Things to do in London today

We’ve all heard of Sid Vicious, Joe Strummer and Iggy Pop. But what about Gina Birch, Ari Up and Gaye Black? Although not completely unknown, these women pioneers of punk often go unsung. In a new free exhibition, the Museum of Youth Culture (MOYC) is finally giving them their safety pin-adorned flowers with a show dedicated entirely to the ‘she punks’ of the past 50 years.  Taking place in a single room at the MOYC, God Save the Queens brings together rare and previously unseen artwork, photography, fashion, film and archival material. A large chunk of the exhibition comes from the archive of the late Poly Styrene – the braces-wearing frontwoman of X-Ray Spex – and is curated by her daughter Celeste Bell.  The museum crams a lot into the fairly compact space. On the far wall is a gallery of larger-than-life photos – the highlight of the exhibition. Vivienne Westwood, shot by Dennis Morris (1978), leans nonchalantly against the SEX shop counter with her iconic spiked hair. Debbie Harry, by Bob Gruen (1977), looks at the camera in her Wayfarers, while sitting in a car smoking a cigarette. Jayne County of the Electric Chairs squats down on stage, holding the mic stand to her crotch like an appendage, shot by Jill Furmanovsky. Poly Styrene, Siouxsie Sioux and Soo Catwoman are also all here.  The women in these photos look like the coolest people on earth The women in these photos look like the coolest people on earth, and what’s most striking is how they all appear...

The Alexandra Palace Fireworks and Drone Festival (as it’s now called) is easily one of the biggest, baddest displays in town. It sends hundreds of drones and fireworks into the air over north London, making it a spectacular place to ring in Bonfire Night. But it’s not just what’s going on in the sky that’s the attraction here (although, with Ally Pally’s panoramic view of London, it is a fairly big pull). Entertainment at Alexandra Palace Fireworks There’s plenty more to see and do besides watching the fireworks and drones. This year, the fun is split across two dates: an adult-centric party night on Saturday, and then a family day on Sunday where under-10s go free. For the Saturday, there's a music line-up headlined by special guests Eats Everything, plus a roaring bonfire, ice skating, and funfair rides on offer. There’s also the UK’s largest German beer festival in the Great Hall, where you’ll also find oompah bands and a Queen tribute act. On Sunday, families will find a quieter firework and drone display at the earlier time of 6pm, plus entertainment including marshmallow-toasting on a firepit, Junior Jungle Kids Rave, and BARRIOKE, with Shaun Williamson, star of Eastenders. Food and drink at Alexandra Palace Fireworks Spectators have plenty of options when it comes to staying fed and watered, with a more than 35 of London’s best street food traders, plus craft beer bars and cocktails available at the alfresco StrEATlife Village, while beer festival ticketholders...

Every winter the Southbank Centre turns the banks of the Thames into a frosty wonderland, full of little wooden Alpine-style cabins selling gifts, warming drinks, and snacks. You’ll find huts serving up truffle burgers, duck wraps, mulled wine, Dutch pancakes, churros and many more tasty morsels to nibble on while you look through gifts, jewellery and decorations made by independent craft traders. Or, once you’re done browsing, snuggle up at pop-up king Jimmy Garcia’s riverside venue Fire And Fromage, where you can snaffle all you can eat raclette, sip on seriously decadent hot chocolates, and even toast your own marshmallows round a cosy fire pit.  When is Southbank Christmas Market open? The market opens on November 2, and will stay open until January 3 in the New Year. Do you need to buy a ticket? No, it's free to enter and have a wander. 

The heat isn’t just up in the air at the Stow Firework Spectacular – it’s also coming out of people’s mouths. The three night bonanza at Walthamstow Cricket Club has four rounds of fire performers for you to marvel at on each evening. In between, you’ll get what you came for, too, with two fireworks displays – one twilight show designed for kids and those with sensory needs, at 6pm, and another ‘full effect’ display at 8pm. Elsewhere, there’s a funfair, games, street food and a licensed bar.

If you want to head down to Dulwich Sports Club’s fireworks fiesta, you’ve got to be organised – tickets won’t be available on the night the event regularly sells out. Once you’ve snapped up your ticket, you’re in for a treat – expect live music to accompany the main event, plus plenty of food and drink offerings. The night goes on rain or shine, so come prepared for all weather. Food & Drinks at Dulwich Fireworks The Dulwich display promises a wide variety of food and beverage stalls offering mulled wine, real ale, BBQ food, burgers, Indian food and pizza.  Entertainment at Dulwich Fireworks The event will feature live music from 5.30pm until 7pm. As in recent years, this will be headlined by London Philharmonic Orchestra conductor Matthew Lynch, and will feature a mixture of crowdpleasing hits and kids’ songs.  What time do the fireworks start? The display will start at approximately 7pm, with the bangs lasting for around 20 minutes.

A hat in the shape of an upside-down shoe; a dress resembling an inside-out human body; embroidered jackets covered with gorgeous pink roses, sparkling zodiac symbols and vibrant vegetables. Elsa Schiaparelli made clothes that were as surprising as they were beautiful. The V&A has plundered the well of ingenuity that is Maison Schiaparelli in its latest landmark fashion exhibition – the first British exhibition dedicated to the Italian designer, who rose to fame in Paris between the World Wars – and there are some real treasures to be found.  With over 400 objects, including 100 ensembles and 50 artworks (by the likes of Salvador Dalí, Picasso and Man Ray), as well as accessories, jewellery, photographs, perfumes and an excellent collection of buttons, Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art presents a deep dive into the fantastical and surreal world of the fashion house. Founded on Paris’ Place Vendôme in 1927, the exhibition spans the 1920s to the present day, showing glorious garments from Creative Director Daniel Roseberry, who has been at the helm since 2019.  Excitingly, many of Schiaparelli’s 20th-century creations appear astoundingly contemporary. Knits from 1927, some of the designer’s first works, are patterned with pretty bows that the TikTok girlies of today would die for. There’s also an incredible gold chainmail headdress which wouldn’t look amiss on Florence Pugh in Dune, or on a ‘medievalcore’ Pinterest board. A shirred form-fitting dress with a visible zip – a...

Wandsworth Council’s annual display is back for 2026, and will once again take place over two nights this year. Go on Saturday for the regular fireworks plus a disco ceilidh, a DJ set from Rudimental and a live Latin band playing salsa, classic dura, and Afro-Cuban rhythms. Alongside the fireworks, Sunday’s entertainment will feature a Taylor Swift tribute, an electrifying performance by Lords of Lightning and a pop anthems afterparty. On both days, there’ll also be street food, cosy drinks and fairground rides. There’ll also be mulled winter warmers and autumnal comfort food.  What time do the fireworks start in Battersea? On Saturday, gates open at 6pm and last entry is at 8pm, before a display that begins at 8.30pm. On Sunday, gates open at 4.30pm, last entry is at 6.30pm, and the display begins at 7pm.  How much do tickets for the Battersea Park fireworks cost? Tickets are available now, from £18.60 for adults and £11.50 for children age 5 to 15. Book here.  What is the capacity of Battersea Park fireworks? One of the largest displays in the city, Battersea Park fireworks can accommodate 50,000 ticketed spectators per night.  Find more fireworks displays in London.

What better place than to mark the anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot than at the Royal Gunpowder Mills? The Waltham Abbey venue’s annual bonfire night boasts further credentials in the form of a firework display created by Future Effects Explosives FX, who have worked on everything from the Sydney Harbour Fireworks to a host of TV and film projects including ‘The Gunpowder Plot: The Countdown To Treason’. Further entertainment includes fire performers, battle reenactors from Rawdens Musketeers and a live DJ. There’ll even be a gunpowder plot-themed exhibition trail with an opportunity to meet the dastardly Guy Fawkes himself. Bonfire Night doesn’t come more steeped in tradition than this.

Oxford Street is one of the most iconic areas for London’s Christmas lights, and for good reason, given that a hefty proportion of us Londoners will see them lighting our way as we do battle for Yuletide gifts. This year, the lights are Harry Potter-themed to mark the release of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone TV show, scheduled to premiere on HBO on Christmas Day. Alongside the usual display, look out for the Hogwarts-themed designs. As is now tradition, the lights will be made from eco-friendly materials, including LED lights and recycled plastic. Featuring 5000 twinkling stars – they shine from 4pm to midnight daily until early January.  The switch-on, on November 4, will also coencide with the opening of the new Harry Potter Shop Oxford Street, which will be the largest shop in the UK to sell memorabilia from the magical franchise. 

This major exhibition from the V&A will transport visitors to one of the world’s great cities, exploring its best-known landmarks, from the Hippodrome and Hagia Sophia to Topkapı Palace and the Galata Tower. Constantinople to Istanbul: One City, Two Empires will explore 1,600 years of this influential city. Once called Constantinople and now called Istanbul it was the imperial and religious capital at the heart of two successive empires: the Byzantine (AD 330– 1453) and the Ottoman (1453–1922), and this show will span AD 330 to 1922, it will bring together remarkable works of art, design and architecture to reveal the enduring creative legacy of an imperial capital that shaped the Mediterranean world and far beyond.  This will be the first exhibition in the UK to tell this story in full, serving up a new perspective on a city defined by artistic excellence across more than a millennium. Expect rarely seen objects dating back to 4th century, drawn from the V&A collection as well as national and international loans, including decorative arts such as fine silks and textiles, ceramic tiles, mosaics and tableware, precious metalwork and jewellery, as well as sculpture and architectural furnishings, works on paper, manuscripts and paintings. 

Although Top Girls and A Number pop up relatively frequently, most of the great Caryl Churchill’s other works are simply too out there to revive with any regularity, and despite its renown her breakthrough play Cloud 9 hasn’t actually had a major London production in 30 years. This autumn, however, is the time, as the National Theatre’s leisurely series of Lyttelton revivals (Top Girls and A Light Shining in Buckinghamshire have both happened recently-ish) continues with Dominic Cooke’s take on Cloud 9. Set in both colonial Africa and ’70s England – with its characters only aging 25 years in a 125-year jump – the play is anything but straightforward but basically draws a line between sexual and colonial repression via its dizzying array of characters. Although hardly racist, its depictions of racism and colonialism are somewhat informed by it being written in a very different era and it’ll be interesting to see if Churchill has updated it in any way.  Rebecca Humphries, Eloka Ivo, Tom Mothersdale, Charlotte Ritchie, Ellen Robertson, Stuart Thompson and Sam Troughton star.

‘Tis the season: master mentalist Derren Brown is back on the West End, this time with a disorienting show that sets out to challenge the illusion of free will and our ownership of the future. Pretty classic Brown stuff, right? Well, indeed. You might think that, some 30-odd years into his career, you know exactly what Brown’s shtick is. He’ll put someone to sleep with a tap on the head; he’ll plumb the depths of a stranger’s mind with a single glance; he’ll predict what will happen in five minutes’ time with uncanny accuracy. But, of course, the thing you can always expect from Brown is the unexpected. His stunts, however routine they might be, still manage to confound. The first half of Only Human cycles through a circus of tricks, some more convoluted than others, some requiring physical participation from the entire audience. It’s complete chaos in the theatre at times, particularly compared to the decidedly more solemn Showman, his last Apollo show which centered on themes of grief and death.  Having been to both shows, I found Only Human far more unsettling. The first half is disorienting but still buoyant, thanks to Brown’s excellent comedic timing and disarming warmth. The second half takes a drastic turn; a sense of alarm no doubt helped by masterful stage effects, lighting and sound design, but largely down to Brown taking some of his more extreme psychological manipulation, usually reserved for television, to the stage. Without giving too much away, trigger...

Read our review of The Lives of Others HERE. It’s shaping up to be a good year for Brit auteur Rob Icke: his superb take on Oedipus wrapped up an acclaimed Broadway run in February and was rewarded with seven Tony nominations; his idiosyncratic version of Romeo & Juliet is a hit and further shows his pull with big names by bagging the UK stage debut of Sadie Sink; and now he’s got a second original West End show lined up for 2026 in The Lives of Others.  If you’re reasonably au fait with global cinema you’ll recognise that this is an adaptation of the Oscar-winning 2006 German film about a playwright and his mistress being surveilled by Stasi agents in ’80s East Germany. It’s the first time Icke – who has adapted many a classic play – has done the same for a film, but the clautrophobic source material built around a small number of characters feels perfect for adaptation, and Icke is an expert with human emotions, often deepeningthe classics. He’s also got some bloody good names here: Bridgerton man Luke Thompson will play playwright Georg Dreyman, with Stephen Dillane as Hauptmann Gerd Wiesler, the agent somewhat reluctantly spying on him. But the big coup is Keira Knightley, returning to the stage for the first time in 15 years to star as Christa-Maria Sieland, Dreyman’s actress lover. It’s the big class celebrity drama of the autumn.

London hasn’t had a big sleb-centric Hamlet in long while – although James Norton’s doing it next year – but the recent trend for slightly alternative takes on Shakespeare’s greatest play reaches something like its apotheosis with the RSC’s Hamlet Hail to the Thief. Debuting at Manchester’s Factory International last year, the show – directed by Christine Jones and Steven Hoggett – does indeed combine Thom Yorke’s specially rearranged score of tracks from Radiohead’s sixth album Hail to the Thief, with a very edited version of (duh) Hamlet. It’s a pretty mad idea and reviews were slightly mixed. Buf Hoggett has suggested it’ll be a tweaked version of the show. With a live band – not Radiohead – playing the rearranged songs (the most famous which is the top five hit ‘There There’), it’s a short, gloomy, strange take on the play with moments of spine-tingling magic when songs and story do hit mesh perfectly.  Though the cast has been somewhat overshadowed by the songs when it comes to talking aboyt the show, it’s a very decent ensemble – largely retained from Manchester – with Samuel Blenkin as Hamlet and Paul Hilton as Claudius. 

Three teenage girls are dancing round their bedroom under flashing rainbow lights, squealing over boys, when everything goes dark and the screaming starts. It’s a jolting opening to a play, and it sets the rhythm for everything that follows in Theresa Ikoko’s Girls. You’re laughing one minute and holding your breath the next. Ikoko’s debut play won the Alfred Fagon Award in 2015, years before she co-wrote the BAFTA-nominated film Rocks. It follows Tisana, Haleema and Ruhab, three best friends taken from their village by militant insurgents. It’s set in Nigeria in 2014, the year Boko Haram abducted 276 schoolgirls. Twelve years on – with around 90 of those girls still believed to be missing – director Ewa Dina brings its first UK revival to the Young Vic’s intimate Maria studio. Captivity doesn’t stop the trio being teenagers. They act out TV shows to pass the time, handing out roses Bachelor-style, collecting awards for best performance in a hostage situation, and playing newsreaders and politicians who sip water and remind us all to vote. It’s so convincing that you sometimes forget where they are, until Elliot Griggs’ lighting snaps to black, Munotida Chinyanga’s sound design floods the room with men’s voices, or the girls jerk to attention at a noise outside, and you’re yanked straight back into the camp with them.  Hannah Akhalu’s Tisana is the dreamer, forever insisting someone will be coming to help. It’s unsettling how often she drifts off to play on her own while...

A baker, a witch and a boy with a cow walk into the woods. It sounds like the set-up to a dodgy Christmas cracker joke, but plenty of Londoners already know how this one ends, given Jordan Fein’s lavish revival of Sondheim’s subversive fairytale musical Into the Woods spent last year packing out the Bridge and hoovering up Oliviers. Now it’s crossed the river to the Noël Coward with a mostly new cast, and it’s every bit as good.  Sondheim and book writer James Lapine throw Cinderella, Jack, Rapunzel and Little Red Riding Hood into the same forest as a childless baker and his wife, and then ask what happens after ‘happily ever after.’ It’s the show’s first West End run since 1991, and if your only previous encounter with it is Meryl Streep and James Corden on Disney+, you’re in for a much stranger night.  Kate Fleetwood is back as the Witch and she owns every inch of stage. She first appears looking thoroughly fed up, like the cynical aunt you only see at Christmas who’s had beef with your parents for decades. She stands on the kitchen table barking orders at the Baker and his Wife, then sprawls across the counter to finish the job, lounging as if she’s on a sunbed while they scurry about beneath her. The Baker and his Wife are petrified, but Fleetwood keeps slipping in moments where she’s a bit ridiculous, even a bit sad, and those are what makes her more memorable than a panto baddie.  John Dagleish and Laura Pitt-Pulford are new as the Baker and his Wife, and they’re a...

Helen Edmundson’s new play Some Woman is described as a thriller, but the experience of watching it is more like a slow strangulation – one that leaves you feeling thoroughly shaken and queasy on the other side.  The ever luminous Anne-Marie Duff plays Julie, a downtrodden mother and divorcee, who puts everyone before herself to such a degree her own needs and opinions are barely a footnote in the minds of her family.  Her ex-husband, Richard (Geoffrey Streatfield), is attempting to chivvy her through the sale of the family home so that he can do it all again with a younger woman. Elder daughter Kate (Hannah Onslow in a cracking stage debut), is sharp-tongued and dismissive – she’s on the fast track to conventional success with a swanky corporate job in Spain, and keen to put as many miles between herself and her dysfunctional family as possible. Younger daughter Ginny (Grace Doherty) is the polar opposite: her mental health struggles make the thought of her leaving home for university seem like an impossibly big mountain.  Stuff’s not much better at Julie’s demanding but dead-end job doing admin in a school. She’s just been overlooked for a promotion that went to some young guy with letters after his name but no common sense.  If it sounds amazingly pedestrian thus far, that’s the point: Julie is an every-woman! But to top it off, she’s had a bad day. An 11-year-old boy called her a ‘fucking bitch’ out of the blue, and Julie takes this as the moment to prove to herself...

Kimberly Akimbo has the sort of outlandish premise that makes you wonder if it’s going to be another entry in the annals of ‘mad things that only Americans are interested in’. But any  musical that wins five Tony awards and tempts the legendary Maria Friedman out of unofficial retirement is probably going to be alright, isn’t it? Well yes. In David Lindsay-Abaire’s adaptation of his own, more obscure 2001 play, Friedman stars as Kimberly LeVaco, a 15-year-old New Jersey schoolgirl who suffers from an unnamed condition which makes her age at four times the usual speed. This is obviously not a real thing that could really happen (or not in such a neat way). But this inverted suburban Benjamin Button allows itself the one wild metaphysical flourish and plays it with a beautifully straight bat. And of course, it’s a metaphor. Kimberly laconically notes early on that not many kids with the condition live beyond the age of 16. It could have been a musical about a teen with cancer or other more tangible terminal condition. But making it weird stops it feeling like a mawkish weepie about a dying girl and opens it up – Kimberly’s condition feels as much a metaphor for the transience of childhood and the fleetingness of life in general than a story to view literally. It’s also a rare gift of a role to a sixtysomething actor and – like Victoria Clark, who won a Tony for the Broadway production - Friedman absolutely seizes it in Michael Longhurst’s UK premiere. She is sensational as...

You know what they say: they fuck you up, your mum and dad. And in Danny Lee Wynter’s new play, based on his own experiences, so do your sisters. Here we are in a big, busy family home in Ilford – both in 1995 and in 1980 – effervescent with life. In the 90s, Ted (an impressive stage debut from Leo Whitfield Harris) is an awkward, mixed-race teen trying to work out his place in the world. He, along with his mother Tillie (Ria Zmitrowicz) and her dysfunctional family of sisters – the sour-tongued and fiercely loyal Jackie, and the youngest and feistiest, Anne – is off to the funeral of his grandmother Elaine, one of the few people who made him feel genuinely at home. Grief swells around the family, in shadows and memories, as they try to sift through the sadmin and prepare to put the house they grew up in on the market. And then there’s Patrick (a sparkling Craig Stein), a former professional dancer known, not-so-affectionately, to some of the family as ‘Pat the poof’. Tillie’s childhood best friend, he shows up to pay his respects to her mother, who opened her heart and home to him when his own father beat him for his sexuality. Wynter’s dialogue feels like it could be lifted straight from a sitcom; we get all the colour and expletives you’d expect from a close-knit family, fractured by clashing personalities and worldviews. But the play is at its best when Pat and Ted begin to form a bond. Pat – a Black gay man, and a fan of big show tunes like Elaine – opens up a whole...

  Ginger Johnson is a polymath. The drag artist won Ru Paul’s Drag Race UK, was the champion of Celebrity Master Chef (while fully tucked, as well), and she can do the sharpest cut crease you’ve ever seen. But the wonderful thing about her, even though she is a triple threat who also knows her way around the kitchen, she doesn’t take herself too seriously.  Performing her new stand-up, musical extravaganza Show Pony, Ginger Johnson sashays onto the stage dressed in a traffic-stopping purple and gold glittery dress, her signature ginger bouffant towering atop her head a la Marge Simpson. In this 70-minute show, Johnson is fatigued by the doom-scrolling, data-mining and machine automation of the present day, so embarks on a spiritual journey of Icelandic gong baths, chakra realignment and acid-fuelled gabber raves to reconnect with her childhood imaginary friend: a gorgeous auburn-haired show pony.   It’s as surreal, and gleefully silly, as it sounds. The first act features some astute observational comedy as Johnson makes fun of the culture wars (‘Who else is going to go out there trans-ing the kids?’), and makes shrewd references to the horrors of modern life, such as the ‘Is It Cake?’ TikTok trend and the return of bootcut jeans (particularly galling to watch when you are in the audience, wearing bootcut jeans). The whole thing ends with the brilliant song ‘The Next Big Thing’, and this is when things start to get a bit bonkers. Johnson’s whip-smart lyrics deploy...

The Wellcome Collection’s big spring exhibition is a deep dive into perceptions of ageing. Expect the Euston Road institution’s typical blend of art, science and pop culture in the 120+ artworks and objects on display, which range from16th century woodcuts made by German printmaker Sebald Beham to Deborah Roberts’ contemporary collages exploring Black childhood. There’ll also be a spotlight on the Wellcome Trust-funded health research project Age of Wonder – one of the largest studies of adoloscence in the world – and an exploration of how societies can adapt to improve everyone’s experience of ageing.

Henry Moore’s bulbous and undulating sculptures were designed to be seen outside and surrounded by nature. So we’re happy to say that Kew is displaying a huge collection of his works as they were intended at this mega exhibition. The world’s biggest ever exhibition of Moore will open at the botanical gardens, with 30 sculptures on show in the open air and more than 90 works including carvings and drawings displayed in the Shirley Sherwood Gallery. Several of his famous and iconic reclining figures will be on view, as well as more abstract and amorphous pieces like the massive bronze marvel ‘Large Two Forms’. 

In our age of mind-boggling CGI and AI-optimised everything, it’s easy to forget how much pleasure can be had from the simple optical tricks of mirrors and lights. But not for Julio Le Parc. A key figure of the Kinetic and Op Art movements of the 1960s, the late Argentinian artist spent seven pioneering decades making illuminated, kinetic and participatory works, and was still making art at the ripe old age of 97 before his death this past May. This major retrospective celebrates his visionary seven-decade career, spanning from from his arrival in Paris in the late 1950s to his resurgence in the 2010s, with over 60 colourful, immersive (and extremely Instagrammable) works.

Painters have been being dazzled by the glorious natural light and sparkling azure sea of the French Riviera for centuries. This autumn, you’ll be able to feel like you’re taking in the sea air on the Côte d’Azur from London, as the Royal Academy brings together artworks depicting the French southern coast from greats including Monet, Braque, Picasso, Matisse, Cézanne, Renoir and Klein. Spanning the Impressionists, Post-Impressionists and Modernists, Painting the French Riviera will not only transport you to the SAD-beating coastline, but explore how the riviera was inextricably linked to the rise of modern art. 

‘This painting makes me so happy,’ said my usually gallery-averse friend, pulling me over to Salman Toor’s ‘The Women’, on display in the painter’s first solo museum show in Europe, at the Courtauld Gallery. ‘We’ve had so many Sunday mornings like this.’ In the painting in front of us were three women slumped across a bed, each propping her head up with one arm. In our version, we’d probably be debriefing on the events of the night before. The painting is small, the room cosy and cocooned from the outside world in Toor’s characteristic velvety green, laid down in thick, parallel strokes of oil paint. At the dresser stands a boy. Toor has said that if he were to write a collection of stories, this image would be the first: ‘a coming-of-age moment for the boy experiencing a blossoming sense of self.’ Toor was born in Lahore, Pakistan, into a middle-class Muslim family. At 20, he moved to the US to study painting, and eventually settled in New York. It was there that he began painting the world that now fills his canvases: queer South Asian men drinking, dancing, flirting, scrolling, lying around with friends, falling in love and being alone. His figures aren’t portraits of real people, but they come from a world he knows. They occupy the sometimes uncomfortable territories between intimacy and exposure, belonging and estrangement. His work draws as much from the Old Masters and the traditions of Western painting as it does from the art history of Pakistan and South Asia,...

Gagosian’s Grosvenor Hill gallery will be filled with apples, hats, pipes and clouds this autumn as it hosts a free exhibition on Belgian surrealist René Magritte. A first major London exhibition of Magritte’s subverside artwork in more than 30 years, it will feature works on paper, sculptures and photography from Magritte’s four-decade-long career, many of which have been loaned by museums and private collectors. These include ‘La Lampe Philosophique (The Philosopher’s Lamp)’, made shortly before the International Surrealist Exhibition that took place in London in 1936, and last displayed in a landmark Magritte exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) 20 years ago. Gagosian’s exhibtiion will also explore Magritte’s legacy via works created specifically for the exhibition by several contemporary artists, including painters Harold Ancart, Allison Katz and Dana Schutz. 

2026 is, according to the Chinese zodiac, the Year of the Fire Horse. In 19th-century London, however, there were real-life fire horses galloping through the city, hauling fire engines and firefighters to burning buildings. Peckham Road Fire Station opened in 1867 to accommodate them, and is the earliest surviving purpose-built fire station in London. Since 2014, though, it has been South London Gallery’s second site (following a 73-year stint as a sausage factory), and for the next few months, it and the gallery’s main building across the road are home to a series of twisted architectural works by Polish artist Monika Sosnowska. The building’s past feels relevant to the exhibition: Sosnowska has made a career probing how architecture shapes us, outlives its purpose and bears witness to a changing city. The Weight of Matter, her first solo show at a London institution in more than 20 years, brings together 14 years of her work across the SLG’s two sites. Her fascination with cities in flux stems from her own experience. Coming of age as Poland’s communist regime collapsed in 1989, Sosnowska watched Warsaw transform as one political and economic order gave way to another. That upheaval became raw material for her sculpture. Steel, concrete, rebar, staircases, handrails and gates – the functional stuff of modernist architecture – are bent, buckled and twisted into strange new forms. In the old engine room, a contorted heap of black steel sprawls across the floor At the Fire...

Anyone who’s ever done a bit of DIY at home will know the struggle of picking the right shade of white paint. That lovely, warm, buttery hue you’ve eyed up in the brochure inevitably turns into the jarring white of a doctor’s surgery once it’s on your own walls. The American artist Robert Ryman knew a thing or two about this, devoting his nearly 60-year painting career to exploring how paint, surface and light can transform what we see.  Ryman wanted to ‘paint the paint’, you see. That is, he wasn’t interested in depicting people, places or things, but rather in how paint – more often than not white – behaved on different surfaces, catching and responding to real light rather than simply creating the illusion of it. A major retrospective at the Barbican, Robert Ryman... The Real Thing, brings together more than 60 works spanning his career, from his earliest experiments in the 1950s to his final paintings in the 2000s. Many might look deceptively similar at first glance, but it’s close up, with your nose inches away from the canvas, where things get interesting. A young Ryman discovered the great rewards of looking at paintings while working as a guard at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (a job also once held by British Museum director Nicholas Cullinan) . It was during those years that he made the first painting he would ever exhibit, which is on view here: ‘Gertrud Mellon’, named after the individual who bought it for $70 at the 1958 staff exhibition. Consisting of...

If Tate’s 2025 programme was big on the 80s – thanks to Photographing Britain and Leigh Bowery! – then 2026 is all about The 90s! Following on from a major Tracey Emin retrospective at Tate Modern, its sister gallery Tate Britain will host a blockbuster autumn show about British art, fashion, photography and pop culture in the final decade of the last millenium. And if that isn’t already a tasty enough prospect, it’s being curated by none other than former British Vogue editor Edward Enninful OBE. Expect flashy photography from the likes of Juergen Teller, Nick Knight, David Sims and Corrine Day, iconic looks from Vivienne Westwood and Alexander McQueen, and era-defining artworks by Damien Hirst, Gillian Wearing, and Yinka Shonibare. The opening party will no doubt give the Met Gala a run for its money.

Tim Walker is a phenomenal fashion photographer. The 55-year-old has created iconic spread after iconic spread for the likes of British Vogue, i-D and Vanity Fair, and he’s shot famous faces including Tilda Swinton, Kate Moss and Harry Styles. Walker's surreal, Alice in Wonderland-inspired style is whimsical, always surprising, and somehow still cool. So then, why is the majority of this landmark show made up of boring celebrity portraits taken on plain grey backgrounds? The premise of Fairyland: Love and Legends is simple: a celebration of queerness comprising 250 portraits, all shot by Walker, of LGBTQ+ activists, artists, actors, singers and allies, taken across six years. Walker got the idea for the exhibition when he stumbled across the plaque commemorating the first gay rights demonstration in Britain while walking in Highbury Fields. A replica of this triangular plaque is displayed proudly at the entrance to the exhibition.  Some of it is subversive and exciting Fairyland opens with stronger works, in a room dedicated to gay rights campaigners of the ‘70s and ‘80s, all defiantly posing in portraits that mimic the style of Tudor painters Hans Holbein the Younger and Nicholas Hilliard. Olivette Cole-Wilson, a founding member of Stonewall, delicately holds a blackbird in jewellery-encrusted hands that are framed by a thick gilded frame. Musician and longtime supporter of the London Lesbian and Gay Switchboard Tom Robinson smirks at the camera, holding a kestrel and...