London events in February 2025

Leigh Bowery was a convention-shunning icon of 1980s London nightlife, taking on many different roles in the city’s scene, from artist, performer and model, to club promoter, fashion designer and musician. His artistry also took many shapes, from reimagining clothes and makeup to experimenting with painting and sculpture. A new Tate Modern exhibition will celebrate his life and work, displaying some of his looks and collaborations with the likes of Charles Atlas, Lucian Freud, Nicola Rainbird and more.

London’s wobbliest Bridge is back for a fourth film outing. Despite all the usual romantic shenanigans, pratfalls and white wines, Renée Zellweger’s Bridget Jones is a singleton in name only these days, with two kids and much unprocessed grief for Colin Firth’s now-deceased QC, Mark Darcy (look out for a spectral Firth this time). Leo Woodall, last seen raising pulses in Netflix’s One Day, plays her young love interest, with Chiwetel Ejiofor perhaps the better long-term bet as her kids’ teacher. It’ll make you feel good, if it doesn’t make you feel old first.

LGBTQ+ history shouldn’t be contained to a single, short month every year. Thankfully, in London you can find some of the best gay bars and queer club nights in the world, along with special events that celebrate LGBTQ+ life, all year round. But things really hit their peak in February, when hundreds of talks, workshops and festivals appear for LGBTQ+ History Month. From film screenings and alt-cabaret to queer history lectures and family-friendly crafts, prepare to be enlightened, inspired and entertained by a rainbow of celebratory events taking place across the capital. Here’s our round-up of our favourites. 

It’s a pretty damn starry start to 2025 over at the Barbican, as producers Wessex Grove lure legendary German theatremaker Thomas Ostermeier back over to London – following last year’s An Enemy of the People – to craft his first original British show. And what a cast: the legend that is Cate Blanchett will star as vain, insecure middle aged actress Arkadina in a new version of Chekhov’s early masterpiece by Ostermeier and Duncan Macmillan.Tom Burke will play her writer lover Trigorin, with Emma Corrin as the young actress Nina who becomes infaturated with him. They’ll be joined by Priyanga Burford (Polina), Zachary Hart (Medvedenko), Paul Higgins (Shamrayev), Tanya Reynolds (Masha), Kodi Smit-McPhee (Konstantin) and Jason Watkins (Sorin). It’s a stunning cast, but don’t go expecting a trad production from provocateur Ostermeier – his interpretation of the play is liable to be as much a talking point as anything Blanchett does, no matter how spectacular.

The Princess of Wales Conservatory at Kew Gardens is getting a Peruvian makeover this February, courtesy of the latest annual mind-bending orchid display that takes over the iconic glasshouse each year. As ever, the exotic display will celebrate the natural beauty and biodiversity of its subject country: Peru is home to over 3,000 variety of orchid, plus vast amounts of other flora and fauna besides.  Look out for sculptures of native animals, carved out of plants, including alpacas and  parihuanas, plus a cornucopia designed to resemble the iconic Lake Titicaca. The world’s largest bromeliad, the Puya raimondii (commonly known as the Queen of the Andes) will be on display, and the country’s diverse wildlife will be celebrated with an orchid-aviary that brings to life the diverse bird populations of Peru. As always, there’ll also be after-hours events with live Peruvian music, food, cocktails and dance performances. 

The BFI’s annual festival for aspiring filmmakers aged 16 to 25 is returns again this February, with a packed programme of talks, discussions, keynotes and workshops aimed at connecting young film enthusiasts with industry professionals, peers and potential collaborators. Like last year’s edition, the programme for 2025’s festival will follow a hybrid format, offering traditional live screenings at the BFI Southbank and partnered inemas around the UK, as well as a selection of films that young cinephiles can watch for free via the BFI YouTube channel. Sponsored by Netflix, the programme has been curated by ten members of the BFI Film Academy’s Young Programmers group, and will be announced on January 9, with the talks and workshops programme going live on January 22, and tickets on sale on January 23. More details can be found on the Future Film website here in due course. 

Guess what: it’s somehow half-term again. It might seem like mere days since the end of the Christmas hols, but the kids are getting a whole week off, which means it’s only a matter of time before somebody complains that they’re bored and you’re racking your brains for something to do besides plonk them in front of the telly. Luckily, London has plenty of brilliant kid-friendly museums and galleries that really come into their own when school is out. And February half-term is a particularly good one, with plenty of family-friendly exhibitions just getting started, plus the return of the redoubtable Imagine Children’s Festival to the Southbank Centre. 

The London Bookshop Crawl takes the basic premise of a pub crawl – only instead of drowning in beer, you’ll be drowning in books. Join one of the guided group tours and organised workshops or strike out on your own and create your own route using one of the free maps. There’s a range of events all supporting bookshops and libraries with author meet and greets and signings included. One thing’s for sure: snubbing Amazon will be a lot easier once you know where all the good bookshops are. 

While Jamie Lloyd’s productions often involve mad celebrity casting of the sort you’d never have expected to see in your lifetime – see his imminent US production of Waiting for Godot starring Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter – he also has go-to actors, and it’s a pleasure to see two of them join forces for this middle-aged Much Ado. MCU veterans Tom Hiddleston and Hayley Atwell have never actually shared the screen in any of the Marvel films, but they’ll share the stage nightly for a couple of months in the second half of Lloyd’s Theatre Royal Drury Lane season of Shakespeare, playing bickering lovers Benedick and Beatrice. Hiddleston previously starred in Lloyd’s revival of Pinter’s Betrayal in the West End and Broadway; Atwell has been in two of Lloyd’s earlier productions, The Faith Machine and The Pride. We don’t specifically know what to expect beyond their casting, but it tends to be the way with Lloyd that the topline celebrities are the only ‘names’ in his casts; he’s also been going through something of a live video phase (though to date that’s only actually been two shows).

Following its excellent inaugural temporary exhibition Japan: Myth to Manga, 2025 sees Young V&A host temporary exhibition number two. In a way Making Egypt sounds like a not totally dissimilar idea to its predecessor, but with a totally different – and much older – civilization at its heart. Making Egypt will look at creativity in Ancient Egypt and its enduring influence on contemporary society, and will gather together over 200 items from the V&A archives, with the oldest around 5,500 years old, and many never having been displayed before. It will range from the fully painted inner sarcophagus of Princess Sopdet-em-haawt to examining the influence of Egyptian design on Minecraft and Moon Knight. New films will explore Ancient Egyptian art techniques, and there will be kids’ activities including drawing with scale, deciphering hieroglyphics and designing your own amulet.

The £10 entry feel will grant unlimited access to the exhibition throughout its run. 

Although the exhibition is suitable for all (including child free adults) there is an emphasis on children aged eight to 12.

The opening stretch of Walter Salles’ steely but moving family drama set in 1970s Rio de Janeiro throws you for a loop. Framed in sun-bleached Super 8, kids play on Copacabana Beach, ice creams are eaten, and teenagers play in the sea. Only the odd helicopter overhead disturbs this dreamy vision of middle-class Brazilian life. But just as you’re settling in for Salles’ sensuous answer to a Paolo Sorrentino film, the veteran Brazilian filmmaker delivers a proper needle-scratch: those choppers are part of the country’s 1970 military junta, a dictatorship hell-bent on tracking down dissidents, including this real-life family’s patriarch Rubens (Selton Mello). Beach football is soon a distant memory as dad is taken away to give a ‘deposition’. From The Motorcycle Diaries to On the Road, Salles is a great celebrator of liberation, both personal and political. The two come together in stirring and poignant ways in this drama taking you right into the machinery of a repressive regime.

In UK cinemas Feb 7, 2025.

Where better to watch rugby and this year's Six Nations than at one of London's best rugby pubs? Our selection of top London sports pubs can be found near the home of English rugby, Twickenham, and beyond, but they all have one thing in common: more than a bit of a buzz on match days. Grab a pint of craft beer or a lovely lager and settle in for some serious sports action. 2025's Six Nations starts on January 31, with France and Wales kicking off the championship at the Stade de France in Saint-Denis, and ends on March 15.

RECOMMENDED: The best places to watch the Six Nations in London.

Clearly eager to make up for the years of his life he gave over to Succession, Brian Cox swifty follows up his 2024 starring role in Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night with a reprisal and West End transfer for his 2023 turn in Oliver Cotton’s new play The Score, which initially ran at the Theatre Royal Bath. Set in 1747, it stars Cox as Johann Sebastian Bach, who has been lured to the Prussian court by the capricious Frederick II, who has prepared an unusual musical conundrum for him that will have unexpected consequences. Cox’s wife Nicole Ansari-Cox will star as Bach’s wife Anna in the Trevor Nunn-directed production.

Do you dream of being that person in your friendship group who always has a slew of new music recommendations? Head to Soho Calling, a showcase of new acts that are set to do some very special things at a whole load of brilliant venues in Soho, and find your next new music obsession. On the bill this year? All-female country pop trio Bluai, queer singsong writer Tom Aspaul, punk duo Punchbag and hip hop group Monster Florence. Catch them at beloved Soho venues including Pheonix Arts Club and The Social. 

Whether you’re flying solo, newly coupled up, or have been with your other half for decades, London is a great place to be on Valentine’s Day. There’s something for everyone on February 14 no matter what your relationship status: eccentrically themed speed-dating nights, ironic drag show, galentine’s parties or warm, fuzzy date spots for all those loved-up couples out there. We’ll be updating this page with our pick of the best as events are announced.

‘It is possible to be desperately sad and have fun at the same time’ declare Rebecca Biscuit and Louise Mothersole in Sh!t Theatre’s Or What’s Left of Us, and what a mantra that proves to be. The wilfully shambolic alt-theatre duo’s first new show since the pandemic is a stripped-back, folk-inflected work made in response to heartache. Superficially it’s classic Sh!ts, featuring the duo in costume – sort of mediaeval peasant garb with occasional Wicker Man-style animal heads – and singing songs while regaling us with some recent japes. But there’s a colossal subtext here, which is the tragically young death of Adam Brace, the duo’s long-term director (and Rebecca’s partner). While it’s clearly a very deliberate decision to not make the show about Brace per see, but the duo’s beguiling mix of lairy tomfoolery, piercing intelligence and beautiful song is sharpened by raw emotion in this funny, barbed and eccentric work about living through grief, not drowning in it.

Run for so long with quiet proficiency by multiverse-wrangler Kevin Feige, are the wheels starting to come off for the MCU? There’s no hiding the negative rumours emerging from its Captain America reboot, a key kick-off movie for another round of superhero blockbusters. There’s a lot riding on Anthony Mackie’s standalone debut as Cap, whose on-screen task will be complicated by Harrison Ford’s raging Red Hulk. Pray that we won’t need to have watched Disney+’s The Falcon and the Winter Soldier for it to make sense… because no one needs that kind of homework.

Nicholas Hytner’s visionary immersive production of Guys & Dolls was (and is!) a truly wonderful thing. But the enormous downside of staging a show both incredibly popular and entirely technically unsuited to a West End theatre is that it couldn’t transfer out of the Bridge, meaning one of London’s most prominent new theatres has only played host to a single production for the entirety of 2023 and 2024. That will change in February with the Bridge’s first show ‘back’, as its founder Hytner returns to his beloved Shakespeare with a new production of Richard II starring Bridgerton heartthrob Jonathan Bailey as the dithering monarch. We don’t know any more details so far; no designer has been named, and pre-Bridge Hytner directed many conventional Shakespeare productions. The only guarantee with Hytner is that it’ll be a modern dress production.

Yes, nobody – apart from possibly children – looks forward to the February half-term, but at least it’s invariably blessed with the Southbank Centre’s Imagine Children’s Festival, a mix of family-oriented shows and workshops, play experiences and exhibitions, music, art and literature that’ll keep youngsters diverted February 18-23. There are events for kids of all ages (from babies to pre-teens) with many of them free, ranging from communal singalong sessions to dance workshops. 

Highlights of the 2025 edition include Replay, a playground made entirely from waste materials repurposed by The Herd Theatre, CBeebies’ Wildlife Jamboree, where Duggee, the Squirrels and more favourite characters from kids’ TV will join the BBC Concert Orchestra to celebrate the natural world in music and song, and sessions with a bunch of celebrated children’s authors, including Dog Man creator Dav Pilkey, Billy and the Beast author Nadia Shireen and Supertato’s Sue Hendra. Plus innumerable theatre shows – the big one is an adaptation of Ross Collins’s beloved There’s a Bear In My Chair – gigs, movement sesisons, quizzes and more – to get the full schedule head over to the Southbank Centre website.

The instant you see a Martin Parr photograph, especially one in colour, you either love it or hate it. Are his renowned photographs of English holidaymakers condescending, exploitative and critical? Or witty, good-natured and humanistic? Lee Shulman’s enormously entertaining documentary naturally makes a persuasive case for the latter, following the perma-smiling Parr around New Brighton, Merseyside – the location for his seminal work, ‘The Last Resort’ – as his ‘candid camera’ continues to capture human nature, red in lipstick-stained tooth and nail-polished claw. His status as one of the great social documentarians has long since been understood, and this documentary provides a persuasive case for it, taking an amiable stroll through his Cartier-Bresson-inspired monochrome period, to his embrace of colour photography. Like its subject and his work, I Am Martin Parr does its job superbly and without fuss. It comes in at just under an hour long, and if it leaves you wanting more, so much the better, for there is a wonderful body of work to explore.

In UK cinemas Feb 21, 2025.

World-class science research centre Imperial College London throws another of its science-themed lates in early February, this time themed around all things weird, unexpected and counterintuitive in the world of science. Head down to the South Kensington university for an evening of unexpected delights that includes quantum computer games, 4D jewellery-making and a mushroom ballet show. There’ll also be opportunities to design butterfly carnival costumes, join an insect yoga class, dance at a subatomic silent disco and vote on the oddest object in the universe. From slimy computers and zombie cells to artificial skin and invisibility cloaks, the weird really is wonderful at this nerd-tastic evening of free entertainment. 

Over the past few years we’ve been awash with Wicca, wallowing in witchcraft and overwhelmed with the occult. To capitalise on the trend for all things pointy hatted and spiritual, Tate Britain is finally giving much-overlooked radical English artist Ithell Colqhoun a major show. Colqhoun was a practicing occultist who used myth, magic and surrealism to explore the idea of divine feminine power through painting, drawing and tarot.