Free things to do in London this weekend

Every winter the Southbank Centre turns the banks of the Thames into a frosty wonderland, full of little wooden Alpine-style cabins selling gifts, warming drinks, and snacks. This year, you can cosy up at Fire And Fromage with its heated riverside igloos where you can snaffle down cheese fondue. Further down, you’ll find huts serving up truffle burgers, duck wraps, and many more tasty morsels to keep you full and warm. Or grab a glass of mulled wine while you look through gifts, jewellery and decorations made by independent craft traders and take in those sparking riverside views.  When is Southbank Christmas Market open? It's open Friday, November 1, until Boxing Day, Thursday, December 26, but some pop-ups will stay open until the new year. The Southbank Centre's Winter Festival is on for a little longer, from November 1 until Sunday, January 5, 2025.  Do you need to buy a ticket? No, it's free to enter and have a wander. 

Dreaming of a kitsch Christmas? New York’s famous Miracle on Ninth Street bar is popping up in London for its seventh year, ‘50s Christmas decorations, nostalgic accessories and creative new spins on beloved cocktail favourites in tow. This year’s menu is still a work in progress, but past years have seen the bar slinging the likes of a Snowball Old Fashioned or a Christmapoliton, which includes cranberry sauce and absinthe mist – a take on Christmas trimmings that’s not for the faint-hearted. If you’re failing to find the Christmas spirit, this is one great place to come find it.

Regent Street was actually the very first road in London to be adorned by Christmas lights back in 1954 – a tradition that happily still continues to this day. Each winter, the display comes to life as one of the most impressive in the capital and features 45 angels designed to look like they’re playing the trumpet. Very festive, very fun and very grand – the whole thing is made up of thousands of individual LED lights. Catch the lights for yourself from November 7, when the big switch-on takes place, with the lights shining daily from 3pm to 11pm until January. Find more Christmas lights in London Find more festive fun with our guide to Christmas in London

Oxford Street is one of the most iconic areas for London’s Christmas lights, and for good reason, given that a hefty proportion of us Londoners will see them lighting our way as we do battle for Yuletide gifts. As is now tradition, the lights this year are made from eco-friendly materials, including LED lights and recycled plastic. Featuring over 300,000 individual lights – including 5000 twinkling stars – they shine from 4pm to midnight daily until early January. Be sure to look out for Oxford Street’s ‘Big Day Of Joy’ on December 7; staged in support of charity partner Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH), it will feature street performances, seasonal menus and in-store activities around the area. 

Alvaro Barrington is letting you in. He’s opening his arms, opening the doors to his childhood home, opening the windows into his memories.  To walk into the London-based artist’s Duveen commission is to walk into the Grenadian shack he grew up in. The sound of rain hammering on the tin roof echoes around the space as you sit on plastic-covered benches; you’re safe here, protected, just like Barrington felt as a kid with his grandmother. You’re brought into her home, her embrace. In the central gallery, a vast silver dancer is draped in fabrics on an enormous steel pan drum. This is Carnival, this is the Afro-Carribean diaspora at its freest, letting loose, dancing, expressing its soul, communing. You’re brought into the frenzy, the dance, the community. But the fun soon stops. The final space houses a dilapidated shop, built to the dimensions of an American prison cell, surrounded by chain link fencing. Its shutters creak open and slam shut automatically. This is a violent shock, a testimony to the dangers facing Black lives in the West: the police, the prison system, the barely concealed injustice.  After all the music and refuge of the rest of the installation, here, it’s like Barrington’s saying: ‘You want this? You want the carnival, the music, the culture? Then acknowledge the pain, the fear, the mistreatment, the subjugation too.’ I don’t think the paintings here are great, but painting’s not Barrington’s strong suit. He excels when he’s collaborating, sampling, sharin

There’s a Bavarian flavour to Kingston Christmas Market, so much so you might be fooled into thinking you’ve stumbled through a portal into Germany. As you shop its many stalls, you can keep you energy up with bratwurst and mulled wine or take a pit stop at the Bavarian curling lanes. Live music and Christmas carol singers will also soundtrack the activities to really get you in the mood for Yuletide. Opening Dates: December 7 Best For: Raising your festive spirit

In a Wakefield hospital in 1980, at 2:54pm, while Sebastian Coe was running the 1500m wearing the number 254, Jason Wilsher-Mills’s parents were being told that he had only a few years to live.  A bout of chicken led to his immune system attacking itself. He was hospitalised and paralysed from the neck down. But the doctors were wrong: he survived.  Those years in hospital, then in recovery, stuck immobile on a ward, lost in his thoughts, awakened a deep creativity in him. Film, TV, cartoons and sport were his escape, and his path towards art. This show is the culmination of all that struggle and creativity. Two vast orthopaedic boots stand like totems as you walk in, but these aren’t austere miserable corrective devices, they’re psychedelically patterned, ultra-colourful - they’re Wilsher-Mills reclaiming his own history and trauma and turning it into joy. Its aim is to make his illness, his trauma, unthreatening A huge body lies on a hospital bed in the middle of the room, its feet massively swollen, its guts exposed. Toy soldiers brandishing viruses lay siege to the patient. Seb Coe, his head transformed into a TV, is the figure’s only distraction. The walls show comic book daleks and spaceships, Wilsher-Mills reimagining his static body as futuristic vehicles or beings with wheels and jets and thrusters. Every inch of the space is covered in pop trivia, or dioramas of happy memories. There’s a hint of Grayson Perry to this, mashed with pop culture and grizzly medical ter

St Katharine Docks’ marina is getting a wintery transformation as it’s lit up by sparkling lights, a dazzling display of decorations and an impressive Christmas tree. Head along between 5.30pm and 7pm for mince pies, mulled wine and Christmas carols sung by community choirs.  From November 22 to December 22 local artisan traders will also set up shop along the waterfront, so you can buy handmade items and gourmet goodies.  Read our full festive guide to Christmas in London

Homeboy Pizza has made a name for itself up north with its unusual combinations of toppings, housed on deep pan sourdough pizzas. For one night only, Londoners can try out its tasty mixes, as the Leeds-based crew takeover Deptford hi-fi cocktail bar Jazu. On the menu are the ’10 Quack Commandments’ – bringing together duck, child crisp hoisin, mozzarella, pickled cucumber and spronions – and the ‘Homeboys Too’, a melding of vodka sauce, pistachio pesto, burrata and a choice of chicken or eggplant cutlet. After you’re done tickling your tastebuds, legendary turntablist and hip-hop icon Mr Thing will be delivering treats for your ears until 3am with a vinyl-only set. Entry is free but on a first-come, first-serve basis with reservations via Opentable encouraged.