What's On in London

Upcoming events in London

• MANILOW: The Last Last London Concert — The O2, Peninsula Square, London SE10 0DX. 17 June 2026. Category: Performing Arts. Barry Manilow returns to The O2 for what he bills as his final London concert, a goodbye from an artist who has sold out the city's arenas since the 1970s. Every hit is accounted for. The audience wil
• Marylebone Minds: The Eco-Brick Project — St Marylebone Parish Church, 17 Marylebone Rd, London NW1 5LT, United Kingdom. 17 June 2026. Category: Science & Nature. A lecture by Dr Corinna Dean on the humble brick and what sustainability really asks of it, given down in the cool stone crypt beneath the church. The setting is the argument made solid. Go for the th
• Soane Museum Study Group: Dance Drawings — Sir John Soane's Museum, 13 Lincoln's Inn Fields, London WC2A 3BP. 17 June 2026. Category: History & Culture. Dr Frances Sands explores the provenance of Soane's George Dance drawing collection, with archive access after the talk. History pulled apart at the seams, then handed back to you.
• William Kentridge in Conversation — Royal Academy of Arts, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London W1J 0BD. 17 June 2026. Category: Family. The South African artist discusses politics, art, and a body of work that changed how we see both. One night, no repeat.
• Disclosure Day — Barbican Centre, Silk St, Barbican, London EC2Y 8DS. 12 June 2026 to 18 June 2026. Category: Performing Arts. An otherworldly force seizes a weatherwoman mid-broadcast and speaks to the whole planet at once. Spielberg doing first contact through the static of a TV studio, with Emily Blunt at the centre of the
• KAYTRANADA — The O2, Peninsula Square, London SE10 0DX. 18 June 2026. Category: Performing Arts. The Montreal producer KAYTRANADA brings his live show to The O2 — warm, syncopated, built equally from house, R&B, and something that only makes sense in his hands. June is the right month for it.
• Drink and Draw: Flaming June — Leighton House, 12 Holland Park Rd, London W14 8LZ. 18 June 2026. Category: Art & Design. An evening drawing session at Leighton House inspired by the most reproduced painting made here: a woman in orange silk, asleep in afternoon warmth, painted at the height of Leighton's career. Pencils
• Flee: Screening and Panel Discussion — Barbican Centre, Silk St, Barbican, London EC2Y 8DS. 19 June 2026. Category: Performing Arts. An animated documentary in which a man finally tells the truth about fleeing Afghanistan for Denmark as a child, his memory drawn rather than filmed to keep him hidden. The animation is the point, not
• RnB Summer Ball — The O2, Peninsula Square, London SE10 0DX. 19 June 2026. Category: Family. A night of R&B at The O2 featuring acts from across the genre. June in London. The only dress code is commitment.
• ISMO: Perseverance Tour — Eventim Apollo, 45 Queen Caroline St, London W6 9QH. 20 June 2026. Category: Family. The Finnish comedian's outsider-eye takes on American life, live in Hammersmith. The title does extra work.
• Roman Fort Gate Tours — Museum of London, No 1, West India Quay, Hertsmere Rd, London E14 4AL. 20 June 2026. Category: History & Culture. A guided tour through the excavated remains of the Roman military fort buried beneath the streets of the City of London, including the second-century gate still largely intact underground. The walls h
• Silent Disco in the Painted Hall — Old Royal Naval College, London SE10 9NN. 20 June 2026. Category: Performing Arts. Dancing in headphones beneath Thornhill's painted ceiling, the so-called Sistine Chapel of the UK that took nineteen years to finish. Look up between songs at the work of two decades above your head.
• The B-52's and Devo: Cosmic De-Evolution Tour — The O2, Peninsula Square, London SE10 0DX. 20 June 2026. Category: Performing Arts. The B-52's and Devo on one bill, two of new wave's strangest originals sharing a farewell-tinged night. Beehives meet boiler suits and red energy domes. See the weird ones while you still can.
• Meshell Ndegeocello: No More Water – The Gospel of James Baldwin — Barbican Centre, Silk St, Barbican, London EC2Y 8DS. 20 June 2026. Category: Performing Arts. One of music's most adventurous voices takes the Barbican stage for a rare London date. Funk, jazz and something harder to name, all in one set.
• Hampton Court Palace Festival — Hampton Court Palace, Hampton Ct Way, Molesey, East Molesey KT8 9AU. 10 June 2026 to 20 June 2026. Category: Family. Live music in the Base Court, where Henry VIII once held tournaments. The sound carries differently through that much stone.
• Rachmaninov's Vespers — St Marylebone Parish Church, 17 Marylebone Rd, London NW1 5LT, United Kingdom. 20 June 2026. Category: Performing Arts. A choir fills the 1817 nave with Rachmaninov's all-night vigil — one of the great choral works of the twentieth century, performed complete. Harmonics pooling in Georgian stone.
• Family Fun: Flaming June with Hackney Herbal — Leighton House, 12 Holland Park Rd, London W14 8LZ. 20 June 2026. Category: Family. A Saturday afternoon for children aged five to ten inside Leighton House, combining plant craft with Hackney Herbal and the Victorian painting Flaming June. One of London's most elaborately decorated
• Cactus Pears — Barbican Centre, Silk St, Barbican, London EC2Y 8DS. 20 June 2026. Category: Performing Arts. In Rohan Kanawade's debut, a closeted man returns to his hometown in Maharashtra and falls back into romantic feeling with his childhood friend, two lives caught between love and expectation. Shot wit
• Familiar Touch — Barbican Centre, Silk St, Barbican, London EC2Y 8DS. 20 June 2026. Category: Performing Arts. Kathleen Chalfant stars in this coming-of-old-age story about a woman's transition into assisted living, directed with care and intelligence. The film turns what sounds like a difficult subject into s
• Nino — Barbican Centre, Silk St, Barbican, London EC2Y 8DS. 20 June 2026. Category: Performing Arts. Pauline Loquès's debut follows a young man blindsided by a throat cancer diagnosis on the eve of his 29th birthday, with Théodore Pellerin's Cannes Critics' Week Rising Star-winning performance holdin
• Beverley Knight: Born to Perform — Eventim Apollo, 45 Queen Caroline St, London W6 9QH. 21 June 2026. Category: Family. A career retrospective with stories from the stage woven in. Thirty years of performing and it still sounds live.
• Mozart: Idomeneo — Cadogan Hall, 5 Sloane Terrace, London SW1X 9DQ. 21 June 2026. Category: Performing Arts. Mozart's opera Idomeneo performed at Cadogan Hall in a concert staging. A king caught between duty and love, and music that has never once lost the argument.
• Patoranking, Ghorwane & Kizaba — Barbican Centre, Silk St, Barbican, London EC2Y 8DS. 21 June 2026. Category: Performing Arts. Afrobeats titan Patoranking, Mozambican veterans Ghorwane and Congolese up-and-comers Kizaba share the Barbican Hall stage on a single Sunday night in a bill that covers the full breadth of the Africa
• The Price — Marylebone Theatre, London. 25 March 2026 to 21 June 2026. Category: Performing Arts. Arthur Miller's two-hander sets two brothers against their father's furniture and the weight of choices made long ago, with Henry Goodman leading a production extended twice by popular demand. Must en
• Skate 50 — Southbank Centre, Southbank Centre, Belvedere Rd, London SE1 8XX. 30 April 2026 to 21 June 2026. Category: Art & Design. Fifty years of the Southbank undercroft's skate culture told through photography, audio and video. The original concrete playground, now with an exhibition to match.
• Harry Styles' Meltdown — Southbank Centre, Southbank Centre, Belvedere Rd, London SE1 8XX. 11 June 2026 to 21 June 2026. Category: Performing Arts. Harry Styles curates his Meltdown at the Southbank Centre across 11 days of concerts spanning electronic, jazz, indie pop and experimental. Eclectic doesn't quite cover it.
• In and Around Smithfield Market — Museum of London, No 1, West India Quay, Hertsmere Rd, London E14 4AL. 21 June 2026. Category: History & Culture. A guided walk through Smithfield packing five centuries into ninety minutes, from medieval hospital to Victorian meat market. One of the most layered square miles in the city, still working.
• Michaelina Wautier – Exhibition Opening — Royal Academy of Arts, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London W1J 0BD. 27 March 2026 to 21 June 2026. Category: Family. A 17th-century Flemish painter good enough to be mistaken for Rubens, and overlooked for exactly that reason. Go while the rooms are still quiet.
• Africa Oyé x Barbican — Barbican Centre, Silk St, Barbican, London EC2Y 8DS. 21 June 2026. Category: Performing Arts. West Africa's biggest free music festival brings its sunshine and soul to the Barbican stage. Expect a day of genre-spanning rhythms and joy that's hard to ignore.
• West End LIVE — Trafalgar Square, Trafalgar Sq, London WC2N 5DS. 20 June 2026 to 21 June 2026. Category: Performing Arts. A free weekend of songs from the West End's biggest musicals, staged out in the open on the square better known for its lions and its fountains. Theatre spilling out of the theatres for once. Bring no
• Les Misérables: The Arena Spectacular — Royal Albert Hall, Kensington Gore, South Kensington, London SW7 2AP. 18 June 2026 to 21 June 2026. Category: Performing Arts. The barricade epic blown up into a grand staged concert with Alfie Boe and Samantha Barks lending their voices. The big numbers were built for a room exactly this grand. One day more, then it is gone.
• World War Two Weekend at Dover Castle — Dover Castle, Castle Hill, Dover, Kent CT16 1HU. 20 June 2026 to 21 June 2026. Category: History & Culture. Re-enactors and wartime vehicles fill the grounds of Britain's most battle-tested medieval fortress — including the secret tunnels where Churchill's staff planned the Dunkirk evacuation. Coast and cas
• Westminster Ensemble Concert — St Marylebone Parish Church, 17 Marylebone Rd, London NW1 5LT, United Kingdom. 22 June 2026. Category: Performing Arts. Elgar, Bach and Schoenberg under one roof, the warm and the thorny side by side. The Westminster Ensemble do not soften the Schoenberg to make it sit easy. A proper programme for ears that want a litt
• Mahler Chamber Orchestra / Daniel Harding — Barbican Centre, Silk St, Barbican, London EC2Y 8DS. 22 June 2026. Category: Performing Arts. The Mahler Chamber Orchestra performs Haydn, Hummel and Beethoven under Daniel Harding, with Håkan Hardenberger on trumpet. A musician who makes brass sound like thought. Vienna, distilled.
• MELTWATER — Royal Albert Hall, Kensington Gore, South Kensington, London SW7 2AP. 23 June 2026. Category: Performing Arts. A new concert work at the Royal Albert Hall — ice, water, and climate as sonic material. Whatever the brief, the dome will make it resonate.
• Alternative Narratives: Romani Visual Activism in Museum Spaces — London Museum Docklands, London. 24 June 2026. Category: Art & Design. Delaine Le Bas, Dan Turner and Corrina Eastwood discuss navigating cultural institutions with Romani identity at the centre. A frank and rare panel tied to the museum's summer display.
• Performance: Calling Card 24062026 after Adrian Piper — London Museum Docklands, London. 24 June 2026. Category: Art & Design. Delaine Le Bas's performance work moves through the galleries of London Museum Docklands for one hour, riffing on Adrian Piper's confrontational Calling Card interventions. Free and ticketed, and genu
• Building Resilience: Demonstrators for a Changing Climate — the Design Museum, 224-238 Kensington High St, London W8 6AG. 25 June 2026. Category: Science & Nature. A symposium for London Climate Action Week on how design actually answers a warming world, demonstrators over slogans. Real prototypes, not promises. Built responses for a planet that cannot wait.
• Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer Portrait Award 2026 — National Portrait Gallery, St. Martin's Pl, London WC2H 0HE. 25 June 2026. Category: Art & Design. The National Portrait Gallery's annual portrait prize opens with a shortlist of four painters selected from 1,474 entries across 63 countries. Free to visit, and one of the better reasons to spend tim
• Building Resilience — the Design Museum, 224-238 Kensington High St, London W8 6AG. 25 June 2026. Category: Art & Design. A design talk on how built environments adapt — or fail to — under climate pressure, civic stress, and the weight of the unforeseen. Architecture as a survival problem.