Top 10 exhibitions in London (updated for 2025)

Curated by Philippa Adams, who previously served as the gallery’s Senior Director for over 20 years, this expansive nine-room retrospective which aims to both celebrate the past and reiterate the Saatchi Gallery’s commitment to championing innovation in the present and future. A reinvention of the wheel, conceptually speaking, it may not be, but it’s a bona fide feast for the eyes. 

Why go: ‘Fun’ is a quality which seems to be all too frequently forgotten by curatorial teams. But it certainly takes pride of place here. The Long Now is a brilliant showcase of the gallery’s decades-long passion for contemporary art, and knack of making stars out of artists whose work is as thought-provoking as it is visually arresting. 

Featuring 250 objects, including loans from Versailles that have never been exhibited outside of France before now, Marie Antoinette Style takes visitors on a journey through the ill-fated queen’s forward-thinking wardrobe, dizzyingly elaborate jewellery, lavish interiors, huge hairstyles and enduring influence on fashion and art today.

Why go: The show is a joy to experience, and a must-see for anyone with a modicum of interest in fashion. It is a thorough, moving and vivacious display of a young woman with expensive tastes and the budget to match.

At first sight, Candice Lin’s g/hosti evokes a childlike playfulness. At its centre is a maze of cardboard panels painted with animals cavorting in a mythical forest. Its simplistic style and bright, warm colours feel akin to the sort of whimsical mural you might find painted on the wall of a primary school. The more you weave through the circular labyrinth, however, the more you realise you’re immersed in something altogether more sinister; the walls of the maze are punctuated with smartphone screens playing hand-drawn cartoons that depict scenes of violence and oppression, from the war in Gaza, to the California wildfires, to student protests being met with police brutality.

Why go: This show is brilliantly unsettling, forcing viewers to really think, but only after luring them into a false sense of security through its surface-level naiveté and cosy reminders of childhood, a simpler time.

In the first of a three-part exhibition, the tall, wiry works of Alberto Giacometti stand beside the hybrid, fragmented figures of Pakistani-American sculptor Huma Bhabha. Where Giacometti’s figures are stretched and attenuated, expressing solitude and existential suffering, Bhabha fractures the human form more explicitly, tearing it apart.

Why go: Though separated by decades, these artists share a profound interest in the aftermath of war and the psychological scars left behind. For them, fragility is more than physical material – it is a lens through which the human condition itself is explored.

From the controversial £1,400 Balenciaga destroyed trainers, to Jordanluca’s pee-soaked jeans, and dresses that have been pulled out of bogs, Dirty Looks peers at the muckier side of fashion design. The exhibition, featuring more than 120 garments from designers including Maison Margiela, Alexander McQueen, Vivienne Westwood and Issey Miyake, takes a clever thematic approach to the philosophy of dirt within fashion, showing how ideas around industrialisation, colonisation, the body, and waste, can be illustrated on the runway. 

Why go: This show will gross you out, make you think and challenge your perception of haute couture. Not glitzy or shiny, Dirty Looks is a raw, honest and edgy display that should be enough to convince anyone that fashion is art. 

Since 2021, the Cosmic House – the fascinating former home of revered postmodernist landscape architect Charles Jencks – has operated as a museum. Each year, the Jencks Foundation commissions an artist to respond to the surroundings. This time round, it’s a video work by Lithuanian-born musician Lina Lapelytė, composed of 12 screens dotted around the house to be hunted down like a game of hide and seek. 

Why go: Beautiful and peculiar, this is immersive art as it should be. It’s also a chance to see some jaw-droppingly gorgeous interiors.

It’s hard to know if Italian Renaissance master Andrea Mantegna was issuing a doom-laden warning or just a doe-eyed love letter to history. Because written into the nine sprawling canvases of his ‘Triumphs of Caesar’ (six of which are on show here while their gallery in Hampton Court Palace is being renovated) is all the glory and power of Ancient Rome, but its eventual collapse too.

Why go: Peer into the peak of empire, of grandeur and riches and dominance and avarice and cruelty and subjugation, before an inevitable fall. 

A series of immersive and beguiling installations, kinetic sculptures, interactive machines and large projections explore the relationship between the human body and machine at this landmark dance exhibition, highlighting the work of virtuoso choreographer Wayne McGregor. 

Why go: Looking at how choreography can be augemented and created through AI, machine learning, motion capture and more, tech nerds and ballet lovers alike will adore this mesmeric exhibition. Virtually every work on show at Infinite Bodies is worth stopping at and lingering over for a while.

A second outing in five years for the trailblazing 20th century photographer, Cecil Beaton’s Fashionable World presents Beaton as more than just a photographer. Younger audiences are likely to find this show more relatable, through its emphasis on his contributions to costume and set design, given their ascendant roles in contemporary fashion. From curious beginnings to his rise through the cultural upper-class, his war photography and costume designs for My Fair Lady, we get a good look at how places and periods influenced Beaton’s style. 

Why go: Elaborately grandiose outfits, celebrities and stylish hedonism, Beaton’s lens captures the luxury of 1920s high society right from the epicentre. Visiting this show will leave you feeling chic by association. 

Peter Doig is one of the greatest living painters, an artist whose approach to hazy, memory-drenched figuration has had an enormous impact on the visual landscape of today. For his show at the Serpentine, he’s going well beyond the canvas, filling the gallery with speaker systems to explore the impact of music on his work.

Why go: Despite a few technical issues with Doig’s re-creation of a hi-fi listening bar, his majestic paintings speak volumes. House of Music is a wonderful showing from an artist with very little left to prove.