A bot reads Austin's event calendars every week and picks what I'd want to go to. It leans toward technology, philosophy, Buddhism, and science, with some music and art mixed in. Top picks come first.
Updated Saturday, October 10
Mon12Oct
One evening, four composers: pianist Anton Nel brings violin, viola, cello, clarinet, a second piano, and percussion together for chamber works by Mozart, Debussy, Poulenc, and Bartok at Bates Recital Hall. The Monday recital is presented by the Butler School of Music, and tickets run $10 to $20.
Music
Tue13Oct
On campus
Between the phone in your pocket and the mine that feeds it sits a supply chain most of us cannot name, and Ernest Scheyder spent years tracing it for The War Below. The author joins GSLI Associate Director John Schwartz over dinner to discuss lithium, copper, and the political and environmental questions around critical minerals, cohosted by the Clark Center for Australian and New Zealand Studies. Crum Auditorium at Robert B. Rowling Hall, 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.; the listing does not mention admission, and dinner is included.
Technology, science
Thu15Oct
Registration required, on campus
Running with Scissors: AI and the Race for the Future asks what happens when the push to ship AI outruns the work of asking whether we should. Ethics Unwrapped and Good Systems host the screening followed by a panel Q&A drawn from the UT Austin researchers, students, and local industry leaders featured in the film. Crum Auditorium at Robert B. Rowling Hall, 6 to 8:30 p.m.; the listing asks attendees to register online to secure a spot.
AI, film
Fri16Oct
Free, registration required, on campus
Computer vision began as the project of teaching machines to see, and it is turning into systems that coach you through a skill or guide you through an unfamiliar place in the physical world. Dr. Kristen Grauman, who leads the UT Austin Computer Vision Group, gives the Hot Science - Cool Talks lecture on this next generation of AI after hands-on Cool Activities fill the Welch Hall hallways from 5:30 p.m. Free with Eventbrite registration; the talk starts at 7 p.m. in Welch Auditorium 2.224 and check-in closes at 6:50.
AI, science
Sun18Oct
Free, on campus
Sunday noon soccer at Myers Stadium as the Longhorns host South Carolina in an SEC home match. Admission is free for regular-season matches per the Texas Soccer fan guide, seating is general admission, and the match also streams on SEC Network+. Kickoff is 12 p.m. at 707 Clyde Littlefield Drive.
Sports
Sun18Oct
Free, outdoors, registration required
A dusk ride with a payoff: the ASES Solar 2026 Climate Ride rolls from the Palmer Events Center to the Congress Avenue Bridge in time for the evening bat flight, then a social hour at The Cedar Door. The ride and walk are free with no registration fee or fundraising minimum, scooters and families are welcome, and check-in and a safety talk lead up to a 5:45 p.m. roll-out.
Science
Sat10Oct
Registration required
Self-driving cars have spent a decade being almost there, and the Avride engineering team opens its Austin garage to show where they actually stand, with brunch, two engineering talks, and tours of the robots and vehicles.
Boris Yangel, head of AI at Humanoid, speaks on reliable robot manipulation, and Avride head of autonomous delivery Roman Nefedov covers physical AI at sidewalk level. Saturday 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at 8325 Tuscany Way; space is capped at 60 guests, so RSVP on the event page.
AI, technology
Sat10Oct
Family, outdoors
The Texas Science and Natural History Museum screens the family film Hoppers outdoors on Saturday night, with museum doors at 6 p.m. and the movie at 7:30 p.m. Tickets include museum admission; blankets work on the lawn, camp chairs on the patio, and snacks are welcome with no glass.
The listing does not state a price.
Film
Sun11Oct
The Cello Concerto, op. 104 by Dvorak anchors the Butler Symphony Orchestra program at Bates Recital Hall, with Bion Tsang as soloist after works by Adam Schoenberg and Gara Garayev.
Tickets run $5 to $15 through the Butler School of Music.
Music
Mon12Oct
Bingo night where romance tropes replace the numbers: the Brewtorium hosts Romance Trope Bingo on Monday, 7 to 9 p.m., a brewery evening for romance readers.
The feed does not state admission; RSVP through the event page.
Books
Tue13Oct
Hunter Thompson retyped The Great Gatsby page by page and Joan Didion typed Hemingway at fifteen, and this evening hands you a vintage typewriter to do the same with a passage you love before drafting something of your own.
The Typewriter Social runs the session at Fortune Teller on South Congress with machines, paper, and passages provided, drinks inside and food trucks outside. Tuesday 8 to 10 p.m.; seats are limited, so RSVP early on the event page, and the listing does not state admission.
Books
Wed14Oct
Three rounds of small-group conversation, each opened by a thought experiment and twisted halfway through by a new constraint, billed by the Thought Experiments series as a way to skip the small talk.
No philosophy background is needed, tables rotate about every 25 minutes, and the host says the mix is better with different ages and beliefs. Wednesday 6:30 to 8:30 p.m.; the venue address is not listed on the event page, and the listing does not state admission.
Philosophy
Fri16Oct
Registration required, on campus
Before asking what AI adds to the humanities, it helps to know what the classical methods already do, and this workshop runs the two side by side on textual analysis tasks like topic modeling, sentiment analysis, and classification.
Yi Shan, East Asian Studies liaison librarian at UT, leads the session in the Scholars Lab Data Lab at the Perry-Castañeda Library, Friday noon to 1 p.m. No digital humanities background is needed; the listing asks participants to register online and bring a device and a corpus of texts.
AI, technology
Fri16Oct
Free, registration required, on campus
The Black Yearbook made a name for UT alumnus Adraint Bereal, and his survey As It Appears opens at the Visual Arts Center with more than 30 works, a commissioned video, and archival materials.
Bereal leads an intimate artist tour at 4 p.m., and an opening reception follows at 5 in the Art Building at 2301 San Jacinto. The tour is free and capped at 30 guests, so RSVP through the UTVAC page.
Art
Sat17Oct
Two decades after her Gold-certified debut Kansas, Jennifer Knapp brings her Songs and Stories tour to the Cactus Cafe with Flamy Grant, mixing music with the story of her years in the Christian music industry and the advocacy since.
Doors open at 7 p.m. for the 7:30 p.m. show on Saturday, and tickets are on sale through the Cactus calendar; the listing does not state a price.
Music
What the bot picked recently. Select an event for details.
Family
Celebrating ten years of My Hero Academia, this concert brings the anime full eight-season journey to Bass Concert Hall, a 15-piece live band performing the Yuki Hayashi score in sync with scenes on screen. The listing tags the show family-friendly, and tickets start at $59 through Texas Performing Arts.
Music, film
Original listingRegistration required, on campus
A lunch hour with donuts in exchange for a working grip on SQL: the UT Libraries Research Data Services team walks through relational databases like PostgreSQL and SQLite at the Perry-Castaneda Library. The session runs hybrid, so register online to attend in person or by Zoom; donuts go to in-person attendees.
Technology, science
Original listingPaint a scene from Avatar the Last Airbender at Hold Out Brewing, a watercolor workshop with the brewery taproom around you. It runs 7 to 9 p.m. on Thursday with free parking in the lot off 4th Street; the feed does not state admission.
Art, design
Original listingThe Austin Claude Code meetup turns October toward agents at work, with practical demos of personal agents at Pershing Hall on East 5th. The feed does not state admission, and RSVP runs through the event page.
AI, technology
Original listingChess night on South Congress: Hotel San Jose hosts Knightcap for a second time, running 7 to 10 p.m. The feed does not state admission; check the event page.
Design
Original listingOutdoors, family, on campus
The night before the team buses north, the Texas Fight Parade marches down Guadalupe Street at 6:30 p.m. and the rally starts at 7 p.m. at the Tower to send the Longhorns to Dallas for the Red River Rivalry. Players and coaches appear, with performances by UT Cheer and Pom and the Longhorn Band, an annual tradition ahead of the Cotton Bowl. It happens outdoors on the Main Mall, and the listing does not mention admission.
Sports
Original listingThe Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Sara Bareilles brings her Good Grief Tour to Bass Concert Hall, pairing raw new songs with the ones that defined her career. Texas Performing Arts lists tickets starting at $60.50.
Music
Original listingFree
Three student conductors share the podium as the University Orchestra plays the Jubilee from Symphonic Sketches by Chadwick and the Borodin Second Symphony at Bates Recital Hall. Admission is free, and the school streams its concerts on YouTube.
Music
Original listingA century after John Coltrane was born, NEA Jazz Masters Branford Marsalis and Dianne Reeves gather at Hogg Auditorium to celebrate his music. Reeves joins the Branford Marsalis Quartet to honor the landmark 1963 Coltrane and Johnny Hartman collaboration, with a companion album newly released on Blue Note Records. Tickets start at $49 through Texas Performing Arts.
Music
Original listingFree
Every Tuesday the Cactus Cafe hands its famed stage to original songs only, with no covers allowed, hosted by songwriter Jake Farr. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. with music at 7:30, and admission is free.
Music
Original listingOn campus
Soil and ocean water as archives: artist Taisha Carrington, the 2026-27 St. Elmo Arts Residency Fellow, gives a one-hour talk on a sculpture and performance practice that reads natural materials for the histories they carry, from Barbados to New Haven. Her solo exhibition opens at the Visual Arts Center on January 22, 2027; the listing does not mention admission.
Art
Original listingNearly two centuries after Schubert wrote Die schöne Müllerin, tenor Steven Brennfleck and pianist Rick Rowley perform the complete song cycle at Bates Recital Hall. The Monday-evening recital comes from the Butler School of Music, and tickets run $10 to $20.
Music
Original listingA silent reading party that hands you a paperback: Reading Rhythms sets up at the Mozart Coffee Roasters cafe on Lake Austin Blvd, and this movie tie-in edition gives attendees a copy of Sense and Sensibility. The feed does not state admission; RSVP through the event page.
Books
Original listingJoin Zoom Meetinghttps://us06web.zoom.us/j/82667595183?pwd=ua6PKaFCp6REFrJO8LQZRMRfHylQqL.1
Free
Blue Hour Skyline by Kevin Day opens the Symphony Band program at Bates Recital Hall on Sunday afternoon, with Into the Blue and Fantasy of Colors completing the bill under conductor Cliff Croomes. Admission is free per the music school listing.
Music
Original listingFree, family, outdoors
The Sunday before the football teams renew the Red River Rivalry in Dallas, Texas Soccer hosts Oklahoma at Myers Stadium with the match carried on SEC Network. Admission is free for all regular-season soccer matches, and East Campus Garage parking is $5 when bought online in advance. Seating is general admission on the east side of the stadium.
Sports
Original listingFamily
Eighteen chapters in one afternoon: the Gita Festival walks participants through the entire Bhagavad Gita using virtual reality and multi-sensory experiences, part of the Chinmaya Amrit Mahotsav 75th anniversary community day. Chinmaya Mission Austin runs it alongside a Superman Hanuman Adventure for children, so the block doubles as a family stop. It runs 11:00 AM to 3:00 PM at Chinmaya Sundaram; admission is not stated per session, though the festival sells tickets through its event site.
Philosophy, technology
Original listingFree, outdoors, registration required
A campus walk that treats sculpture as scenery: the October tour from Landmarks stops at four works, Veduggio Glimpse, Source, EON, and Untitled (Seven Mountains), exploring how artists draw inspiration from landscapes and how steel, wood, and digital animation evoke places both real and imagined. Landmarks is the university public-art program whose collection dots the UT Austin campus. 11 a.m. Sunday, free with registration through the link in the listing; the meeting point is not named, so confirm it when you register.
Art
Original listingFamily
Seventy-five years after Swami Chinmayananda began teaching the Gita and Upanishads to lay audiences, his Austin chapter marks the milestone with a collective Hanuman puja. The Hanuman Samashti Puja opens the Sunday community day of the Chinmaya Amrit Mahotsav festival at the Chinmaya Sundaram campus on Burnet Road. It starts at 9:00 AM with no end time listed, and admission is not stated, though the festival sells tickets through a ticketing page.
Philosophy
Original listingSeven years into a solo career with no major hit to its name, Boz Scaggs cut Silk Degrees, which reached number 2 on the Billboard 200 and produced the hit singles 'Lowdown' and 'Lido Shuffle'. The singer, songwriter, and guitarist, an early bandmate of Steve Miller and later co-founder of Slim's (the San Francisco venue that ran until 2020), brings his Rhythm Review 2026 to Bass Concert Hall, drawing on a catalog that stretches from his 1969 start to 2018's Out of the Blues. Tickets start at $58.80 through Texas Performing Arts.
Music
Original listingKatrina Miller traded a particle physics Ph.D. for a notebook, and now the award-winning New York Times reporter crafts the stories that explain science to everyone else. At the College of Natural Sciences' New Equations series she sits down with Anthony Dudo, who directs UT's science-communication program, to talk about how those stories get made and what science journalism owes the public as assumptions about STEM shift. The talk starts 4:30 in Norman Hackerman Building 1.720 with a pre-talk reception at 4:00; the listing's RSVP deadline (Sept 24) has passed, and whether walk-ins are welcome is not stated.
Science
Original listingTwo hundred and fifty years before anyone asked whether a chatbot can really write, another crowd asked whether an eighteenth-century android could, and whether nineteenth-century spirits were the ones dictating. Dr. Annette Vee traces that lineage from androids and spiritualism to twentieth-century computer scientists, probing what writing meant in each era and what each assumed it took to be human. Expect the talk in Learning Lab 1 at the Perry-Castañeda Library; the listing does not mention admission details.
AI, history
Original listingFree, family
Once a month the dinosaurs are free: H-E-B Free Fourth Sundays waive admission to the Texas Science & Natural History Museum, where you can touch real meteorites and walk beneath the 33-foot wingspan of a pterosaur and a tyrannosaur. The galleries tell the story of life in Texas from the formation of the planet through the age of dinosaurs into the current environment. Open 1 to 5 p.m. with last admission at 4:30; the free day recurs the fourth Sunday of every month.
Science
Original listing