Things to do in London today

Each year, London Literature Festival aims to bring together readers of all ages to ‘celebrate the power of the written and spoken word’, with a big name celebrity curator leading the charge. And excitingly, the 2026 edition will have popstar and Service95 Book Club founder Dua Lipa in the hot seat, in a festival that runs from Wednesday October 21 - Sunday November 1.  Dua has already proven that she's a massive advocate for fiction from around the world with her monthly fiction podcast, where she interviews a different author each month. She's also spoken up for marginalised readers facing incarceration or book bans. Her lineup for the festival includes a conversation with Zadie Smith about her 2000 novel White Teeth (Oct 24), a sit down with Sudanese-Canadian singer-songwriter Mustafa to discuss his poetry publication NOUR (Oct 24) and a chat with Patti Smith about her memoir Bread of Angels (Oct 25).  Elsewhere in the week there’ll be a showcase of translated fiction (Oct 28), events with Hernan Diaz (Oct 21) and Malorie Blackman (Oct 28), a celebration of debut London authors (Oct 25), an evening discussing  threats to free expression faced by writers, journalists and the UK public (Oct 31) and a creative writing masterclass with Pulitzer Prize-winning author Hisham Matar. That only scratches the surface of the festival’s stacked programme – see everything that’s lined up on the Southbank Centre's official website. 

Having debuted in 2024, it looks like Kew’s Halloween trails – from the producers of Kew Gardens’ beloved Christmas trail – is here to stay and a permanent seasonal fixture. It’s a light trail, basically, but a souped up one: we’re promised eerie illuminated trees, ghoulish installations, fire performers and more, with a troupe of actors on hand to stoke up our horrors (in a family friendly way, of course). There are three timeslots: only available in half-term week, Daylight sessions run during the daytime and are intended for younger audiences who want an absolute minimum of spookiness (or simply not be out too late); Twlight slots are between 6pm and 7.30pm and things are definitely getting a bit scarier (ie darker); finally the Moonlight slots run after 7.30pm when it should be fully dark. It’s worth stressing that the trail is suitable for all ages at all times, but certainly there are ways a means of managing the spook factor and fitting it around the bedtime of younger audiences. If none of that’s your bag, there will be a host of activities themed around beloved Julia Donaldson children’s book Zog-themed running at Kew until November 3. Halloween at Kew opening dates Halloween at Kew 2026 begins Friday October 16 and runs until Sunday November 1. From October 16 to October 24 it will run 6pm to 10pm; from Octover 24 to Novemeber 1 it will run 4pm to 10pm. Tickets and pricing Tickets for Halloween at Kew cost £19.50 for adults during off-peak times, or £24 during...

Poly Styrene, Chrissy Hynde, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Debbie Harry; this autumn, as part of the city-wide Up Yours! Festival, the Museum of Youth Culture will celebrate the women behind the punk movement with a landmark exhibition. God Save The Queens is dedicated to the legacy of Poly Styrene, the visionary frontwoman of X-Ray Spex. It will bring together rare and previously unseen artwork, photography, fashion and personal archival material, with highlights including the Poly Styrene Archive, original artworks by radical feminist photographer Linder, previously unseen artwork from X-Ray Spex saxophonist Lora Logic, and archival fashion pieces from the inconic pink-haired designed Dame Zandra Rhodes. 

Things are getting spooky on High Street Ken for Halloween. The west London thoroughfare will play host to a Halloween trail between October 24-31, complete with ghoulishly themed workshops, seasonal treats and scary surprises (all appropriately family-friendly, it is half-term after all). Then, on Halloween itself, Holland Park will transform into a theatrical playground of spooky characters, immersive installations and interactive games and live entertainment between 4pm and 7pm. Plus, there’ll be the chance to take part in the capital's best trick-or-treating, with the neighbourhood’s houses once again putting on their legendary Halloween displays. Make a day of it by heading to the Big Kensington Vintage Flea (10am to 4.30pm), which will have a Gothic twist for the day, with stalls packed with grand candelabras, Victorian-inspired gowns, black lace and moody florals.  

It’s the perfect time of year to explore the grand, gloomy corridors and courtyards of Henry VIII’s haunted palace. Last year Hampton Court’s Halloween celebrations escaped the walls of Henry VIII’s palace and moved to the outside, and October half-term 2026 will be similar as its Wilderness area (as it’s now dubbed) returns, offering ‘a bewitching autumnal trail filled with pumpkins, scarecrows, and seasonal surprises’.   Although the inside of the palace is a little less ‘halloweeny’ than it was before the spooky celebrations encompassed the outside, there is still plenty of phantasmal fun to be had, notably various ghosts wandering the halls (actors, but still might be scary to youngsters) plus a 15-minute storytelling session in William III’s apartments every 45 minutes, sharing ‘The Return of Boo in Wren’s Revenge’. 

London Month Of The Dead’s annual programme returns this spooky season to get you in the mood for Halloween with a programme of more than 60 fascinatingly macabre events investigating our city’s relationship with death. The line-up offers a plethora of ghostly tours that will take you around crypts, cemeteries, undertakers, execution sites and other eerie locations across the city, alongside talks exploring everything from Victorian child bereavement to anthropodermic leather. Highlights of this year’s programme also include a bat skeleton mounting workshop, a magic shadow show in West Norwood Cemetery, a five hour immersive forensics workshop, a screening of eerie classic The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari with live piano accompaniment by Stephen Horne, and creepy Halloween festival A Danse Macabre. It doesn’t get more gothic than that! Check out the full programme here. 

Doc’n Roll Film Festival shines a spotlight on some of the movers and shakers who’ve lit up the music world with intriguing and eclectic sounds via an 18-day programme of music documentaries covering a wealth of genres and scenes, and screened in London cinema staples like the Barbican, BFI Southbank and Dalston’s Rio. The 13th edition of the festival boasts 21 feature documentaries and five shorts, with screenings often accompanied by Q&As with the musicians and/or filmmakers, and even one or two live performances.  Highlights this year include an Opening Night screening of Wolf, Christian Cargill’s portrait of English singer Patrick Wolf via intimate conversations with his longtime friend Tilda Swinton, the world premiere of Peven Everett: Voice of a Generation, documenting Chicago musician’s pioneering impact on house music and featuring interviews with peers including Damon Albarn and The Twilite Tone, and Kevin Wright’s Punk Brighton, documenting the lively punk scene that revolved around legendary Brighton music venue The Vaults in the ’70s and ’80s. There’ll also be a UK premier at BFI IMAX of Newport And The Great Folk Dream, Robert Gordon’s documentary delving into the spirit of protest and rebellion that epitomised the music festival, and its influence on the music of Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and Johnny Cash, plus another UK premiere for You Fuckers Figure It Out: A Jason Mollina Story, a tribute to the late indie-rocker by his high school friend and first-time...

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...

The history of the Tower of London goes back a whopping 900 years, which covers a hell of a lot of torture, prisoners and executions – most famously the beheading of Anne Boleyn. It‘s no surprise then that the landmark is notorious for ghostly sightings. Visit over October half term and follow a spooky trail around the ancient landmark and see if you can spot medieval queens, Roman soldiers, wizards and indeed ghost bear lurking about the place.  Halloween at the Tower is, to be clear, more treat than trick and don’t expect massive jump scares, but rather friendly ghosts and fun themed areas including the Haunted Forge, the Enchanted Wishing Well, and the Raven’s Observatory

Turn picking your pumpkin into a whole seasonal extravaganza at Berkshire's Wasing Estate, which has laid on plenty of fun add ons to the main event. Cast your wish at a wishing well, explore a mysterious witches apothecary, and spot woodland creatures at this whimsical October spectacular. There's also a dining tent on offer, serving up locally grown delights including, naturally, pumpkin soup.

Ask any millennial how they feel about High School Musical, the world-conquering made-for-Disney Channel teen movie, celebrating its twentieth anniversary this year, and their reaction will likely be equal parts misty-eyed and horrified. Nonetheless, there’s clearly big business in nostalgia, as is made blatantly clear with the brand new High School Musical stage production running at the Troubadour Wembley Park Theatre this autumn. From the set recreation photo opps outside the venue to the stunt casting of a former teen heartthrob (McFly’s Harry Judd) and original supporting cast member (KayCee Stroh) in the adult roles, High School Musical (the musical) is being aimed squarely at millennials who as kids went there, did that, got the t-shirt – and the mug and the stickerbook and the CD and the novelisation of the script, in my case. Cynicism is a natural response, particularly when it comes to a musical best described as ‘Grease, but with Sandy learning to embrace her what makes her special rather than grabbing the nearest packet of cigarettes and skin-tight lycra trousers in an attempt to be accepted’. But as cheesy exercises in nostalgia bait go, the Manchester Hope Mill production of High School Musical is about as impressive as they come. It’s a mammoth undertaking, with an astonishing ensemble, slick choreography by Aaron Renfree, and impressive leads. You can’t watch and not be wowed. For that, the first credit must go to Andrew Exeter. After all, it's his vibrant...

Having missed the press night I decided the logistically sensible thing to do was to see this cult Irish immersive horror show on my own, late at night (I slotted it in after seeing another immersive horror, Room 13). This was either a terrible idea or a brilliant one: even some of the relatively sympathetic costumed beings that inhabit this pair of scary mazes – plus shorter one-room vignettes – looked at me in slight concern when they realised I was flying solo.  I can well imagine that with a group of friends, and after a few drinks, The Nightmare Realm verges on camp and is quite a good laugh. Arguably I did in fact do it the only authentic way: even blessedly aware that none of the actors were allowed to touch me I still flinched and yelled repeatedly as I passed through its two dimly lit, twisty turny labyrinths in which a seemingly endless stream of abominations leap out at you from any given corner.  I flinched and yelled repeatedly The mazes don’t so much have plots as themes. In Sundown Manor you’re invited to dinner with… well, lots of scary people, but let’s call them a coven of witches. I was too on edge to entirely follow what was going on, but it’s all very well done, as you push through decrepit halls and rotting sides of meat (NB fake) while being constantly menaced from the shadows, eventually arriving at your final encounter with eyeless manor proprietor Lady Sundown. In Avery Hill Asylum you’re edging through a chaotic madhouse where the patients have...

‘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...

It’s difficult to pinpoint why the moment Paddington walks on stage at the start of his new musical is quite so moving.  Spoiler alert: ‘Paddington’ is a small woman (Arti Shah) in a bear costume (by Tahra Zafar), with a regular-sized man (James Hameed) doing the voice and remote controlling the facial expressions from backstage. Which doesn’t sound groundbreaking but it’s enough to make us believe that Paddington is really in the room with us. Which is surely the point of the endeavor. He’s not the Paddington of the films: he looks different, more teddy-like, and Hameed’s voice is much younger and more boyish than Ben Whishaw’s. He looks more like the Paddington of Michael Bond’s books, but he’s not really him either, on account of all the singing he does and how much more wordy that makes him. He is a new Paddington. But he is, fundamentally, Paddington, right there in the room with us. Does that make it a good performance? I mean sure, he’s a triple threat: adorable, polite and also a bear. The normal rules for a musical theatre lead are suspended here. But Hameed can sing well, and there’s enough expression in both face and body for Paddington to feel genuinely alive to us. Shah doesn’t really dance, but a couple of elaborately choreographed sequences in which our hero pings around causing chaos are impressively physical. Main attraction aside, a fine creative team led by director Luke Sheppard has created a very enjoyable show indeed. It’s by and large a stage...

It’s been a great year for fans of Aardman Animations – the beloved studio’s 50th – and it just keeps getting better. Following the Young V&A’s blockbuster Inside Aardman exhibition and ahead of new film Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom, the latest immersive film from the Lightroom in King’s Cross is Larger Than Life, an immersive documentary that tells the story of the studio from its Morph-era roots to the cuddly cultural supremacy that began with the first Wallace & Gromit film. We’re promised ‘never-before-seen archival content and bespoke new animation’ for the 50-minute journey through the highs and highs of Britain’s best loved animation studio.

This review is from 2025. An Oak Tree returns yet again for 2026 as part of a season at The Other Palace curated by producer Francesca Moody. Guests this time include Hammed Animashaun, Bessie Carter, Rosalie Craig, Sacha Dhawan, George Fouracres, Clare Perkins, Tom Mothersdale and Gemma Whelan. New shoots keep growing from Tim Crouch’s An Oak Tree, its legend quietly bubbling away for 20 years and its strange, unsettling magnificence never wavering. First performed in 2005, it was a solid rejection of stuffy plays where the actors say their memorised words each night in the same way. Instead, every performance has a different actor performing alongside experimental theatremaker Crouch, now almost 400 of them, including Hugh Bonneville, Mike Myers and Alanis Morrissette. They come on stage, follow Crouch’s instructions, take on the part of a grieving father and generally look very nervous while doing it. The actor has never seen or read the play before, and the audience doesn’t know which star guest they’ll get. For this twentieth anniversary production, the list of actors eager to submit themselves to this grief-laden improv show is impressive: David Tennant and Indira Varma are on the roster, while on press night it was Jessie Buckley pulled up from the front row.The performer is instructed very precisely by Crouch what to do and say. She is Andy, a middle aged man, grieving the recent loss of his daughter who was killed by a driver. The driver was a stage hypnotist –...

As You Like It is mostly a play about a large assortment of oddballs living in a forest for some reason. It definitely has a plot, but it also kind of plays out like an eccentric Tudor sketch show. And I’ve seen a lot of productions get lost in the woods (badoom) of its teeming character and their largely low-stakes adventures – you can watch this show a dozen times and not be entirely clear who, say, Silvius is if the director doesn’t lead you through it. Fortunately dual directors Sean Holmes and Charlie Josephine – plus their creative team headed by designer Paul Wills – are excellent guides though the trees.  This is not a production that (as far as I can tell) comes with a high concept. I don’t think the reason why the opening court-set scene sees the characters dressed in a sort of eye-poppingly absurd 17th century style – big wigs; insanely silhouetted dresses; vaguely kinky; general Marie Antoinette-on-acid vibes – comes with any great point other than that it looks awesome and it sets up a contrast with the longer more rustic sequence that follows when most of the key cast are banished or have run away to the Forest of Arden. It is very fun to spend time in designer Paul Wills’ whiteboard forest But by making every character as vivid as possible, visually and personality-wise, it’s just a great, boisterous production where you don’t find yourself questioning ‘and who is THAT guy?’ two hours in. From Lola Shalam’s highly strung romantic lead Rosalind and Grace...

This short immersive horror show from Immersive Octopus and BAC provides briskly efficient scares four times a weeknight and up to eight a day at weekends. And to be clear it is scary. Or it is by the time you get to the main event, a sort of seance-like sequence where the audience - divided into small tables - are plunged into darkness, and bad things happen for 10 minutes or so. Tom Maller’s production is boosted by effective sound design from Matt Farthing and Max Sharp’s fine lighting – indeed, frequently non-lighting – does a tremendous job of turning what is basically a room with some tables in it into a nexus of otherworldly horror. It’s all a bit thin though. Bells Pendergast’s script features some fun lore about entities who enter our world through destructive fires, and how Room 13 mysteriously appeared at Battersea Arts Centre following the blaze that ripped through it in 2015. To be clear it is scary But with just half an hour of performance there’s not a lot of time to get much world building in. The conceit of the doorway being examined by the oddly Victorian-garbed paranormal investigators the Circle of the Veil is fair enough. But the fact one of them is an incredibly creepy lady who makes funny clicking noises is never really delved into – we can infer she’s possessed and not subtly so, but there’s no real corroboration of this or explanation of exactly what’s going on. Even 15 minutes extra would have given time to build it all out a bit. Still, being...

A Catholic upbringing has left me both terrible at lying and capable of looking guilty about more or less anything. As such I was morbidly convinced that I would get the tap on the shoulder designating me a traitor in this live recreation (you could call it immersive theatre if you wanted) of the smash BBC game show. This proved to be entirely correct and long story short I lasted four rounds until I was rumbled (though it was a close thing and involved me being inexplicably betrayed by my fellow traitor). And speaking as somebody who has barely watched the show: I had a blast. If you can swallow the cost (a little under £50 in the evening, but cheaper by day) and go in prepared to be eliminated early then The Traitors Live Experience is extremely good fun. As much as anything, this adaptation from Immersive Everywhere is extremely well organised. Clearly you can’t make a note-perfect recreation of a show that involves 25 contestants staying at a remote Scottish castle for three weeks. But what they’ve done captures a sense of it very nicely. In this much shorter format, a large number of participants book in for a given time slot and are then divided into groups of around 12. Each is spirited away to their own round table, which comes complete with its own Claudia Winkleman-substitute host. Ours was a chipper young man who did a great job of geeing things along with help from a pre-recorded Winkleman (wisely she’s only used sparingly). It’s such a rock-solid conceit that...

Taking place across The Place, Sadler’s Wells, the Barbican and online, the massive annual contemporary dance festival returns to London this October, bringing groundbreaking artists from South Africa, Brazil, Lebanon, Britain and the Netherlands. Spanning live performance, artist talks, film screenings and more, highlights include Dance is Not for Us at the Barbican Pit, a rare UK performance from Lyon-based Lebanese choreographer Omar Rajeh. Legendary British choreographer Akram Khan will be in conversation with Kevin O’Hare, director of The Royal Ballet alongside English National Ballet lead principal Erina Takahashi and first soloist James Streeter. South African dance artist and recipient of the 2026 Venice Biennale Silver Lion Mamela Nyamza will be in town to put on a brand new work at Sadler’s Wells East. Plus much more across the month.     

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.

Right, this one is good. But it’s not easy. Then again, I don’t think any of Jenkin van Zyl’s films – or performances, or sculptures, for that matter – are meant to be. The worlds he creates aren’t easy to make sense of, and they’re not places you’d want to live in. They’re grotesque, chaotic, and filled with technologies, rituals and systems that seem to have taken on lives of their own.  His latest creation, Enclosure, has taken over a wing of Somerset House, and comprises of a film and narrative installation that spills out from the screen and into the surrounding rooms, filling them with the signage, photographs and general detritus of a fictional universe. In this world, people known as ‘Donors’ can have replicas of themselves made, called ‘Cherubs’, grown from a single tooth. Stay with me. These doubles were once the basis of a strange kind of tourism where visitors could temporarily inhabit somebody else’s life (‘a little holiday inside someone extraordinary’), as one of the facility’s workers (dressed in a pink milkmaid outfit) puts it. The installation's narrative focuses on Mercy, a former starlet who lent her likeness to the programme, and appears to have been something of a Cherub sensation. ‘Never before has a Cherub attracted such attention’ reads one peeling poster bearing five stars. But by the time Mercy returns to the facility, the good times are over. The place is decaying, the programme has become obsolete, and Mercy is there to terminate her contract –...

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...

New-York based artist Autumn Knight constructs installations and performances inspired by her background in theatre and psychology. In I Can’t Complain, her first major presentation in the UK, she explores the act of complaining and the ways in which it can be cathartic, frustrating and politically empowering. At the centre of the show is an audio installation that collates coversations about everyday irritations, exposing how minor things like food quality can be indicative of deeper inequalities. On select days (October 1,12 and 15), Knight will be in the space for solo performances that delve further into the concept of complaining, asking questions about who gets to complain? And how are those complaints received?     

You may not have realised, but at some point in your life you’ve probably encountered the work of Es Devlin. If you’ve been to an Adele concert, watched a Super Bowl half-time show, or tuned in to the 2012 Olympics closing ceremony, you will most likely have come face to face with creations by the British artist and stage designer.  To call Es Devlin impressive would be an understatement. The designer’s contact book is like a who’s who of the world’s biggest A-listers  – she’s conjured up ingenious staging for the Weeknd, Lorde, Beyoncé, Dua Lipa, the Pet Shop Boys and U2. Devlin has made otherworldly sets for some of the world’s most esteemed theatres and opera houses, from the National Theatre to Milan’s La Scala. She’s also the proud owner of three Olivier Awards, one Tony, three Emmys, one Ivor Novello, the London Design Medal… you get the picture.  With such an illustrious career, it’s no wonder the Design Museum has deemed Devlin worthy of a retrospective, staging her first European solo show as its big autumn opening. But how does all this awe-inspiring stage design come across when it’s not actually on a stage? We enter into a recreation of Devlin’s studio, with messy bookshelves and drawings strewn all over the place. In a video projection Devlin tells us her life story: she was named after a witch, whose name her parents found in a crossword puzzle; her great-grandfather was an architect; she studied literature at university and then her mind was awakened at art...

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,...

London’s art lovers go mad for a bit of French Impressionism, so it’s a little surprising that the capital hasn’t hosted an exhibition on one of its leading figures, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, since the National Gallery’s 2007 show on his landscapes nearly 20 years ago. And now, just weeks after France’s most recent high profile art heist targeted the Musée Renoir, the Trafalgar Square institution once again hosts a major exhibition dedicated to the divisive painter. Created in partnership with Paris’s Musée d’Orsay, Paris, and Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, Renoir and Love will focus on the most significant and prolific years of the artist’s career, from the mid-1860s to the mid-1880s. Opening in October 2026, it will feature several of Renoir’s most iconic works, including  the 1876 painting Bal au Moulin de la Galette, exhibited for the first time ever in the UK.