The 25 best things to do in London in 2025

Two years on from the reopening of the Young V&A comes the next phase of the iconic museum’s building projects. Opening its doors in May 2025, the V&A East Storehouse is a brand new venue in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. Purpose-built to house more than 1,000 archives from the museum’s collection, comprising more than 250,000 objects and 350,000 books, the storehouse promises to offer a peek behind the scenes to show how a working museum goes about cataloguing artefacts, from vintage footie kits and Glastonbury festival ephemera to a collection of samurai swords. Oh, and did we mention it will house the David Bowie Centre, a massive archive of more than 80,000 objects related to the music icon? We can’t wait to have a good old poke when it opens slightly later, in September. 

V&A East is also one of Time Out’s best things to do in the world in 2025.

Austin, Texas’ SXSW festival is renowned across the world for being the place to discover the next big thing. In previous years, superstars like Billie Eilish, Dua Lipa and Chappell Roan have all given early performances at the Texas event and now, following an expansion into Sydney, the multi-venue fest is coming to London for the first time. The inaugural SXSW London will take over various venues in Shoreditch, including Shoreditch Town Hall and Village Underground, bringing with it the hottest new acts from across the globe for more than 70 music events. The conference arm of the event will also make the journey across the pond, with 420 talks and panels delving into the most pressing issues across business, tech and more. And there’ll also be 250 film screenings, including plenty of international premieres. The line-up is yet to be announced, but will be revealed in the coming months.

RECOMMENDED: More great music festivals to check out in 2025

Islington’s hallowed Sadler’s Wells might be London’s only dedicated major dance theatre, but that’s set to change in 2025 when its 550-seat sister venue Sadler’s Wells East opens in Stratford. It’s a boon not only to dance lovers but also to London: considering the number of major theatres the city has, modern dance struggles to get much of a foothold in this city, with the big ballet companies by far the most visible aspect of the genre. A whole second Sadler’s is a serious cultural statement, more or less doubling the amount of interesting contemporary dance work appearing on London stages.  

RECOMMENDED: Sadler’s Wells East has announced details of its opening season

The 2025 Women’s Rugby World Cup is already smashing records before a single match has even been played. A record 220,000 tickets have been sold to date – the fastest-selling tournament ever. The much-anticipated competition will take place between August to September next year across 32 matches, with the final taking place in London at the iconic Twickenham Stadium. There’s even more reason to be excited: England are one of the favourites to win, and we all know that England’s female sporting teams have a greater track record of being victorious. So, fingers crossed, the England women’s rugby team get their own Euro ’22 moment. Those hoping to buy 2025 Women’s Rugby World Cup tickets must register on the official website.

The UK is experiencing a much-publicised Guinness shortage at the moment – it’s no wonder, now that one in every ten pints poured in the capital is the black stuff – which makes the opening of this swanky new spot in Covent Garden all the more exciting. After years of teasing and two pushed-back opening dates, the Guinness microbrewery in Old Brewer’s Yard is finally set to open in 2025 following a £73 million building project. Located on a historic site that first produced beer over 300 years ago, the 50,000-square-foot building will feature plenty of event spaces, an open-fire kitchen and restaurant featuring a rooftop with 360-degree views, a merch shop and, most important of all, a micro-brewery pumping out limited-edition brews alongside gallons of the freshest Guinness in the city. The exact opening date is yet to be announced, but the city’s Guinness lovers should be able to split the G in its hallowed halls in a matter of months. 

Guinness’s new London brewery is one of Time Out’s best new things to do in the UK in 2025.

It’s been a while since Vicky Park played host to any new live events, but the ever popular summertime venue is welcoming a brand new festival in the early days of summer 2025. Scheduled for two consecutive weekends in June, Lido festival will take place in the Tower Hamlets park’s 5000-capacity Lido Field. Having released his accaimed second album in September, Jamie xx is set to headline on Saturday June 7, bringing his club residency The Floor to the festival, with his bandmate Romy, collaborators Sampha and John Glacier, Arca and Panda Bear on the line-up. And on Saturday June 14, Vicky Park will be throwing it back to Brat summer, with a headline set from Charli XCX as part of the pop icon’s Party Girl night, featuring appearances from 070 Shake, A.G. Cook, Kelly Lee Owens, The Dare and The Japanese House. Plenty more details will be announced in due course, so watch this space!

RECOMMENDED: Read more about the new festival

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.

Six years after it was first mooted, Soho Theatre’s Walthamstow outpost is expected to open in spring of 2025, a few months shy of its initially announced opening date in autumn 2024. The 970-seater venue takes over a former Granada Cinema built in 1930 and closed in 2003, restoring the Grade II-listed property to its former glory with a £30 million building project. Details of the theatre's first season are yet to be announced, but like the Dean Street venue, there will be a focus on comedy in the programming, with visitors also promised an annual panto, film screenings, theatre and community-focused education projects. 

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.

In cinemas worldwide Feb 14. Streaming on Peacock in the US Feb 13.

Serving up traditional British fare since 1828, beloved by literary luminaries Charles Dickens and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and one of the first UK restaurants to earn a Michelin star back in 1974, it’s safe to say Simpson’s in the Strand is a proper London dining institution. Which is why we’re thrilled that five long years after it closed its doors, the Savoy-owned restaurant will be reopening in 2025 under the auspicious direction of Jeremy King, the brains behind the likes of Brasserie Zédel, The Wolseley and recent Bayswater opening The Park. Scheduled to open in May, the revamped Simpson’s is described as a ‘big-theatre brasserie’ that will feature two restaurants, two bars (one of which hopes to acquire a 3am licence) and several private rooms, including one seating up to 100 guests. And most importantly of all, the restaurant’s infamous carving trolleys will be making a return. 

He may have been the greatest composer of musicals in history, but Stephen Sondheim’s final musical was, appopriately enough, too arty for Broadway: the posthumously produced Here We Are debuted at major NYC arts centre The Shed in 2023, where its mash up of two disturbing arthouse classics by Luis Buñuel received warm if not uncritical notices. The imminent arrival of new Sondheim is a furiously exciting and sadly never to be repeated experience and what a coup for Rufus Norris to score it as the centrepiece of his final season running the NT. Directed by Joe Mantello in what has been billed as a new production likely to be different fron his original NYC one, it has a formiddable cast headed by Tracie Bennett, Rory Kinnear and Denis O’Hare. The plot follows Leo and Marianne Brink, who think they’ve dicovered the perfect new brunch spot, before things start to get very weird.

There’s a lot to love about Ikea. Stylish furniture for affordable prices. Those tiny pencils that everyone steals. The iconic meatballs. Us Brits are big, big fans of the blue and yellow mecca, which is why we’re thrilled that the Swedish multinational is finally set to open its long-awaited Oxford Circus store in the early part of 2025, after years of speculation and delays. Anyone who has had the misfortune of having to schlep back from Ikea Croydon on public transport with a Kallax shelving unit, two houseplants and a Frakta full of ‘bits of the kitchen’ will understand quite how momentous an occasion this is. Currently, its home is covered in one of its famous blue bags, but come spring, that will be removed to reveal six floors of home interior bliss. And yes, the meatballs will be making an appearance, too.

Amazing news for lovers of neat symmetry, loud primary colours and twee outfits. Following on from autumn 2024's major exhibition on director Tim Burton, west London’s Design Museum will be staging a blockbuster show delving into the iconic aesthetic of another of Hollywood’s most distinctive auteurs, the Texas-born Oscar- and Golden Globe-winning director Wes Anderson. London has had several Anderson-inspired openings over the years, including the ‘Isle of Dogs’ exhibition at 180 The Strand and the ‘Accidentally Wes Anderson’ photo show, but the film director’s first official retrospective promises to be a different beast. A collaboration between the Design Museum and Cinémathèque Française, it has been curated in partnership with Wes Anderson himself and his production company American Empirical Pictures and follows his work from his early experiments in the 1990s right up to his recent Oscar-winning flicks, featuring original props, costumes and behind-the-scenes insights.

Isaac McHale is already responsible for one of Shoreditch’s most renowned restaurants with the two Michelin-starred The Clove Club, so we expect big things from the Scottish chef’s next project, a ‘considered yet informal’ à la carte spot inspired by his love of southern French and simple Spanish cooking, which opens round the corner on Kingsland Road in January. Bar Valette’s menu promises an array of bar snacks inspired by San Sebastian’s pintxos bars, plenty of hearty sharing dishes suitable for long, boozy dinners with friends, and one or two Clove Club signatures. It’ll also offer an extensive list of French and Spanish wines, plus craft ciders and rare bottles of sherry. You need only look at the perpetual queue outside Tollington’s to see how eagerly London has embraced Iberian bar culture of late, so we’d imagine the latest opening to service this trend will be popular from the get-go. 

Valette is one of our top new London restaurant openings in January.

Somehow, inexplicably, ‘The Anatomy of Painting’ will be the first major museum exhibition in London dedicated to the work of Jenny Saville. I say inexplicably, because since the 1990s – when she was part of Saatchi’s infamous, groundbreaking ‘Sensation’ exhibition – Saville has been one of the most important, influential and distinctive painters in the country. She is the natural successor and heir to Bacon and Freud, a vicious, extreme, passionate painter of flesh, whose work tears bodies apart and rebuilds them in shocking, beautiful ways.

It’s been almost a decade since Red Bull Culture Clash last took place in London, but finally, it’s making its return in 2025, The epic music battle, inspired by Jamaican sound clash culture, will see four crews armed with their finest dubplates go head-to-head, delivering the best of the electronic, UK rap, Afro, and Caribbean music scenes. Only one can be crowned the winner, though, and take home the Red Bull Culture Clash trophy, with the victor. The likes of Boy Better Know, A$AP Mob and Rebel Sound have previously competed at the legendary competition, as well as special guests like J Hus, Stormzy, and Ice Kid, so crowds can expect some pretty special things from its return, which takes place at Drumsheds in March. 

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.

Famed for its spicy rigatoni alla vodka, celebrity clientele and interiors that make you feel like you’ve stepped onto the set of Goodfellas, Mario Carbone’s eponymous upmarket Italian-American spot quickly established itself as one of NYC’s most celebrated restaurants after first opening its doors in 2013. It’s famously difficult to secure a reservation at the Greenwich Village institution – no surprise when Rihanna, Taylor Swift, the Obamas and the Kardashians are fans – but we’re hoping that Londoners might have a little more success when its first European outpost opens inside the new Chancery Rosewood hotel in the summer. Serving up ‘red sauce’ restaurant classics like veal parm, baked clams and branzino, with Caesar salad and bananas Foster made tableside by suave waiters dressed in dashing maroon tuxedos, the Grosvenor Square restaurant will no doubt deepen London’s current love affair with Italian-American cuisine. 

RECOMMENDED: In the meantime, check out one of our favourite Italian restaurants in London

Young V&A had a hit with its inaugural exhibition Japan: Myths to Manga, so we have high hopes for its second major opening exploring Ancient Egypt’s enduring influence on contemporary culture. The revamped Bethnal Green institution might well be the best cultural institutions in the city when it comes to entertaining hyperactive children, but it’s not just kids who will be fascinated by the 200+ items from the V&A’s collection featured in Making Egypt. These include a painted inner sarcophagus belonging to Princess Sopdet-em-haawt, and displays exploring the influence of Ancient Egyptian design on contemporary comic books and video games.

What do Tokyo and London have in common? As well as both being sprawling metropolises, and world-class centres for fashion, food and technology, they’ve also both hosted the Grand Sumo Tournament. In fact, London is the only place outside of Japan to ever host a professional sumo wrestling competition, at the Royal Albert Hall in 1991. Staging the competition was no mean feat, with a strengthened stage having to be built to hold the wrestlers’ weight, and specialist soil imported to the UK to create the wrestling ring.  Kensington’s 153-year-old Italianate music hall must have done a pretty decent job as hosts, though, because it is also due to host the second-ever overseas Grand Sumo Tournament in autumn 2025. More than 40 of Japan’s top sumo wrestlers will be competing in the London arena across five days in October, with tickets due on sale in spring. It’s an incredibly rare opportunity to see Japan’s famous, 1,500-year-old sport up close without having to hop on a plane, and we absolutely can’t wait. 

It’s not that long ago that British art bigwigs Gilbert & George grew so frustrated with what they saw as a lack of attention from the UK’s art institutions that they set up their very own museum dedicated to themselves. That big whinge seems a bit premature now that the Hayward is giving them a big exhibition looking at their work since the turn of the millennium, a period that has seen them satirising everything from hope and fear to sex and religion.

RECOMMENDED: More amazing art exhibitions we can’t wait to see in 2025

There’s a new festival in town and it’s highlighting one of the more unsung parts of our favourite movies – the soundtracks. London Soundtrack Festival puts the scores front and centre in March 2025, with a series of screenings, talks and performances celebrating the musicians who make Hollywood sound so exciting, tense and emotional. Highlights include Hildur Guðnadóttir introducing the first and second Joker movies and, later in the programme, holding her own concert, David Cronenberg and Howard Shore in conversation, screenings of Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times, The Silence of the Lambs and Eighth Grade with live scores, a day-long celebration of video game music at The Roundhouse ‘Great Movie Songs with Anne Dudley & Friends’ featuring guest appearances from the likes of the Pet Shop Boys’ Neil Tennant and Jake Shears of the Scissor Sisters. Tickets are on sale now!

More than a decade after it first opened as a pop-up, the original branch of open-air food hall Boxpark looks set to vacate its Shoreditch site shortly to make way for new development Bishopsgate Goodsyard, but the East End won’t have to wait long for an exciting replacement for the pioneering. Set to take over the historic Metropolitan Arcade, which first opened in 1912, Boxhall Liverpool Street is the first of a series of planned spin-off concepts and will open in spring 2025. Unlike the original Boxpark venues, this 17,000 square foot space won’t be made from shipping containers, instead taking inspiration from the popular Chelsea Market in Manhattan. It will feature 13 food spaces including both kitchens and retail venues, plus several bars and a 3000 square foot roof terrace boasting views across the City.

Occupying the gap left by the mighty Frozen at the huge Theatre Royal Drury Lane, Hercules is a fascinating choice of Disney film for the megacorp to adapt as its new stage musical – although the 1997 film turned a profit, it was only a modest one and it remains one of the more obscure movies of its blockbuster ’90s. Still, the Disney name plus that of the Greek demigod himself is doubtless brand recognition enough to draw a crowd, and moreover word from the German debut of Robert Horn and Kwame Kwei-Armah’s adaptation – with songs by Alan Menken and David Zippel – is that it’s very good. Luke Brady will play the title role in a musiclal that presumably follows the film’s approximate story in explaining how Hercules came to be only half-divine and following his storied hero-ing career and romantic entanglement with the sarcastic Meg.

All that glitters isn’t gold – sometimes it’s silver, amethyst, ruby, sapphire or emerald. All the colours of the jewel rainbow will be on display at the V&A as part of its huge Cartier exhibition opening in spring 2025. The UK’s first major display dedicated to the Maison in nearly 30 years will boast more than 350 tiaras, watches, clocks, brooches and other precious objects – some of which have been worn by Queen Elizabeth II and pop princess Rihanna – and trace Cartier’s evolution since the turn of the 20th century. A limited initial ticket sale has already sold out, but keep your eyes peeled for more tickets going on sale. Members can still gain access to the exhibition, so if you’re desperate to gawp at the glamour, consider signing up.