La Peña Cultural Center, Cultural center in Berkeley, United States

La Peña Cultural Center is a multicultural center at 3105 Shattuck Avenue in the Ashby neighborhood of South Berkeley, California. Its façade is covered with a mural inspired by the Chilean Nueva Canción movement. Inside, the center holds performance and meeting spaces used for concerts, dance and music classes, and community events. The Café Valparaíso, added in 1976, left the building in the mid-2010s and moved to Solano Avenue in Albany.

The center was founded in 1975 by Chilean exiles who sought refuge after the 1973 military coup in Chile. Its creation was closely tied to the solidarity movement for Chilean refugees and their supporters.

La Peña takes its name from the Chilean peña, a gathering where music and politics meet. Its façade carries a mural inspired by the Nueva Canción song movement. Classes teach Puerto Rican bomba y plena, Afro-Peruvian cajón and dance, Brazilian capoeira angola, Mexican son jarocho and Cuban charanga. Each year the Chilean diaspora gathers here for fiestas patrias, Christmas and the anniversary of the 1973 coup.

The center is open regularly throughout the week for events, classes, and performances, offering visitors multiple options to explore. It helps to check ahead on what activities are happening, as the program changes seasonally.

The building's façade is covered by a mural inspired by the Nueva Canción movement, a Chilean song tradition the founders drew on. In 2010 the center hosted the Mano a Mano benefit for victims of that year's Chile earthquake, aiming to raise US$10,000 in donations.