All editions

29 October–4 November 2026

A new restoration of Donnie Darko gets a one-night-only screening with a live introduction on Halloween weekend, a Tenerife noise label takes over Café OTO for three nights, and an actor performs Dickens's own ghost story by candlelight at the Charles Dickens Museum. Frieze Sculpture and a posthumous Martin Parr show both close Sunday, and Battersea Arts Centre turns its programme over mid-week, from one immersive horror's last night to a wholly unrehearsed new one.

22–28 October 2026

A free museum dedicated to the women who built punk opens in Camden the same Friday the Science Museum unveils its own account of the science behind America's founding, also free. Dua Lipa brings Patti Smith to the Royal Festival Hall for the literature festival she's curating herself, Diwali fills Trafalgar Square on Sunday, and pianist Craig Taborn and trumpeter Peter Evans play two sets nobody else will hear at Vortex Jazz Club.

15–21 October 2026

Battersea Arts Centre turns its own fire-damaged building into a 35-minute Halloween horror, and a director sits in the room for one screening of his own 1990 thriller at The Garden Cinema. Frieze week leaves two free, substantial gallery shows behind it — Cecilia Vicuña at Whitechapel, Justin Caguiat at the Serpentine — and Evan Parker brings three of free improv's sharpest voices to Café OTO.

8–14 October 2026

Luca Guadagnino's Artificial gets its international premiere at the Royal Festival Hall as the BFI London Film Festival turns 70. Tate Britain and the National Portrait Gallery open the two biggest shows of their autumn on back-to-back days. Eleven free sculptures sit in Regent's Park a week before Frieze descends on the same lawns, and a Vortex residency pianist launches a debut album.

1–7 October 2026

The British Museum's Korea and the National Gallery's Renoir and Love open on back-to-back days, the latter putting a 150-year-old Impressionist icon on British walls for the first time. Café OTO gathers three generations of free-jazz improvisers for a 101st-birthday tribute to a trumpeter most listings pages have never mentioned. Three runs close the same Saturday within walking distance of each other, and Croydon gets a free harvest weekend built around a fortune-telling puppet pig.

24–30 September 2026

Somerset House gives Jenkin van Zyl's first major London show a free run the same day Lisson Gallery opens two exhibitions five minutes apart on Marylebone's Bell Street and Lisson Street. Vortex marks Sonny Rollins' death with a tribute from two of British jazz's own, a Bethnal Green sandwich shop hands its kitchen to a Hackney Wick barbecue outfit, and Tim Key returns to Wilton's. Tate Britain's Whistler retrospective and a free Barbican sound-installation both close the same Saturday.

17–23 September 2026

Fifty years to the day since the Sex Pistols played the 100 Club's original Punk Special, it happens again at 1976 prices — £1.50 a ticket. A string quartet plays the Thames at a Victorian sewage-pumping cathedral in Abbey Wood, Brick Lane shuts for a free curry festival, and Cadogan Hall pairs George Monbiot with Ian McEwan. Three free closings — a Britpop time-capsule at the Barbican, an Austrian landscape painter at the National Gallery, Open House's last weekend — all land the same Sunday.

10–16 September 2026

A world premiere opens previews at the Arcola the same night an all-femme grime line-up takes over the Yard, and Strawberry Hill House disappears under thirty florists' installations for four days only. Saturday spreads the city thin — Open House Festival's 800-plus free buildings, a flotilla of historic boats at St Katharine Docks, Woolwich's biggest carnival yet — while Café OTO and Vortex both return after a fortnight's rest and a Bermondsey textile show closes for good on Sunday.

3–9 September 2026

Notting Hill hands over three weeks to 200 free indie films the same week a brand-new East London museum throws open a free Thursday-night DJ residency and Mayfair's autumn gallery season begins in earnest. Hackney Wick gets a day-to-night jazz festival, an art fair turns out to be entirely about food, and M.C. Escher and the Saatchi Gallery's celestial blockbuster both close within the window.

20–26 August 2026

Nine titans of British free improvisation share one Dalston stage for a single bookable night. Greenwich+Docklands International Festival opens free in Woolwich, Sophie Okonedo leads a Donmar revival of Turgenev, and Danielle de Niese directs her first opera at Holland Park. A trio of major exhibitions — Hockney, Hurvin Anderson, the RA Summer show — all close the same Sunday.

13–19 August 2026

A community arts centre in Deptford throws a free Saturday fete with a world-record hula-hoop troupe. Three East London kitchens lay one 300-person table for charity, the British Museum quietly opens 110 Netherlandish drawings unseen together since the 1930s, and a DIY venue in New Cross runs gigs seven nights straight. Wes Anderson's retrospective and two Grimeborn operas all close the same Saturday.

30 July–5 August 2026

The Garden Cinema runs new restorations of Tarkovsky's final two films, Angel Comedy fills The Bill Murray with Edinburgh work-in-progress sets, and a former Kiln chef cooks canapés for one free night in Smithfield ahead of her own restaurant. Two blue-chip closings collide on 31 July, and Brilliant Corners plays its last Dalston sessions before a fortnight's refurb.

23–29 July 2026

The Royal Academy opens its first Richard Dadd retrospective in fifty years, Opera Holland Park throws its canopy open for a 40-piece Broadway night, and Peckham's kitchens serve £10 plates all weekend for the borough's food club. A Wigmore Hall song recital and a brand-new live score at Wilton's silent-comedy night fill the quieter days on either side.

16–22 July 2026

Rough Trade turns fifty with a full weekend takeover of the Southbank Centre — Pulp, Scritti Politti, caroline, and Jarvis Cocker introducing a live-scored Kes. The National Gallery opens its first-ever Waldmüller show, free, Soho's own village fête turns 51, and Evan Parker launches a new duo record at Café OTO.

9–15 July 2026

The Almeida closes its Islington Trilogy with an 80-strong community cast, a historian puts the American Revolution's Kolkata roots to Tom Holland at the British Library, a De Beauvoir jazz week at Vortex, and no-sign-up karaoke under a Vauxhall railway arch.

2–8 July 2026

Steve Reich on a Peckham rooftop, Toninho Horta at Kings Place, SET's reopening fundraiser, and scratch nights inside the Yard's unfinished new theatre — revised with the full harvest pipeline.

18–24 Jun 2026

11–17 Jun 2026

13–19 May 2026

30 April – 6 May 2026

23 – 30 April 2026

16 – 23 April 2026

9 – 16 April 2026

2 – 9 April 2026

26 March – 2 April 2026

19–26 March 2026