What's On in London

Upcoming events in London

• Disco Orchestrated with Brixton Chamber Orchestra — Horniman Museum and Gardens, 100 London Rd, London SE23 3PQ. 6 August 2026. Category: Performing Arts. Seventeen musicians and four vocalists rework disco classics into full orchestral arrangements on an outdoor bandstand, echoes of Earth, Wind and Fire recast for strings and brass. It makes for a summ
• Novelty Automation bar night — Novelty Automation, London. 6 August 2026. Category: Family. Tim Hunkin's arcade of satirical, coin-operated contraptions swaps its daytime hours for a late bar night on the first Thursday of the month. Feed the machines a pound a throw and let mechanical wit o
• The Sacrifice — Barbican Centre, Silk St, Barbican, London EC2Y 8DS. 2 August 2026 to 6 August 2026. Category: History & Culture. A dying director's last film, shot in Sweden in 1986 with Ingmar Bergman's own cinematographer, about a man who vows to give up everything he loves to stop a nuclear war. Tarkovsky was already sick wh
• London Traditions — Guildhall Library, Aldermanbury, London EC2V 5AF, United Kingdom. 6 August 2026. Category: History & Culture. The City of London hoards odd ceremonies and older customs nobody can quite explain, kept alive more through habit than through design. This free talk unpicks a few of the stranger ones, from ancient
• London's Traditional Customs and Ceremonies — Guildhall Library, Aldermanbury, London EC2V 5AF, United Kingdom. 6 August 2026. Category: History & Culture. From swan upping to beating the bounds, London still guards ceremonies older than the streets around. An afternoon lecture traces which customs survive, which have faded, and why the city still keeps
• Summer by the River: Danny Griffiths — Southbank Centre, Southbank Centre, Belvedere Rd, London SE1 8XX. 6 August 2026. Category: Performing Arts. A rising songwriter brings big, melodic hooks to a pocket-sized garden by London Bridge, tucked away from the crowds along the water. Free, lunchtime-length and built for anyone who happens to wander
• Bass in the Borough — Southbank Centre, Southbank Centre, Belvedere Rd, London SE1 8XX. 7 August 2026. Category: Performing Arts. South London youth bands and community groups take over an evening of music and dance, curated by two of Kinetika Bloco's own performers. A DJ set closes the night, free and open to anyone drawn in by
• Summer family festival — National Portrait Gallery, St. Martin's Pl, London WC2H 0HE. 3 August 2026 to 7 August 2026. Category: Family. A week of free drop-in art activities lets families respond to the current Portrait Award shortlist with their own collage, drawing and photography. No booking needed, just younger hands let loose amo
• Family Open Day at Two Temple Place — Two Temple Place, London. 7 August 2026. Category: Family. A neo-Tudor mansion opens its doors free for the day, with a digital trail led by the Green Man or a paper quest guided by Little Red Hood. Ornate architecture gets a child's-eye tour, corners explore
• Honey at Dusk: a Museum Late — Bank of England Museum, Bartholomew Ln, London EC2R 8AH. 7 August 2026. Category: History & Culture. Live bees move into the banking halls for an evening built around trust: how it gets built, tested and occasionally defrauded, tied to an exhibition on the long, sticky relationship between honey and
• Make Your Own Jellyfish Cuddly Toy — Horniman Museum and Gardens, 100 London Rd, London SE23 3PQ. 6 August 2026 to 7 August 2026. Category: Family. A sewing workshop turns scraps of reclaimed fabric into a soft jellyfish to take home, led by a Lewisham studio making the most of leftover cloth. Simple stitches, a bit of foam, and a squishy new pet
• Handle with Care: Conversations Through Objects — Wellcome Collection, 183 Euston Rd., London NW1 2BE, United Kingdom. 8 August 2026. Category: History & Culture. Drop-in stations invite visitors to actually touch items from the collection, guided by the engagement team through the tactile history of health and art. Nothing here stays behind glass, and every st
• Allegra — The Harold Pinter Theatre, Panton Street, London, UK, Panton Street, London SW1Y 4DN. 8 July 2026 to 8 August 2026. Category: Performing Arts. A comedy with music about a woman so full of joy she keeps bursting into song, whether her village likes it or not. Maureen Lipman leads a five-week run built entirely around the idea that some feelin
• Cocktails in the City: Summer Edition — Bedford Square Gardens, London. 6 August 2026 to 8 August 2026. Category: Performing Arts. Twenty of the capital's best bars set up shop inside a usually-private square, pouring festival-only serves alongside street food and a silent disco. Lawn games fill the gaps between the rounds, while
• Gay Men's Chorus of Los Angeles: Love Across the Pond — St Paul’s Church Covent Garden, Bedford St, Covent Garden, London WC2E 9ED. 7 August 2026 to 8 August 2026. Category: Performing Arts. A first UK visit for the Los Angeles chorus lands inside the actors' church, mixing Motown and musical-theatre numbers with gospel and Pride anthems. Every ticket supports the Terrence Higgins Trust,
• In and Around Smithfield Market — Museum of London, No 1, West India Quay, Hertsmere Rd, London E14 4AL. 8 August 2026. Category: History & Culture. Smithfield has staged public executions, hosted a plague hospital and housed the greatest meat market in London for seven centuries. This London Museum walk covers the dissolution of the monasteries,
• The Art of Champagne: To Piper, My Favourite — National Portrait Gallery, St. Martin's Pl, London WC2H 0HE. 8 August 2026. Category: Art & Design. A guided morning that starts in front of Marilyn Monroe's portraits and ends with a champagne masterclass in the gallery's restaurant. Someone worked out that art appreciation goes down easier with a
• Centre Stage (Eventim Apollo: OPEN) — Eventim Apollo, 45 Queen Caroline St, London W6 9QH. 8 August 2026. Category: Performing Arts. Amateur performers get a two-hour booking on the legendary Apollo stage, with a full sound check, a 45-minute live set in front of their own crowd and post-show access to the VIP bar. The stage that h
• Pour It Up — The Old Queens Head, 44 Essex Road, London N1 8LN. 8 August 2026. Category: Performing Arts. An upstairs club room turns unpretentious for the night, with resident DJs running through Kendrick, Peggy Gou, Burna Boy and Beyoncé until the small hours. Free before nine, then the door charges for
• Upside Down London — Alexandra Palace, Alexandra Palace, Alexandra Palace Way, London N22 7AY, United Kingdom. 1 August 2026 to 9 August 2026. Category: Art & Design. A pop-up pinhole camera obscura turns the view from a hilltop terrace upside down, live, for nine days only. Landmarks like the Shard and the BT Tower flip and drift across the wall, proof that a two-
• KERB Goes East — Canada Water Market, London. 8 August 2026 to 9 August 2026. Category: Family. Fifty traders turn a dockside corner into one long table of Japanese comfort food, Singaporean curry puffs and Korean-Mexican mashups. A lion dance opens Saturday, taiko drummers close out the day. Co
• The OAE Plays Mozart and Haydn — Royal Albert Hall, Kensington Gore, South Kensington, London SW7 2AP. 9 August 2026. Category: Performing Arts. Period instruments and gut strings take on Haydn's Nelson Mass, written in 1798 while Napoleon's fleet was still a real and present worry, plus rarer pieces from Zelenka and Mozart either side. The Or
• Charity Super.Mkt — Coal Drops Yard, Stable Street, King's Cross, London N1C 4DQ. 6 August 2026 to 9 August 2026. Category: Family. Second-hand fashion takes over a converted coal store, with racks of vintage and pre-loved pieces standing in for the high street. Repair and upcycling drop-ins mean the clothes get a second life, not
• Skoob Books x Horse Hospital Extravaganza — The Horse Hospital, Colonnade, London WC1N 1JD. 9 August 2026. Category: History & Culture. Bloomsbury's long-running second-hand bookshop gets a proper send-off, with a show-and-tell of its own ephemera and a quiz promising serious prizes for the well-read. Books are for sale, drinks are fl
• Fulham Palace Walled Garden Tour — Fulham Palace, Bishop's Ave, London SW6 6EA, United Kingdom. 9 August 2026. Category: History & Culture. Generations of bishops once pottered about this walled garden between church duties, one redesigning it purely to catch better river views. The tour swaps the pulpit for the flowerbed, proving even th
• Picturehouse Outdoor Cinema at Gunnersbury Park — Gunnersbury Park Museum, Gunnersbury Park, Gunnersbury Park Museum, Popes Ln, London W5 4NH, United Kingdom. 31 July 2026 to 9 August 2026. Category: Performing Arts. A season of outdoor film screenings sets up across two summer weekends on the grounds of a former Rothschild family estate, opening with a singalong classic before dusk brings each further feature to
• Sinfonia Smith Square's Guide to Italy — Sinfonia Smith Square, Smith Square, London SW1P 3HA, United Kingdom. 9 August 2026. Category: Performing Arts. Straight from their own festival in Tuscany, the orchestra's musicians tour Puccini, Vivaldi and Morricone through the hall, the gardens and the surrounding square. A gelato in hand makes the Baroque
• H+F Spotlight (Eventim Apollo: OPEN) — Eventim Apollo, 45 Queen Caroline St, London W6 9QH. 9 August 2026. Category: Performing Arts. A community variety show at the Eventim Apollo celebrating the talent and cultural diversity of Hammersmith and Fulham, with all profits going to local charity H&F Giving. Local talent on a stage usua
• Holy Pop! — Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 1LA. 21 May 2026 to 9 August 2026. Category: Art & Design. Shrines built from devotion fill the galleries, tracing how fans turn Diana, Warhol, Prince and even a fictional house-elf into icons worth keeping. What's ordinary turns sacred the moment enough peop
• Urban Garden Fair — Canada Water Market, London. 8 August 2026 to 9 August 2026. Category: Family. A craft and culture market trading in small-batch goods rather than street food, set up right alongside its noisier neighbour at the Canada Water dock. Independent makers, handmade wares, nothing mass
• The Sun and The Moon: Family Days — Saatchi Gallery, Duke of York's HQ, King's Rd, London SW3 4RY. 10 August 2026. Category: Family. Kids build their own mirrored moons from silver tape and broken tile, then trace sigils, a symbol system older than scripture and still in use today. Handing children glue and glitter beats another sc
• Tunnel Vision - Art & Architecture of the Underground — Guildhall Library, Aldermanbury, London EC2V 5AF, United Kingdom. 11 August 2026. Category: History & Culture. A City guide traces a century and a half of art inspired by London's Underground, from wartime shelter photographs to 1990s station paintings now hanging nearby in the Guildhall's own gallery. Even th
• Seeing Self: Explorations in Self-portraiture — National Portrait Gallery, St. Martin's Pl, London WC2H 0HE. 11 August 2026. Category: Art & Design. A new free display gathering self portraits by artists including Paula Rego, Lindsay Kemp and Steve McQueen, tucked into room 29 on the first floor. Each artist turns the camera or the brush back on t
• Henry Moore Sunset Buggy Tours — Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Kew, Richmond TW9 3AE. 14 July 2026 to 11 August 2026. Category: Art & Design. An evening buggy tour past Moore's monumental sculptures, six to a buggy, with a glass of sparkling wine poured as the sun goes down. It's the laziest way to see the show: sit back while a guide drive
• Evelyn Glennie and the Fantasia Orchestra — Royal Albert Hall, Kensington Gore, South Kensington, London SW7 2AP. 11 August 2026. Category: Performing Arts. Dame Evelyn Glennie performs barefoot as always, feeling the music through the floor of the hall rather than hearing it in the usual way, which makes this the rare Prom genuinely about physical sound,
• Alien Pastoral: The Strain — Chelsea Physic Garden, 66 Royal Hospital Rd, London SW3 4HS, United Kingdom. 11 August 2026. Category: Performing Arts. A collaborative card game imagining a biology lab gone strange, staged among medicinal beds as summer light starts to fade. First played at an ecology marathon across the river, this outing asks the g
• Online Curator's Talk: Portrait of a City — Dulwich Picture Gallery, London SE21 7AD. 12 August 2026. Category: Art & Design. An online hour with the curator who assembled this century of American photographs, taking you behind the selection decisions and into the stories the labels cannot contain. Good exhibitions have a st
• Monthly release of tickets to visit Big Ben — Houses of Parliament, Parliament Square, London SW1A 0AA. 12 August 2026. Category: History & Culture. Once a month, a fresh batch of tickets opens for the 334-step climb inside the Elizabeth Tower, past the mechanism that keeps Big Ben's bongs on time. These slots tend to vanish within the hour. A vie
• Early Evening Gin Experience — The Household Cavalry Museum, Horse Guards, Whitehall, London SW1A 2AX. 12 August 2026. Category: History & Culture. A Horse Guards gin and tonic in hand before a guided walk through stables built for ceremonial horses, not house pets. Uniforms, tack and two centuries of royal service, explored once the day's crowds
• Hollywood Vampires — The O2, Peninsula Square, London SE10 0DX. 12 August 2026. Category: Performing Arts. A supergroup fronted by Alice Cooper and Johnny Depp, Hollywood Vampires raid the back catalogues of rock history for a touring tribute that is as much wake as rock show. Loud, slightly chaotic and ge