Things to do in London this weekend (28 February - 1 March)

The Tate Modern kicks off its 2026 programme with a retrospective tracing the 40-year career of Croydon’s finest artistic export, Tracey Emin. Over 90 pieces will be exibited in the landmark exhibition, including some of the Young British Artist’s most defining works, from her famous neons and her controversial Turner Prize-nominated installation My Bed, to painting, video, textiles and never-before-exibited sculptures. Expect plenty of raw, confessional art exploring love, trauma and the female body.

Kruk is in a railway arch under Peckham Rye station. What separates Kruk from the glut of other Thai-inspired restaurants across Zone 2? Pleasingly unpolished location aside, not much. But that’s no bad thing. Years after the initial nu-Thai boom, there’s still a ravenous market for punchy papaya salads. What Kruk does bring to the table is a veggie-friendly take on Thai, with every dish having a vegetarian counterpart. There’s plenty of fish and meat with betel leaves wrapped around poached prawns, fried venison wontons with water chestnut and chicken thigh skewers with slippery cashew and coconut sauce. This is serious cooking with intoxicating flavours that won’t blow your head off but may leave it at a slight angle.

British painter Rose Wylie takes on films, celebrities and ancient civilisations in her work. Like a punkier, more feminist Philip Guston, the Kent-based artist often focuses on women, depicting figures from Elizabeth I to Nicole Kidman in exuberant, colourful, bold lines. She’s also a later-in-life success story, having taken up painting in her fifties, and only achieving critical success only arrived in her late seventies. All those decades of working away have paid off, though, as The Royal Academy of Arts will bring the largest collection of the 92-year-old’s work to date to the capital this February, showcasing her adventurous, socially observant paintings to a wider audience.

If, like Alan Partridge, you believe that Wings were ‘the band The Beatles could have been’, Morgan Neville’s propulsively upbeat music doc is a total treat. And, honestly, even if the merest waft of bagpipe on ‘Mull of Kintyre’ brings you out in hives, Man on the Run is still full of treasures. Piecing together a snappy collage of ’70s home video, unseen archive and gig footage, plus some insightful voiceover interviews, it revisits Paul McCartney as he tries to figure out what it is to be an ex-Beatle – and, ideally, how to graduate from it.

In UK and Ireland (and remote Scottish) cinemas now. Streaming on Prime Video worldwide Feb 27.

After a five-year-long world tour, this blockbuster exhibition on the ancient Egyptians is finally arriving in London. Ramses and the Pharaoh’s Gold will display 180 priceless treasures on loan from the Supreme Council of Antiquities, of which the pinnacle is the coffin of Ramses II, giving Londoners the chance to see an original sarcophagus here in the Big Smoke. Other gems on show will include gold masks,  silver coffins, animal mummies, amulets, jewellery and colossal sculptures. Although superficially sounding quite similar to the recent Tutankhamun immersive exhibition, this one seems a lot more based around Ancient artefacts, with none of the fanciful CGI frippery that’s come into fashion in the world of international touring exhibitions the last couple of years.

Everyone knew there was more to the late Chadwick Boseman than Black Panther, but even so it was somewhat startling when Deep Azure – a play he wrote in 2005 – popped up on the winter programming schedule of Shakespeare’s Globe. But, the fit with the Globe makes sense. Boseman’s play is not only written in street poetry-esque rhyming verse, but it features a ghost (kind of), a revenge plot and even actually quoted passages from Hamlet. It’s set in the aftermath of the death of Deep (Jayden Elijah), the free-spirited lover to Selina Jones’ intense Azure. He was killed by a cop, and she’s now stuck in a spiral of despair, compounded by her own underlying body image issues. It’s far more than a curio by a famous guy – it’s a work of powerful poetry. 

Try beers from more than 50 breweries from all over the world at the fourth edition of this two-day wintry festival. Notting Hill’s Mall Tavern is letting discerning drinkers discover cult brews including Sureshot from Manchester, Empire Brewing's stout from Huddersfield, Nerd Brewing from Sweden, and sour specialists, Trial & Ale, from the USA. There'll also be a newly enlarged Belgian beers room, plus a new Czech lager room. 

Tickets are £60, and get you all the beers you can sample during a five-hour session in this cosy but capacious pub.

Club culture legend Honey Dijon is taking over Tate Lates for a celebration of queer culture and creativity this February. See her in conversation with writer and curator Charlie Porter about her music, and her rise from the Chicago house scene to London's queer clubs (tickets £5-£15). Or check out some of the music she's programmed for free, in Tate's South Tanks (which will be decked out with her photos), Terrace Bar and Corner Bar, which'll all house DJ sets. The night's excitements also include a LGBTQIA+ tour of Tate Modern (free, book in advance) and a community zine-making session with Zoë Thompson, founder of sweet-thang zine (free, book in advance). 

This musical adaptation of Rachel Joyce’s The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry – a 2012 novel that was made into a film a couple of years back – has a fair few unlikely moments of its own, in a good way. Katy Rudd’s production of this yarn about a taciturn man in his sixties having what I think is fair to describe as an elaborate mental breakdown has supernatural elements and uses rustic folk songs written by indie folkster Passenger. It’s a story about life and the scars we pick up on the way. There’s a wildness and darkness bubbling beneath the surface that means The Unlikely Pilgrimage packs a surprising punch.

2026’s first big whack of cosplay, meet and greets, comic culture and general fandom. The Olympia London plays host to a packed weekend of stuff catering to fans of iconic telly, video games and film. Appearances already announced include Ncuti Gatwa, Millie Gibson, Craig Charles and Brian Blessed. And of course, there'll be tons of opportunities to pick up limited edition merch, meet other fans, and see some of the most ambitious cosplay this city has to offer.

A revival of William Nicholson’s 1989 play, Shadowlands, stars Hugh Bonneville as the devoutly Christian Chronicles of Narnia author CS Lewis, and traces his real-life romance with the younger American poet Joy Davidman. And it’s largely delightful, not an odd couple meet cute, but a story about a genuine, real connection between two somewhat lost souls. It’s high-class MOR, a chaste romantic fantasy that plays great with the Bonneville stans. 

Groundbreaking Colombian artist Beatriz González gets her first solo UK show – and biggest ever European show – at the Barbican this spring. Famed for her vibrant, Pop Art-influenced depictions of Colombia during the decade-long civil war known as La Violenca and known in her native country as ‘la maestra’, González draws on found images to tell stories about power, grief, conflict, community and more. Featuring over 150 artworks made between the 1960s and the present day and spanning painting, sculpture, furniture and monumental printed curtains, this major will look at Gonzalez’s work not only from a Colombian and Latin American perspective, but a global one. 

Terence Rattigan’s Man and Boy is a truly extraordinary revival. Anthony Lau’s production is the first Rattigan we’ve seen that throws off the shackles of naturalism. Here, Rattigan joins Shakespeare, Chekhov, Ibsen et al in being deemed a playwright whose work can be given a batshit staging and still stand tall. Staged in the round, designer Georgia Lowe’s distinctly Brechtian, wilfully anachronistic set, it liberates star Ben Daniels from period constraints, freeing him up to deliver what is easily the best stage performance of the year to date. He plays Gregor Antonescu, a Machiavellian Romanian-born financier who on the cusp of triggering a fresh financial crash. It’s an extraordinary couple of hours of theatre, the performance of the year wrapped up in a wild production that tears up everything we thought we knew about how to stage good old Terence Rattigan.

Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota will bring her mesmirising web-like installation to the Hayward in her first major London solo show. Floor-to-ceiling woven artworks will take over the gallery, engulfing ordinary objects – such as shoes, keys, beds, chairs and dresses – within the huge structures. These will be accompanied by new large-scale sculptures, drawings, early performance videos and photographs. 

Emily Brontë’s only published novel has always been utterly batshit, and director Emerald Fennell’s take on the gothic ‘romance’ of Wuthering Heights follows suit. The destructive aspect of Cathy and Heathcliff’s obsessive love is front and centre. Fennell makes those wild moors howl with passion, and when it comes to interiors, Linton’s house seems imagined by Kubrick on a dose of Yorkshire’s finest shrooms. Those here for Brontë Behaving Badly will get their kicks largely from Heathcliff’s pivot to perversion in the film’s third act. 

This year’s New Contemporaries exhibition, a showcase of 26 of the UK’s finest emerging artists, includes themes of – and you may want to take a breath here – dystopian futures, the climate crisis, industrialisation, gentrification, displacement, critical approaches to systems of power, digital technologies, mourning, remembrance, and loss. Among others!

Veteran director Richard Eyre’s new adaptation of August Strindberg’s The Dance of Death brings another bunch of weighty actors to perform a thoughtful revival of a classic drama in The Orange Tree Theatre’s intimate in-the-round space. Alice (Lisa Dillon) and Edgar (Will Keen) have been trapped together for nearly 25 years on a military outpost off the coast of Sweden. They loathe everyone on the island, especially each other. Then one stormy night, a potential bombshell arrives in the form of Kurt (Geoffrey Streatfeild). Will he rescue Alice? Team up with Edgar? Or merely be the enabler for yet more sadistic cat-and-mouse games? Eyre’s sweary, funny adaptation of Strindberg’s play makes the most of the biting humour. It’s bitterly funny but also narrow and claustrophobic.

Somerset House’s next outdoor large-scale comission will be created by German-Scottish artist and researcher Dana-Fiona Armour. Serpentine Currents will feature large-scale serpentine structures derived from 3D scans of endangered sea snake specimens, illuminated by light patterns triggered by oceanographic data, addressing the looming threat of marine ecosystem collapse. Cheerful stuff!

For 24 years, Kinoteka has been highlighting the creativity and magic of Polish cinema in London, taking over some of the most-respected cinema locations with offerings from the Slavic country. This year will be no different so get down to the likes of BFI Southbank, the ICA and more to discover some new cinematic treasures. The festival has a tradition of putting on retrospectives of great Polish directors, and in 2026 it’s the turn of Andrzej Wajdas. The opening gala on February 4 will show Wajdas's classic 1958 film Ashes and Diamonds from a 35mm print, and there’ll be Q&As, talks and an exhibition celebrating him in the following weeks. Other programme highlights include the UK premiere Agnieszka Holland's Kafka biopic Franz at BFI IMAX, a screening of The Good Boy starring Stephen Graham and Andrea Riseborough from Corpus Christi director Jan Komasa and a showing of award-winning documentary Trains from Maciej J. Drygas. 

Sweetmeats, from writer Karim Khan and director Natasha Kathi-Chandra, offers a love story about the older generation – slow-burning and cocooned in domestic simplicity. Two widowers, Hema (Shobu Kapoor) and Liaquat (Rehan Sheikh), meet at a Type 2 diabetes management course. It’s hardly a classic meet-cute, but it’s a plausible one. As with most romances, they begin by bickering. It has something resonant to say about forgotten generations and their desires, about the cultural specificities that connect and nourish, and about intergenerational families at a stage of life we rarely see onstage. It’s not glamorous, but it’s very sweet.

The NPG will be the UK’s first museum to stage an exhibition focussing on Lucain Freud’s works on paper, including some artworks seen on display for the first time. Focussing on Freud’s mastery of drawing in all forms, Drawing into Painting will look at the artist’s lifelong preoccupation with the human face and figure, from the 1930s to the early 21st century.

Tom Stoppard’s 1993 masterpiece is a work of burning, ravenous intelligence, and almost universally acknowledged as his best work. It’s a play about the unpredictability of humanity, how we’re defined by our transience, our sex drives, and our desire to understand. Carrie Cracknell’s revival is not an attempt to radically reconfigure Arcadia. She and her team - notably designer Alex Eales - have leaned nicely into the Old Vic’s current in-the-round configuration with a revolving circular stage that neatly encapsulates the underlying sense of cosmic wonder that underpins it all. Arcadia is a perfect play, which means there’s a lot less wiggle room for a director to impose themselves. It’s also unforgiving to actors. Cracknell gives it a nice air of intimacy and avoids having her cast speechify Stoppard’s ornate prose.

Miriam Battye’s comedy The Virgins is set in an unremarkable house, with a corridor in the middle. With Joel (Ragevan Vasan), his mate Mel (Alec Boaden), and his teenage sister Chloe (Anushka Chakravarti) and her friends Jess (Alla Bruccoleri) and Phoebe (Molly Hewitt-Richards), who are getting ready for a big night out as it opens. The boys are not the focus here. The girls – clever, wordy, neurotic, virgins – are painstakingly crafting a plan to go out and get… snogged. They are smart and irrational, sweet and maddening as they try to naively micromanage their journey to adulthood. It’s a fine play: funny, concise, stacked with rising talent. And very accessible: Battye has written a lot for TV and it shows, in a good way. 

Between 1885 and 1890, OG Neo-Impressionist Georges Seurat spent five summers observing the port towns along the northern coast of France, capturing impressive seascapes, regattas and other oceanic activities. Twenty three of these paintings, oil sketches and drawings are to be showcased at the Courtauld from February next year, offering a nautical insight into this elusive French artist. The exhibition will borrow works from world-class galleries including MOMA and the Musée d’Orsay, making it even more worth the peek.

The Princess of Wales Conservatory at Kew Gardens is taking a voyage to China 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: China is home to thousands of varieties of orchid, plus vast amounts of other flora and fauna besides. Look out for sculptures of dragons and Chinese lanterns, as well as intricately woven plant installations. There’ll also be ticketed after-hours events with live Chinese music, food, cocktails and dance performances. 

The far right on the streets, an agenda-filled press and a nation caught in a cost-of-living crisis being encouraged to blame immigrants for its woes. It’s not hard to see why this new musical – set in the lead-up to and aftermath of the real-life 1936 stand against the march of Oswald Mosley’s black-shirt fascists by the residents of Cable Street in London’s East End – resonates so powerfully now. Told in flashback via a present-day tour of Cable Street, it follows the fatefully linked lives of Irish Mairead and Jewish ex-boxer Sammy. Its clear-sighted sense of the high stakes of history is what makes it so deeply moving.

The landmark exhibition at the British Museum will trace the evolution of the Japanese warrior class over the past 1,000 years, exploring how their image came to be what it is today. From the medieval period to the present day, this major exhibit will bring together 280 objects to illustrate how the Samurai came to be known as armour-clad warriors, fighting epic duels, and following a strict code of honour. But it will also explore how ideas of Samurai have been fabricated, idealised and adapted, dispelling the myths and revealing their true history. 

In 1824, the young King Liholiho and Queen Kamāmalu travelled across oceans from their kingdom, Hawaiʻi, to seek an alliance with the British Crown. This winter British Museum will shine a light on the lesser-known story about the historical relationship between Hawaiʻi’ and the United Kingdom, showing artefacts and treasures created by Hawaiian makers of the past and present. You’ll be able to see everything from feathered cloaks worn by chiefs, to finely carved deities, powerful shark-toothed weapons, and bold contemporary works by Kānaka ʻŌiwi (Native Hawaiian) artists.