Open-cavity flows are known to exhibit a few well-defined peaks in the power spectral distribution of velocity or pressure signals recorded close to the impinging corner. The measured frequencies are in fact common to the entire flow, indicating some global organisation of the flow. The modal structures, i.e. the spatial distribution of the most characteristic frequencies in the flow, are experimentally investigated using time-resolved particle image velocimetry. Each spatial point, of the resulting two-dimension-two-component (2D–2C) velocity fields, provides time-resolved series of the velocity components V _x and V _y , in a (x, y) streamwise plane orthogonal to cavity bottom. Each local time-series is Fourier-transformed, such as to provide the spectral distribution at any point of the PIV-plane. One finally obtains the spatial structure associated with any frequency of the Fourier spectrum. Some of the modal spatial structures are expected to represent the nonlinear saturation of the global modes, against which the stationary solution of the Navier–Stokes equations may have become linearly unstable. Following Rowley et al. (J Fluid Mech 641:115–127, 2009 ), our experimental modal structures may even correspond to the Koopman modes of this incompressible cavity flow.