Rapid events are becoming increasingly popular, at least in top-level chess, but it hasn't really trickled down to the club level yet. (Or has it? If your non-professional level club experience has seen a steady rise in rapid events over the past decade or two please mention this in the comments.) The elites have seen an ever-increasing number of rapid events since the 1987 Kasparov-Short match got the ball rolling.
The last week has seen four high-level rapid events: the Gideon Japhet Cup in Jerusalem (Israel), the Leon Chess Masters in Leon (Spain), a rapid & blitz match between Ruslan Ponomariov and Hou Yifan in Shenzhen (China), and the Yinzhou Cup in Ningbo (China). Let's say a bit about each.
1. Gideon Japhet Cup. This was a very strong event that finished with a curious crosstable. Ian Nepomniachtchi took first with a 6-4 score in the double round-robin, Anna Muzychuk finished last with 4 points out of ten, and the other four players tied for 2nd-5th with 50% scores. The four players were Peter Svidler, Vassily Ivanchuk, Boris Gelfand, and Georg Meier. There's a Chess24 report, including a longer interview with Svidler and a shorter one with Ivanchuk, here. Despite the strong clustering around 50%, the drawing percentage wasn't exceptionally high - there were 13 decisive games out of 30.
2. Leon Chess Masters. As usual, it was a four-player knockout event, with one four-game semi-final played on Friday, the second on Saturday, and the final on Sunday. The Friday match was between two players riding waves of success: Grand Chess Tour leader Wesley So and the newly-minted second-youngest grandmaster ever, Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu. The first three games were crazy, with results that weren't "normal" given earlier evaluation moments in the game. So was winning game 1 (more than once) but lost;So was lost in game 2 (more than once, starting with the position after his 7th[!!] move) but won; and Praggnanandhaa probably should have won game 3 as well, but So escaped. Finally, So won game four in normal fashion to advance to the final. (A nice report can be found here.)
On day 2 the other favorite also had trouble against a lower-rated opponent before advancing. Francisco Vallejo Pons lost the first game to Jaime Santos (without preliminary adventures), and achieved nothing with the white pieces in game 2. Game 3 was a calm draw, and in the last regular game something insane happened. Vallejo played a nice game and was pressing all the way, but Santos's excellent defense kept him alive. Hoping for more than rook and bishop vs. rook, Vallejo made a pretty "combination" that lost by force. All Santos had to do was played the only legal move, and on the next move make the one move from two legal options that didn't lose on the spot - and in fact won on the spot! Instead...he resigned. On to tiebreaks, and Vallejo won the second game after drawing the first to advance. (Report here.)
The final was more of the same. As in his first match, So lost in game 1 but came back to win in game 2; and as in Vallejo's previous match the players needed tiebreaks. So was in trouble in both games, but somehow won the first and reached a winning position in the second before offering Vallejo a charity draw to conclude the match. (More here.)
3. Shenzhen. Hou Yifan has played a few matches of this sort against higher-rated male opposition, typically losing but often outperforming her opponents by rating. In the rapid portion she kept it close, only losing to former FIDE world champion Ruslan Ponomariov by a 4.5-3.5 margin (losing game 1 and drawing the next 7!), but Ponomariov broke away in the blitz, 6.5-3.5. The blitz started well for Hou, as she won the first game and drew the next two, but the next six games were all decisive, and five of them were won by Ponomariov. Here are two of the shorter blitz games, sans annotations.
4. Yinzhou Cup. One more rapid event, featuring a small but elite field comprising Yu Yangyi, Wei Yi, Bu Xiangzhi, and Li Chao. Yu won with an impressive score of 4.5/6, a point ahead of Wei Yi whom he beat 2-0. Bu and Li were last with two points apiece. (A more helpful page for non-Chinese speakers is here.)