A week of significant openings. London's best experimental sound festival returns to Somerset House, a major Tate survey maps the Caribbean-British diaspora in colour, and Trafalgar Square becomes a five-hour dancefloor. Plus a rare MBV sighting at the Albert Hall, Cecily Brown's twenty-year homecoming to the Serpentine, and the final hours of a venue that shaped two decades of London nightlife.
Somerset House Studios · Thu 26 – Sat 28 Mar · £12–48
Somerset House Studios' experimental sound festival returns for its fifth edition — three days of new commissions and UK premieres you won't find anywhere else. Turner Prize winner Jasleen Kaur premieres her first ever performance work, Supra, with an ensemble of vocals, dilruba and trumpet. Laurel Halo and Hanne Lippard explore how sound controls public space, from muzak to anti-loitering deterrents. Ellen Arkbro premieres a piece for crumhorns and regal with the London Crumhorn Consort. If you only do one thing this week that makes you think differently about what music can be, this is it.
Tate Britain · Opens Thu 26 Mar · Until 23 Aug · £18
One of the year's most significant exhibition openings. Sixty-plus paintings spanning Anderson's entire career — colour-drenched barbershops, tropical foliage, cricket pitches — folding between the UK and the Caribbean to explore belonging and displacement. The centrepiece is the UK debut of Passenger Opportunity, a monumental 24-panel work inspired by murals at Jamaica's Norman Manley Airport. Anderson was the first of eight siblings born in the UK after his family left Jamaica for Birmingham. This is his first major solo show. It's overdue.
House Against Hate
Trafalgar Square · Sat 28 Mar, 1–6pm · Free
R3 Soundsystem's protest rave takes over Trafalgar Square on Saturday. Ben UFO, Shygirl, Hot Chip, Daniel Avery, A Guy Called Gerald, Norman Jay, Horse Meat Disco, Jessie Ware, Katy B, Chloé Caillet — the lineup reads like a fantasy festival bill and entry is free. Part of the Together Alliance mobilisation, with Choose Love and Amnesty International. Five hours, outdoors, in the heart of the city. The kind of thing London does better than anywhere.
My Bloody Valentine + CHVRCHES
Royal Albert Hall · Fri 27 Mar · Teenage Cancer Trust
Robert Smith curated this year's Teenage Cancer Trust series, and Friday night is the crown jewel. My Bloody Valentine — live, in the round, in a room designed for orchestras. They've played London perhaps four times in the last fifteen years. CHVRCHES open with their first live appearance since 2023. The Albert Hall acoustic will do extraordinary things to that wall of guitar. Check for returns.
Serpentine South · Opens Fri 27 Mar · Until 6 Sep · Free
Cecily Brown's first major solo show of paintings in a UK institution since 2005 — which is absurd for an artist this significant. She's spent thirty years in New York, but the new paintings were made for this room, inspired by Kensington Gardens: amorous couples, woodland scenes, nursery-rhyme darkness. Alongside key works from the past 25 years. With Hockney's Year in Normandie next door at Serpentine North, this corner of Hyde Park is having a quietly extraordinary spring.
Also This Week
Corsica Studios Grand Finale
Elephant & Castle · Sat 28 Mar, 10pm · 28+ hours · Free
The last party, ever. 40 unannounced artists across both rooms. Twenty-four years of London electronic music, ending where it started.
National Theatre, Dorfman · Opens Thu 26 Mar
Winsome Pinnock's gothic thriller — her first NT premiere. Hidden diaries, a country house, secrets darker than expected. Rakie Ayola stars.
Wolf Alice + Nilüfer Yanya
Royal Albert Hall · Sun 29 Mar · Teenage Cancer Trust
TCT closing night. Two of the best British guitar acts of the last decade on the same bill. Robert Smith curates.
Kings Place · Fri 27 Mar, 7:30pm
George Crumb's otherworldly Voice of the Whale, Steve Martland, Eleanor Alberga, and a new commission on our shifting relationship with nature. Contemporary classical for the curious.
V&A South Kensington · Fri 27 Mar, 6:30–10pm · Free
Gaming meets performance for London Games Festival. Robot karaoke, cosplay cabaret, live-coded music, videogame zine-making. The V&A after dark.
Southbank Centre, Purcell Room · Sun 29 Mar, 7:45pm · £15
The Life of Pi author discusses his first novel in a decade. A masterpiece of myth, history and domesticity.
V&A · Opens Sat 28 Mar · Until 8 Nov · £28–30
First UK exhibition on Elsa Schiaparelli — 200+ objects spanning the 1920s to today. The 1938 Skeleton dress and Tears dress (both with Dalí), Picasso, Man Ray, Cocteau. Plus Dua Lipa's Golden Globes gown and Ariana Grande's Oscars dress. Surrealism meets couture in the Sainsbury Gallery. This will be packed all summer — book an early slot.
Opens Saturday
100 Strand, WC2 · Romano's opens this week
Jeremy King's revival of the 200-year-old institution enters its second act. The Grand Divan is already serving; Romano's opens by month's end. Trolley carving is back. Fixtures retrieved from auction. Grade II-listed splendour with a new century's polish. Book a Sunday lunch.
Bookings from 30 March
Blitz: The Club That Shaped the 80s
Design Museum · Closes Sun 29 Mar
Final weekend. 250+ artefacts, rare footage, and a full recreation of the club that rewired British culture on a Tuesday night in Covent Garden. More immersive than you'd expect. Don't let this one slip.
Final weekend
BFI Flare: 40th Anniversary
BFI Southbank · Closes Sat 29 Mar
London's LGBTQIA+ film festival turns forty — 120+ films across three strands. Closing film Black Burns Fast screens Saturday. Panel talks, DJ nights, and an exhibition at the reopened Queer Britain museum. Last screenings this weekend.
Closes Saturday
Laura Lima: The Drawing Drawing
ICA · Closes Sun 29 Mar · Free
Brazilian multidisciplinary artist's first London solo — where the line between drawing, sculpture and living system dissolves. Free. Closes Sunday.
3 days left
Teal by Sally Abé
52 Wilton Way, Hackney · Opens Thu 26 Mar
Michelin-starred Sally Abé opens her first solo restaurant — a British bistro championing seasonal ingredients. Angels on horseback, Dorset crab royale, marmalade ice cream sandwich. The penny lick is £1 and proceeds go to Hackney Food Bank. Vintage stools, brass lamps, women's rights posters on the walls. Every food source in London flagged this independently.
Opens Thursday
Gagosian, Davies Street · Opens Thu 26 Mar · Free
New sculptures and photographs. Papier-mâché reliefs pressed onto weathered barn doors, finished in silver and copper leaf — preserving the grain and scars of the original structures. Plus fibreglass sculptures from mudlarking finds, painted in bright seaside colours. Whiteread at her most tactile.
Opens Thursday
Royal Academy · Opens Fri 27 Mar · Until 21 Jun
The first UK exhibition of a 17th-century Baroque painter whose work was lost, hidden, or misattributed to men for centuries. Twenty-five paintings reunited — portraiture, still life, and history paintings that were off-limits to women of her era. A quiet revelation.
Opens Friday
| Mar 30–Apr 3 |
Royal Court Open Submissions Festival. Five new plays selected from 3,500+ scripts. Professional casts, £8.50 each. The best bargain in London theatre. |
| Apr 18 |
Donmar: Mass. Fran Kranz adapts his Sundance film about two couples meeting years after a school shooting. Adeel Akhtar, Monica Dolan, Carrie Cracknell directs. |
| Apr 19 |
Lena Dunham: Famesick. Intelligence Squared at Hackney Empire. The new memoir on celebrity, obsession and watching yourself become a story. |
Curated from Somerset House Studios, Tate, Serpentine, RA, Gagosian, Crack Magazine, The Wire, LOTI, The Nudge, Hot Dinners, Resident Advisor, Mixmag, NME & friends.
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Updated 26 March 2026