- Leiden International Film Festival. A small yearly film festival in October encompassing mainstream and smaller art-house films shown at a variety of museums and cinemas throughout town. It gets some Dutch premieres.
- Leidsche bluesweek A yearly festival with performances by mainly (but not exclusively) Dutch performers. The Wednesday night pub-crawl is a blast with many bars hosting live music (for other venues you do have to buy tickets though they're not expensive).
- Werfpop (in Dutch). A small-scale music festival with performances ranging from metal to dance. July.
- Leidsche lakenfeesten (in Dutch). A week of different activities in the city center and on the canals. There's a culinary festival, and the museum night. June.
- 3 October celebrations (3 Oktober Vereniging). Celebrations commemorating the end of the Spanish siege of Leiden (in 1547). Part of the festivities is a huge fun fair. The festival is overwhelming, noisy and heavily beer drinking. The town hall has strongly increased policing and crowd management of the event to make it reasonably safe to visit. In evening hours, it is still more like a mega pub crawl than a family event.
A comprehensive program of all of the festivals and activities can be found at the VVV site.
