Street art brings colour, pride, and safety

Street art is everywhere in Rotterdam. Murals sometimes catch your eye from far away, sometimes they appear right where you least expect them. They bring colour, pride, and safety to neighbourhoods. The highlight comes every September with the international street art festival ALL CAPS. But you can also set out to explore at any time of year with the street art routes from Rewriters010.

‘We want to make Rotterdam more beautiful with street art,’ says Daniel Claessens, creative director of street art festival ALL CAPS. ‘Rotterdam is a street art city through and through, with artists who want to enrich it with murals. Art on the street changes how you experience your surroundings: it makes them feel better, safer, and more inspiring.’

Alleyways and metro pillars

The City of Rotterdam uses street artists to address dark alleyways in the Hoogkwartier neighbourhood. Their work is less likely to get painted over and at the same time can help create a greater sense of safety. And on the Tarwewijk, fifteen bare metro pillars are getting a makeover in collaboration with RET, with new artworks inspired by stories from local residents, schools, and organisations.

ALL CAPS is proud of these collaborations: ‘By transforming public space with art, we bring not just colour, but also pride and safety to the neighbourhood.’

A leading street art festival

Since 2018, ALL CAPS has grown into the leading street art festival in the Netherlands. Alongside international names, there are plenty of Rotterdam-based artists on show. ‘I look for artists with a wow factor, who push the boundaries of colour and form,’ says Claessens.

The name ALL CAPS is deeply rooted in the street art world and carries more than one meaning: a nod to the spray caps from graffiti culture, but also to typography, since many graffiti artists work exclusively in capitals.

City as living work of art

The festival moves to a different part of the city each time, transforming it with colour and creativity into a living work of art. In 2026, the festival takes place in the Lombardijen neighbourhood in Rotterdam-Zuid.

For a full week, you can watch artists working on their murals in the neighbourhood. What makes it particularly special: one of the artists has been chosen by local residents themselves to create a mural.

Graffiti workshops

On the closing Super Sunday, you can discover the new murals yourself on a tour through the neighbourhood. On this free festival day, you can also watch artists at work live and even try your hand yourself. The festival really comes into its own with graffiti workshops for children, food trucks, DJs, live acts, and dance workshops.

Legal street art wall

When the festival launched, Rotterdam still had a zero-tolerance policy on graffiti. Today, there are practice walls and designated spots where artists can work legally. Rotterdam’s first legal street art wall is the Open Art Wall: a 150-metre wall on the Korte Stadionweg, created in collaboration between the City of Rotterdam, Rotterdams Tij, and ALL CAPS. Here, artists, students, and enthusiasts can get creative freely and legally.

West-Kruiskade

The West-Kruiskade shows just how much a neighbourhood can be transformed by murals. This multicultural street, where 170 nationalities live side by side, is home to the Rotterdam Street Art Museum. The street is the museum. You feel the city’s authentic energy here, where every wall and every work tells its own story.

Street art routes

There are several routes for exploring Rotterdam’s murals. ALL CAPS releases a new route each year through the festival app, which previously won the Aardig Onderweg Award from RET.

There are also six street art routes from Rewriters010. Download them and follow the trail through murals and hidden artworks across different neighbourhoods, each with its own story. The routes are updated regularly, so there’s always something new to discover.