Things to do in London today

Each year, London Literature Festival aims to bring together readers of all ages to ‘celebrate the power of the written and spoken word’, with a big name celebrity curator leading the charge. And excitingly, the 2026 edition will have popstar and Service95 Book Club founder Dua Lipa in the hot seat, in a festival that runs from Wednesday October 21 - Sunday November 1.  Dua has already proven that she's a massive advocate for fiction from around the world with her monthly fiction podcast, where she interviews a different author each month. She's also spoken up for marginalised readers facing incarceration or book bans. Her lineup for the festival includes a conversation with Zadie Smith about her 2000 novel White Teeth (Oct 24), a sit down with Sudanese-Canadian singer-songwriter Mustafa to discuss his poetry publication NOUR (Oct 24) and a chat with Patti Smith about her memoir Bread of Angels (Oct 25).  Elsewhere in the week there’ll be a showcase of translated fiction (Oct 28), events with Hernan Diaz (Oct 21) and Malorie Blackman (Oct 28), a celebration of debut London authors (Oct 25), an evening discussing  threats to free expression faced by writers, journalists and the UK public (Oct 31) and a creative writing masterclass with Pulitzer Prize-winning author Hisham Matar. That only scratches the surface of the festival’s stacked programme – see everything that’s lined up on the Southbank Centre's official website. 

We’ve all heard of Sid Vicious, Joe Strummer and Iggy Pop. But what about Gina Birch, Ari Up and Gaye Black? Although not completely unknown, these women pioneers of punk often go unsung. In a new free exhibition, the Museum of Youth Culture (MOYC) is finally giving them their safety pin-adorned flowers with a show dedicated entirely to the ‘she punks’ of the past 50 years.  Taking place in a single room at the MOYC, God Save the Queens brings together rare and previously unseen artwork, photography, fashion, film and archival material. A large chunk of the exhibition comes from the archive of the late Poly Styrene – the braces-wearing frontwoman of X-Ray Spex – and is curated by her daughter Celeste Bell.  The museum crams a lot into the fairly compact space. On the far wall is a gallery of larger-than-life photos – the highlight of the exhibition. Vivienne Westwood, shot by Dennis Morris (1978), leans nonchalantly against the SEX shop counter with her iconic spiked hair. Debbie Harry, by Bob Gruen (1977), looks at the camera in her Wayfarers, while sitting in a car smoking a cigarette. Jayne County of the Electric Chairs squats down on stage, holding the mic stand to her crotch like an appendage, shot by Jill Furmanovsky. Poly Styrene, Siouxsie Sioux and Soo Catwoman are also all here.  The women in these photos look like the coolest people on earth The women in these photos look like the coolest people on earth, and what’s most striking is how they all appear...

Things are getting spooky on High Street Ken for Halloween. The west London thoroughfare will play host to a Halloween trail between October 24-31, complete with ghoulishly themed workshops, seasonal treats and scary surprises (all appropriately family-friendly, it is half-term after all). Then, on Halloween itself, Holland Park will transform into a theatrical playground of spooky characters, immersive installations and interactive games and live entertainment between 4pm and 7pm. Plus, there’ll be the chance to take part in the capital's best trick-or-treating, with the neighbourhood’s houses once again putting on their legendary Halloween displays. Make a day of it by heading to the Big Kensington Vintage Flea (10am to 4.30pm), which will have a Gothic twist for the day, with stalls packed with grand candelabras, Victorian-inspired gowns, black lace and moody florals.  

Having debuted in 2024, it looks like Kew’s Halloween trails – from the producers of Kew Gardens’ beloved Christmas trail – is here to stay and a permanent seasonal fixture. It’s a light trail, basically, but a souped up one: we’re promised eerie illuminated trees, ghoulish installations, fire performers and more, with a troupe of actors on hand to stoke up our horrors (in a family friendly way, of course). There are three timeslots: only available in half-term week, Daylight sessions run during the daytime and are intended for younger audiences who want an absolute minimum of spookiness (or simply not be out too late); Twlight slots are between 6pm and 7.30pm and things are definitely getting a bit scarier (ie darker); finally the Moonlight slots run after 7.30pm when it should be fully dark. It’s worth stressing that the trail is suitable for all ages at all times, but certainly there are ways a means of managing the spook factor and fitting it around the bedtime of younger audiences. If none of that’s your bag, there will be a host of activities themed around beloved Julia Donaldson children’s book Zog-themed running at Kew until November 3. Halloween at Kew opening dates Halloween at Kew 2026 begins Friday October 16 and runs until Sunday November 1. From October 16 to October 24 it will run 6pm to 10pm; from Octover 24 to Novemeber 1 it will run 4pm to 10pm. Tickets and pricing Tickets for Halloween at Kew cost £19.50 for adults during off-peak times, or £24 during...

It’s the perfect time of year to explore the grand, gloomy corridors and courtyards of Henry VIII’s haunted palace. Last year Hampton Court’s Halloween celebrations escaped the walls of Henry VIII’s palace and moved to the outside, and October half-term 2026 will be similar as its Wilderness area (as it’s now dubbed) returns, offering ‘a bewitching autumnal trail filled with pumpkins, scarecrows, and seasonal surprises’.   Although the inside of the palace is a little less ‘halloweeny’ than it was before the spooky celebrations encompassed the outside, there is still plenty of phantasmal fun to be had, notably various ghosts wandering the halls (actors, but still might be scary to youngsters) plus a 15-minute storytelling session in William III’s apartments every 45 minutes, sharing ‘The Return of Boo in Wren’s Revenge’. 

The history of the Tower of London goes back a whopping 900 years, which covers a hell of a lot of torture, prisoners and executions – most famously the beheading of Anne Boleyn. It‘s no surprise then that the landmark is notorious for ghostly sightings. Visit over October half term and follow a spooky trail around the ancient landmark and see if you can spot medieval queens, Roman soldiers, wizards and indeed ghost bear lurking about the place.  Halloween at the Tower is, to be clear, more treat than trick and don’t expect massive jump scares, but rather friendly ghosts and fun themed areas including the Haunted Forge, the Enchanted Wishing Well, and the Raven’s Observatory

Between the Bridges will be given a terrifying transformation for Halloween this year, and the centrepiece is a massive free party on the spookiest night of the year. Drag queen Elektra Fence will host a night including nostalgic sounds from resident DJs Guilty Pleasures, Britney and Madonna tribute acts, Drag Emo Karaoke, and a grand costume parade. Get your fangs at the ready.     

Doc’n Roll Film Festival shines a spotlight on some of the movers and shakers who’ve lit up the music world with intriguing and eclectic sounds via an 18-day programme of music documentaries covering a wealth of genres and scenes, and screened in London cinema staples like the Barbican, BFI Southbank and Dalston’s Rio. The 13th edition of the festival boasts 21 feature documentaries and five shorts, with screenings often accompanied by Q&As with the musicians and/or filmmakers, and even one or two live performances.  Highlights this year include an Opening Night screening of Wolf, Christian Cargill’s portrait of English singer Patrick Wolf via intimate conversations with his longtime friend Tilda Swinton, the world premiere of Peven Everett: Voice of a Generation, documenting Chicago musician’s pioneering impact on house music and featuring interviews with peers including Damon Albarn and The Twilite Tone, and Kevin Wright’s Punk Brighton, documenting the lively punk scene that revolved around legendary Brighton music venue The Vaults in the ’70s and ’80s. There’ll also be a UK premier at BFI IMAX of Newport And The Great Folk Dream, Robert Gordon’s documentary delving into the spirit of protest and rebellion that epitomised the music festival, and its influence on the music of Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and Johnny Cash, plus another UK premiere for You Fuckers Figure It Out: A Jason Mollina Story, a tribute to the late indie-rocker by his high school friend and first-time...

Don’t just carve your pumpkin this year – use it as a big orange canvas! Two of London’s Royal Parks are putting on free pumpkin painting sessions for kids in the lead-up to trick-or-treating night. Wear fancy dress for the occasion, and there’ll also be a Halloween treat up for grabs.  Sessions take place at Regent’s Bar & Kitchen, The Regent’s Park and Pavilion Café, Greenwich Park on October 29, 30 and 31. Sessions will take place at 10am and 2pm on 29 and 30 October, and at 10am, 11am, 1pm and 2pm on October 31.   

A hat in the shape of an upside-down shoe; a dress resembling an inside-out human body; embroidered jackets covered with gorgeous pink roses, sparkling zodiac symbols and vibrant vegetables. Elsa Schiaparelli made clothes that were as surprising as they were beautiful. The V&A has plundered the well of ingenuity that is Maison Schiaparelli in its latest landmark fashion exhibition – the first British exhibition dedicated to the Italian designer, who rose to fame in Paris between the World Wars – and there are some real treasures to be found.  With over 400 objects, including 100 ensembles and 50 artworks (by the likes of Salvador Dalí, Picasso and Man Ray), as well as accessories, jewellery, photographs, perfumes and an excellent collection of buttons, Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art presents a deep dive into the fantastical and surreal world of the fashion house. Founded on Paris’ Place Vendôme in 1927, the exhibition spans the 1920s to the present day, showing glorious garments from Creative Director Daniel Roseberry, who has been at the helm since 2019.  Excitingly, many of Schiaparelli’s 20th-century creations appear astoundingly contemporary. Knits from 1927, some of the designer’s first works, are patterned with pretty bows that the TikTok girlies of today would die for. There’s also an incredible gold chainmail headdress which wouldn’t look amiss on Florence Pugh in Dune, or on a ‘medievalcore’ Pinterest board. A shirred form-fitting dress with a visible zip – a...

‘Tis the season: master mentalist Derren Brown is back on the West End, this time with a disorienting show that sets out to challenge the illusion of free will and our ownership of the future. Pretty classic Brown stuff, right? Well, indeed. You might think that, some 30-odd years into his career, you know exactly what Brown’s shtick is. He’ll put someone to sleep with a tap on the head; he’ll plumb the depths of a stranger’s mind with a single glance; he’ll predict what will happen in five minutes’ time with uncanny accuracy. But, of course, the thing you can always expect from Brown is the unexpected. His stunts, however routine they might be, still manage to confound. The first half of Only Human cycles through a circus of tricks, some more convoluted than others, some requiring physical participation from the entire audience. It’s complete chaos in the theatre at times, particularly compared to the decidedly more solemn Showman, his last Apollo show which centered on themes of grief and death.  Having been to both shows, I found Only Human far more unsettling. The first half is disorienting but still buoyant, thanks to Brown’s excellent comedic timing and disarming warmth. The second half takes a drastic turn; a sense of alarm no doubt helped by masterful stage effects, lighting and sound design, but largely down to Brown taking some of his more extreme psychological manipulation, usually reserved for television, to the stage. Without giving too much away, trigger...

While the old rocksteady Les Mis has been running in the West End pretty much unchanged since 1985, this other musical by its creators Alain Boublil and composer Claude-Michel Schonberg, also based on French history, has never been able to find its perfect form. Every time Martin Guerre has been revived since its poorly received premiere in 1996, the tale of the 16th-century peasant has received not only a tinkering around the edges but a complete gutting and reconstituting. Surely if anyone can solve its complex plot of false identities and time jumps, it’s Matthew Warchus, originator of so many great musicals from Matilda to Groundhog Day, who attempts in his final act as the Old Vic’s artistic director finally to make Martin Guerre work.  But if this is the best version of the show, then we’ve got a problem. It’s not that it’s bad. Warchus and librettist Boublil and composer Schonberg have heavily streamlined proceedings. This becomes a simple story barrelling in one direction: man marries woman, is driven out of village, returns seven years later, may not be all he seems. Even in this semi-staged form, Warchus and designer Rob Howell make it look great with Traitors-esque black robes and simple splashes of colour coming from scarves and sashes, while red grit covers the floor, suggesting blood and soil and much else besides.  But it just all sounds so much like someone writing a less good version of Les Mis, with added lute for that 16th century tang. The bones are the...

Ask any millennial how they feel about High School Musical, the world-conquering made-for-Disney Channel teen movie, celebrating its twentieth anniversary this year, and their reaction will likely be equal parts misty-eyed and horrified. Nonetheless, there’s clearly big business in nostalgia, as is made blatantly clear with the brand new High School Musical stage production running at the Troubadour Wembley Park Theatre this autumn. From the set recreation photo opps outside the venue to the stunt casting of a former teen heartthrob (McFly’s Harry Judd) and original supporting cast member (KayCee Stroh) in the adult roles, High School Musical (the musical) is being aimed squarely at millennials who as kids went there, did that, got the t-shirt – and the mug and the stickerbook and the CD and the novelisation of the script, in my case. Cynicism is a natural response, particularly when it comes to a musical best described as ‘Grease, but with Sandy learning to embrace her what makes her special rather than grabbing the nearest packet of cigarettes and skin-tight lycra trousers in an attempt to be accepted’. But as cheesy exercises in nostalgia bait go, the Manchester Hope Mill production of High School Musical is about as impressive as they come. It’s a mammoth undertaking, with an astonishing ensemble, slick choreography by Aaron Renfree, and impressive leads. You can’t watch and not be wowed. For that, the first credit must go to Andrew Exeter. After all, it's his vibrant...

Having missed the press night I decided the logistically sensible thing to do was to see this cult Irish immersive horror show on my own, late at night (I slotted it in after seeing another immersive horror, Room 13). This was either a terrible idea or a brilliant one: even some of the relatively sympathetic costumed beings that inhabit this pair of scary mazes – plus shorter one-room vignettes – looked at me in slight concern when they realised I was flying solo.  I can well imagine that with a group of friends, and after a few drinks, The Nightmare Realm verges on camp and is quite a good laugh. Arguably I did in fact do it the only authentic way: even blessedly aware that none of the actors were allowed to touch me I still flinched and yelled repeatedly as I passed through its two dimly lit, twisty turny labyrinths in which a seemingly endless stream of abominations leap out at you from any given corner.  I flinched and yelled repeatedly The mazes don’t so much have plots as themes. In Sundown Manor you’re invited to dinner with… well, lots of scary people, but let’s call them a coven of witches. I was too on edge to entirely follow what was going on, but it’s all very well done, as you push through decrepit halls and rotting sides of meat (NB fake) while being constantly menaced from the shadows, eventually arriving at your final encounter with eyeless manor proprietor Lady Sundown. In Avery Hill Asylum you’re edging through a chaotic madhouse where the patients have...

It’s shaping up to be a good year for Brit auteur Rob Icke: his superb take on Oedipus wrapped up an acclaimed Broadway run in February and was rewarded with seven Tony nominations; his idiosyncratic version of Romeo & Juliet is a hit and further shows his pull with big names by bagging the UK stage debut of Sadie Sink; and now he’s got a second original West End show lined up for 2026 in The Lives of Others.  If you’re reasonably au fait with global cinema you’ll recognise that this is an adaptation of the Oscar-winning 2006 German film about a playwright and his mistress being surveilled by Stasi agents in ’80s East Germany. It’s the first time Icke – who has adapted many a classic play – has done the same for a film, but the clautrophobic source material built around a small number of characters feels perfect for adaptation, and Icke is an expert with human emotions, often deepeningthe classics. He’s also got some bloody good names here: Bridgerton man Luke Thompson will play playwright Georg Dreyman, with Stephen Dillane as Hauptmann Gerd Wiesler, the agent somewhat reluctantly spying on him. But the big coup is Keira Knightley, returning to the stage for the first time in 15 years to star as Christa-Maria Sieland, Dreyman’s actress lover. It’s the big class celebrity drama of the autumn.

Helen Edmundson’s new play Some Woman is described as a thriller, but the experience of watching it is more like a slow strangulation – one that leaves you feeling thoroughly shaken and queasy on the other side.  The ever luminous Anne-Marie Duff plays Julie, a downtrodden mother and divorcee, who puts everyone before herself to such a degree her own needs and opinions are barely a footnote in the minds of her family.  Her ex-husband, Richard (Geoffrey Streatfield), is attempting to chivvy her through the sale of the family home so that he can do it all again with a younger woman. Elder daughter Kate (Hannah Onslow in a cracking stage debut), is sharp-tongued and dismissive – she’s on the fast track to conventional success with a swanky corporate job in Spain, and keen to put as many miles between herself and her dysfunctional family as possible. Younger daughter Ginny (Grace Doherty) is the polar opposite: her mental health struggles make the thought of her leaving home for university seem like an impossibly big mountain.  Stuff’s not much better at Julie’s demanding but dead-end job doing admin in a school. She’s just been overlooked for a promotion that went to some young guy with letters after his name but no common sense.  If it sounds amazingly pedestrian thus far, that’s the point: Julie is an every-woman! But to top it off, she’s had a bad day. An 11-year-old boy called her a ‘fucking bitch’ out of the blue, and Julie takes this as the moment to prove to herself...

A baker, a witch and a boy with a cow walk into the woods. It sounds like the set-up to a dodgy Christmas cracker joke, but plenty of Londoners already know how this one ends, given Jordan Fein’s lavish revival of Sondheim’s subversive fairytale musical Into the Woods spent last year packing out the Bridge and hoovering up Oliviers. Now it’s crossed the river to the Noël Coward with a mostly new cast, and it’s every bit as good.  Sondheim and book writer James Lapine throw Cinderella, Jack, Rapunzel and Little Red Riding Hood into the same forest as a childless baker and his wife, and then ask what happens after ‘happily ever after.’ It’s the show’s first West End run since 1991, and if your only previous encounter with it is Meryl Streep and James Corden on Disney+, you’re in for a much stranger night.  Kate Fleetwood is back as the Witch and she owns every inch of stage. She first appears looking thoroughly fed up, like the cynical aunt you only see at Christmas who’s had beef with your parents for decades. She stands on the kitchen table barking orders at the Baker and his Wife, then sprawls across the counter to finish the job, lounging as if she’s on a sunbed while they scurry about beneath her. The Baker and his Wife are petrified, but Fleetwood keeps slipping in moments where she’s a bit ridiculous, even a bit sad, and those are what makes her more memorable than a panto baddie.  John Dagleish and Laura Pitt-Pulford are new as the Baker and his Wife, and they’re a...

The key to what makes Daniel Bailey’s touring revival of August Wilson’s 1985 play – now at the Lyric Hammersmith – so good is how intimately devastating it is. The sweep of the generational and national tragedy so deftly portrayed by Wilson is always anchored by its impact on one family. At this production’s heart is Ray Fearon as Troy, a fiercely proud Black man whose struggle to support his family and anger at the racism of 1950s America, on the cusp of painful postwar change, becomes destructively entangled with his inability to let go of the past. As he relentlessly builds a fence around his home in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is he keeping the world out or trapping his family inside? Lily Arnold’s gorgeous set – a two-story house façade, with peeling paint and fading features – is a richly realised domestic space in which the drama feels real and rooted. As characters laugh, argue or fight in the yard, we see others at bedroom windows, on the stairs or answering the phone. At some points, the house pivots 360 degrees – briefly revealing, almost in tableaux, the interior. These small, telling moments, coupled with Khalil Madovi’s soulful sound design and the moments when the cast interrupt the naturalism to sing alone to us, add to the production’s richly textured emotional authenticity. Fearon gives a tour-de-force performance as Troy, his face quickly switching from easy charm to ugly menace when his character feels his authority challenged. He conveys the deep...

You know what they say: they fuck you up, your mum and dad. And in Danny Lee Wynter’s new play, based on his own experiences, so do your sisters. Here we are in a big, busy family home in Ilford – both in 1995 and in 1980 – effervescent with life. In the 90s, Ted (an impressive stage debut from Leo Whitfield Harris) is an awkward, mixed-race teen trying to work out his place in the world. He, along with his mother Tillie (Ria Zmitrowicz) and her dysfunctional family of sisters – the sour-tongued and fiercely loyal Jackie, and the youngest and feistiest, Anne – is off to the funeral of his grandmother Elaine, one of the few people who made him feel genuinely at home. Grief swells around the family, in shadows and memories, as they try to sift through the sadmin and prepare to put the house they grew up in on the market. And then there’s Patrick (a sparkling Craig Stein), a former professional dancer known, not-so-affectionately, to some of the family as ‘Pat the poof’. Tillie’s childhood best friend, he shows up to pay his respects to her mother, who opened her heart and home to him when his own father beat him for his sexuality. Wynter’s dialogue feels like it could be lifted straight from a sitcom; we get all the colour and expletives you’d expect from a close-knit family, fractured by clashing personalities and worldviews. But the play is at its best when Pat and Ted begin to form a bond. Pat – a Black gay man, and a fan of big show tunes like Elaine – opens up a whole...

This short immersive horror show from Immersive Octopus and BAC provides briskly efficient scares four times a weeknight and up to eight a day at weekends. And to be clear it is scary. Or it is by the time you get to the main event, a sort of seance-like sequence where the audience - divided into small tables - are plunged into darkness, and bad things happen for 10 minutes or so. Tom Maller’s production is boosted by effective sound design from Matt Farthing and Max Sharp’s fine lighting – indeed, frequently non-lighting – does a tremendous job of turning what is basically a room with some tables in it into a nexus of otherworldly horror. It’s all a bit thin though. Bells Pendergast’s script features some fun lore about entities who enter our world through destructive fires, and how Room 13 mysteriously appeared at Battersea Arts Centre following the blaze that ripped through it in 2015. To be clear it is scary But with just half an hour of performance there’s not a lot of time to get much world building in. The conceit of the doorway being examined by the oddly Victorian-garbed paranormal investigators the Circle of the Veil is fair enough. But the fact one of them is an incredibly creepy lady who makes funny clicking noises is never really delved into – we can infer she’s possessed and not subtly so, but there’s no real corroboration of this or explanation of exactly what’s going on. Even 15 minutes extra would have given time to build it all out a bit. Still, being...

The Wellcome Collection’s big spring exhibition is a deep dive into perceptions of ageing. Expect the Euston Road institution’s typical blend of art, science and pop culture in the 120+ artworks and objects on display, which range from16th century woodcuts made by German printmaker Sebald Beham to Deborah Roberts’ contemporary collages exploring Black childhood. There’ll also be a spotlight on the Wellcome Trust-funded health research project Age of Wonder – one of the largest studies of adoloscence in the world – and an exploration of how societies can adapt to improve everyone’s experience of ageing.

Henry Moore’s bulbous and undulating sculptures were designed to be seen outside and surrounded by nature. So we’re happy to say that Kew is displaying a huge collection of his works as they were intended at this mega exhibition. The world’s biggest ever exhibition of Moore will open at the botanical gardens, with 30 sculptures on show in the open air and more than 90 works including carvings and drawings displayed in the Shirley Sherwood Gallery. Several of his famous and iconic reclining figures will be on view, as well as more abstract and amorphous pieces like the massive bronze marvel ‘Large Two Forms’. 

In our age of mind-boggling CGI and AI-optimised everything, it’s easy to forget how much pleasure can be had from the simple optical tricks of mirrors and lights. But not for Julio Le Parc. A key figure of the Kinetic and Op Art movements of the 1960s, the late Argentinian artist spent seven pioneering decades making illuminated, kinetic and participatory works, and was still making art at the ripe old age of 97 before his death this past May. This major retrospective celebrates his visionary seven-decade career, spanning from from his arrival in Paris in the late 1950s to his resurgence in the 2010s, with over 60 colourful, immersive (and extremely Instagrammable) works.

Gagosian’s Grosvenor Hill gallery will be filled with apples, hats, pipes and clouds this autumn as it hosts a free exhibition on Belgian surrealist René Magritte. A first major London exhibition of Magritte’s subverside artwork in more than 30 years, it will feature works on paper, sculptures and photography from Magritte’s four-decade-long career, many of which have been loaned by museums and private collectors. These include ‘La Lampe Philosophique (The Philosopher’s Lamp)’, made shortly before the International Surrealist Exhibition that took place in London in 1936, and last displayed in a landmark Magritte exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) 20 years ago. Gagosian’s exhibtiion will also explore Magritte’s legacy via works created specifically for the exhibition by several contemporary artists, including painters Harold Ancart, Allison Katz and Dana Schutz. 

Right, this one is good. But it’s not easy. Then again, I don’t think any of Jenkin van Zyl’s films – or performances, or sculptures, for that matter – are meant to be. The worlds he creates aren’t easy to make sense of, and they’re not places you’d want to live in. They’re grotesque, chaotic, and filled with technologies, rituals and systems that seem to have taken on lives of their own.  His latest creation, Enclosure, has taken over a wing of Somerset House, and comprises of a film and narrative installation that spills out from the screen and into the surrounding rooms, filling them with the signage, photographs and general detritus of a fictional universe. In this world, people known as ‘Donors’ can have replicas of themselves made, called ‘Cherubs’, grown from a single tooth. Stay with me. These doubles were once the basis of a strange kind of tourism where visitors could temporarily inhabit somebody else’s life (‘a little holiday inside someone extraordinary’), as one of the facility’s workers (dressed in a pink milkmaid outfit) puts it. The installation's narrative focuses on Mercy, a former starlet who lent her likeness to the programme, and appears to have been something of a Cherub sensation. ‘Never before has a Cherub attracted such attention’ reads one peeling poster bearing five stars. But by the time Mercy returns to the facility, the good times are over. The place is decaying, the programme has become obsolete, and Mercy is there to terminate her contract –...

2026 is, according to the Chinese zodiac, the Year of the Fire Horse. In 19th-century London, however, there were real-life fire horses galloping through the city, hauling fire engines and firefighters to burning buildings. Peckham Road Fire Station opened in 1867 to accommodate them, and is the earliest surviving purpose-built fire station in London. Since 2014, though, it has been South London Gallery’s second site (following a 73-year stint as a sausage factory), and for the next few months, it and the gallery’s main building across the road are home to a series of twisted architectural works by Polish artist Monika Sosnowska. The building’s past feels relevant to the exhibition: Sosnowska has made a career probing how architecture shapes us, outlives its purpose and bears witness to a changing city. The Weight of Matter, her first solo show at a London institution in more than 20 years, brings together 14 years of her work across the SLG’s two sites. Her fascination with cities in flux stems from her own experience. Coming of age as Poland’s communist regime collapsed in 1989, Sosnowska watched Warsaw transform as one political and economic order gave way to another. That upheaval became raw material for her sculpture. Steel, concrete, rebar, staircases, handrails and gates – the functional stuff of modernist architecture – are bent, buckled and twisted into strange new forms. In the old engine room, a contorted heap of black steel sprawls across the floor At the Fire...

You may not have realised, but at some point in your life you’ve probably encountered the work of Es Devlin. If you’ve been to an Adele concert, watched a Super Bowl half-time show, or tuned in to the 2012 Olympics closing ceremony, you will most likely have come face to face with creations by the British artist and stage designer.  To call Es Devlin impressive would be an understatement. The designer’s contact book is like a who’s who of the world’s biggest A-listers  – she’s conjured up ingenious staging for the Weeknd, Lorde, Beyoncé, Dua Lipa, the Pet Shop Boys and U2. Devlin has made otherworldly sets for some of the world’s most esteemed theatres and opera houses, from the National Theatre to Milan’s La Scala. She’s also the proud owner of three Olivier Awards, one Tony, three Emmys, one Ivor Novello, the London Design Medal… you get the picture.  With such an illustrious career, it’s no wonder the Design Museum has deemed Devlin worthy of a retrospective, staging her first European solo show as its big autumn opening. But how does all this awe-inspiring stage design come across when it’s not actually on a stage? We enter into a recreation of Devlin’s studio, with messy bookshelves and drawings strewn all over the place. In a video projection Devlin tells us her life story: she was named after a witch, whose name her parents found in a crossword puzzle; her great-grandfather was an architect; she studied literature at university and then her mind was awakened at art...

Painters have been being dazzled by the glorious natural light and sparkling azure sea of the French Riviera for centuries. This autumn, you’ll be able to feel like you’re taking in the sea air on the Côte d’Azur from London, as the Royal Academy brings together artworks depicting the French southern coast from greats including Monet, Braque, Picasso, Matisse, Cézanne, Renoir and Klein. Spanning the Impressionists, Post-Impressionists and Modernists, Painting the French Riviera will not only transport you to the SAD-beating coastline, but explore how the riviera was inextricably linked to the rise of modern art. 

‘This painting makes me so happy,’ said my usually gallery-averse friend, pulling me over to Salman Toor’s ‘The Women’, on display in the painter’s first solo museum show in Europe, at the Courtauld Gallery. ‘We’ve had so many Sunday mornings like this.’ In the painting in front of us were three women slumped across a bed, each propping her head up with one arm. In our version, we’d probably be debriefing on the events of the night before. The painting is small, the room cosy and cocooned from the outside world in Toor’s characteristic velvety green, laid down in thick, parallel strokes of oil paint. At the dresser stands a boy. Toor has said that if he were to write a collection of stories, this image would be the first: ‘a coming-of-age moment for the boy experiencing a blossoming sense of self.’ Toor was born in Lahore, Pakistan, into a middle-class Muslim family. At 20, he moved to the US to study painting, and eventually settled in New York. It was there that he began painting the world that now fills his canvases: queer South Asian men drinking, dancing, flirting, scrolling, lying around with friends, falling in love and being alone. His figures aren’t portraits of real people, but they come from a world he knows. They occupy the sometimes uncomfortable territories between intimacy and exposure, belonging and estrangement. His work draws as much from the Old Masters and the traditions of Western painting as it does from the art history of Pakistan and South Asia,...

London’s art lovers go mad for a bit of French Impressionism, so it’s a little surprising that the capital hasn’t hosted an exhibition on one of its leading figures, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, since the National Gallery’s 2007 show on his landscapes nearly 20 years ago. And now, just weeks after France’s most recent high profile art heist targeted the Musée Renoir, the Trafalgar Square institution once again hosts a major exhibition dedicated to the divisive painter. Created in partnership with Paris’s Musée d’Orsay, Paris, and Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, Renoir and Love will focus on the most significant and prolific years of the artist’s career, from the mid-1860s to the mid-1880s. Opening in October 2026, it will feature several of Renoir’s most iconic works, including  the 1876 painting Bal au Moulin de la Galette, exhibited for the first time ever in the UK.