonstrations, and the flexibility to work around nap schedules and multiple stops in Saint Paul.<\/p>\n Visitor information and tickets: https:\/\/www.smm.org<\/a><\/p>\n Hours<\/strong> Saturday: 10:00 AM to 8:00 PM Sunday: 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM<\/p>\n Price<\/strong> General admission varies by date and package.<\/p>\n Venue:<\/strong> Minnesota Children’s Museum Address:<\/strong> 10 W 7th St, Saint Paul<\/p>\n Three floors of interactive play near downtown Saint Paul, with timed entry available online. Advance tickets are recommended. For households with younger children, the predictability of a timed arrival matters as much as the exhibits themselves.<\/p>\n Tickets and visitor information: https:\/\/www.mcm.org<\/a><\/p>\n Price<\/strong> Admission varies by date and availability.<\/p>\n Notes<\/strong> Advance online tickets recommended.<\/p>\n Venue:<\/strong> UnitedHealth Group Stage at Children’s Theatre Company Address:<\/strong> Minneapolis<\/p>\n Life-size dinosaur puppets on a stage, built around a child-centered adventure format. For families wanting a true performance rather than museum-style wandering, this is a natural fit. For younger children, it will not feel like entertainment. It will feel like revelation.<\/p>\n Tickets and event information: https:\/\/www.childrenstheatre.org<\/a><\/p>\n Showtime<\/strong> Sunday: 5:00 PM<\/p>\n Price<\/strong> Ticket prices vary by seating and seller.<\/p>\n Tours and Social Experiences<\/strong><\/p>\n Venue:<\/strong> Wabasha Street Caves Address:<\/strong> 215 Wabasha St S, Saint Paul<\/p>\n A roughly two-hour motorcoach tour through the city’s Prohibition-era criminal history. One of Saint Paul’s most durable themed experiences, and an easy recommendation for visitors, history-minded locals, or anyone wanting something outside the usual dinner-and-show pattern.<\/p>\n Tour information and tickets: https:\/\/www.wabashastreetcaves.com<\/a><\/p>\n Length<\/strong> Approximately 2 hours<\/p>\n Price<\/strong> Ticket prices vary by date and availability.<\/p>\n Venue:<\/strong> Minneapolis, with rotating brewery stops<\/p>\n A small-group guided tour with multiple taproom stops, snacks, and round-trip transportation by minibus. Afternoon and evening options available, with some listings showing a Saturday noon start.<\/p>\n Tour information and booking: https:\/\/www.viator.com<\/a><\/p>\n Length<\/strong> Approximately 3 hours<\/p>\n Price<\/strong> Ticket prices vary by provider and date.<\/p>\n The Weekend Takeaway<\/strong><\/p>\n What connects all of this, the Kurosawa and the roller derby, the Celtic dance and the ballpark, Shakespeare and the children with their ninety-second cameras, is not theme or geography but a particular kind of seriousness. Not solemnity. Seriousness. The sense that the people who made these events believed they were worth making, and that the audience showing up believes they are worth attending.<\/p>\n That compact, renewed every weekend in cities that choose to honor it, is not guaranteed anywhere. In the Twin Cities, it has held for a long time. This weekend is more evidence.<\/p>\n Event Links and Tickets<\/strong><\/p>\n 31st Annual Food & Wine Experience at Target Field: https:\/\/www.minnesotamonthly.com<\/a><\/p>\n Day of Irish Dance at Landmark Center: https:\/\/www.landmarkcenter.org<\/a><\/p>\n Macbeth<\/em> at Guthrie Theater: https:\/\/www.guthrietheater.org<\/a><\/p>\n Symphonic Storytelling at Orchestra Hall: https:\/\/www.minnesotaorchestra.org<\/a><\/p>\n Dessa with Lady Midnight at Dakota: https:\/\/www.dakotacooks.com<\/a><\/p>\n Roma Di Luna & Friends at The Cedar: https:\/\/www.thecedar.org<\/a><\/p>\n Lucero with Otis Gibbs at First Avenue: https:\/\/www.first-avenue.com<\/a><\/p>\n Rochelle Jordan at Fine Line: https:\/\/www.first-avenue.com<\/a><\/p>\n Humbe with Arath Herce at The Fillmore: https:\/\/www.fillmoremn.com<\/a><\/p>\n 90-Second Newbery Film Festival at Minneapolis Central Library:31st Annual Food & Wine Experience<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Day of Irish Dance<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Macbeth<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Symphonic Storytelling<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Dessa with Lady Midnight<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Roma Di Luna & Friends Benefit Concert<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Lucero with Otis Gibbs<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Rochelle Jordan<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Humbe with Arath Herce<\/strong><\/h2>\n
90-Second Newbery Film Festival<\/strong><\/h2>\n
The Bad Sleep Well, in 35mm<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Minnesota Wild vs. New York Rangers<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Science Museum of Minnesota<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Minnesota Children’s Museum<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Dinosaur World Live<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Saint Paul Gangster Tour<\/strong><\/h2>\n
All-Inclusive Minneapolis Craft Brewery Tour<\/strong><\/h2>\n