The best things to do in London in April 2025

London has an amazing energy on bank holidays and Easter weekend is particularly blessed, because it’s a rare double bank holiday, meaning we get four whole days of work-free fun from Good Friday on April 18 to Easter Monday on April 21

The capital has plenty to keep you occupied over your extra-long weekend. Check out our top picks for Easter weekend 2025 below. 

He may have been the greatest composer of musicals in history, but Stephen Sondheim’s final musical was, appropriately 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 a 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 formidable cast headed by Tracie Bennett, Rory Kinnear and Denis O’Hare. The plot follows Leo and Marianne Brink, who think they’ve discovered the perfect new brunch spot – but things start to get very weird.

Serving up an eclectic mix of live music, visual arts, spoken word, podcasts and club nights, Roundhouse Three Sixty is a brand-new springtime festival at Chalk Farm’s famous circular arts venue. Aiming to ‘amplify the voices of today’s most vital and unapologetic artists’, its line-up features both globally recognised talents and up-and-coming creators nurtured by the Roundhouse. Highlights of the month-long programme include ‘Love to Love You Baby’, a celebration of the legacy of Queen of Disco Donna Summer featuring performances from the likes of MNEK, Katy B and Le Gateau Chocolat (Thu April 10), the debut performance from Daniel Kaluuya’s young persons’ performing arts company Centre 59 (date TBA), the climactic final of 2025’s Roundhouse Poetry Slam (Thu April 24) and a unique 25th anniversary performance of 1000-year-long music project Longplayer (Sat Apr 25). There are some cracking clubnights on the bill too, including Sherelleland, a forward-thinking and cost-friendly clubnight curated by BBC 6Music DJ Sherelle (Fri April 11), and Jack Rooke’s Show Hole (Sat April 12), a ‘club-cum-cabaret-cum-comedy night’ curated by the BAFTA-winning TV writer featuring DJ sets from Self Esteem and Lolly Adefope. See you down the front.  

‘It’s complicated’, says unflappable young Kiwi housekeeper Hallie (Tessa Bonham Jones) when her boss Roald Dahl (John Lithgow) aggressively presses her for her opinions on Israel. And it really is. Transferring to the Harold Pinter after an initial run at the Royal Court in September, the topicality of Mark Rosenblatt’s thoughtful debut play about Roald Dahl’s antisemitism is startling.

It is 1983, in Dahl’s home in Buckinghamshire. Israel has invaded Lebanon, and the world-renowned children’s author has written a review of a book about the war in which his condemnation of the civilian casualties inflicted by Israel has pitched into conflation of the country with Jewish people in general, accusing them of switching ‘rapidly from victims to barbarous murderers’. It’s one heck of a debut play – well-made and sturdy, exquisitely tense, and scrupulously fair, less trying to damn Dahl than understand him.

At the heart of Nicholas Hytner’s naturalistic, real-time production is American actor John Lithgow. His Dahl is magnetic: frail and malignant, cruel and kind, righteous and monstrous. The fact this largely manifests as a personality that is likeable in a grumpy sort of way means his vilest utterances hit home the more woundingly, each a kind of betrayal. It’s a magnificent performance.

Running a marathon is a truly gruelling feat requiring countless hours of training, so the 50,000 brave souls who are taking part London Marathon on Sunday April 27 2025 very much deserve our support. Check out our route guide to find the best spectating spots and track down nearby pubs and bars for when all that whooping and clapping leaves you feeling nearly as thirsty as the runners. Remember: your presence at this monumental sporting occasion makes it absolutely fine to drink lager or rosé in the street at 10am on a Sunday.  

Over 17 years on from his last UK stage outing – with a Broadway Stoppard revival his only other theatre action in the interim – Ewan McGregor returns to the stage in 2025, reunited with Michael Grandage, the director of Guys & Dolls and Othello, the two Donmar Warehouse shows the Scots actor did at the height of his Star Wars fame.

My Master Builder is a new play, or rather a new spin on an old play, being up and coming US playwright Lila Raicek’s reworking of Henrik Ibsen’s The Master Builder. Like many of Ibsen’s works, the 1892 drama could reasonably be described as ‘proto-feminist’ without quite being ‘feminist’ – one suspects Raicek is liable to tease the #MeToo implications out of this story of an architect whose world is rocked by the appearance of a young women who says he propositioned her in the past. You might further guess that Raicek may have jettisoned some of the dreamlike symbolism that mark Ibsen’s original – all will be revealed in 2025.

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.

F Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novella about the dark side of the American Dream has been endlessly adapted for the stage and that’s kicked into overdrive now that the US copyright has expired – there are two big US musical adaptations, with Florence Welch’s Gatsby: An American Myth circling Broadway and Jason Howland, Nathan Tysen and Kait Kerrigan’s The Great Gatsby already there.

And now it’s coming here: barely a year after it opened on the Great White Way, The Great Gatsby will transfer to London, playing the limited summer season at the huge London Coliseum. Both the speed of the transfer and the limited nature of the run are slightly odd for a new Broadway show, and one wonders if it’s somehow trying to queer the pitch for a Gatsby: An American Myth transfer. Whatever the case, if it’s a big enough hit it will inevitably move elsewhere – reviews from Broadway suggest a stylish but not exactly profound take on the classic story that follows narrator Nick Carraway’s entaglement with enigmatic millionaire Jay Gatsby. Marc Bruni directs the transferring production.

Tate Britain hosts the first major UK exhibition of video and animation artist Ed Adkins, career-spanning show in which visitors will be able to explore paintings, writing, embroideries and drawings, alongside the acclaimed artist’s moving image works.

Spring in London is always a knockout. As we emerge from an extra-severe period of hibernation, the urge to get to the park and gawp at loads of pretty flowers becomes pretty intense and there are tons of amazing green spaces to enjoy the season’s pops of colour. From London's bright pink cherry blossoms to seas of lavender that swell in summer, take a look at our list of the best places to see flowers in London.

The capital’s special colourful spectacle that signals warmer days are on the way is here. Cherry blossom season in Japan is a major event, with vistors from around the world flocking over to get a glimpse of the petals in full bloom. If you can’t make it over for this year’s sakura season London has plenty of bloomin’ marvellous places to see the flowers.