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A man and his dog walking down a path in Brockwell Park on a spring morning
Photograph: Chris Bethell for Time Out
Photograph: Chris Bethell for Time Out

Things to do in London today

The day’s best things to do all in one place

Rosie Hewitson
Written by Rosie Hewitson
Things to Do Editor, London
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In this city, you’re never too far away from a picturesque park, a lovely pub or a cracking cinema, and on any given day, you’ve got a wealth of world-class art shows, blockbuster theatre and top museum exhibitions to choose from if you’re twiddling your thumbs.

Use your spare time wisely with our roundup of the best things happening in London today, which gets updated every single day and includes a specially selected top pick from our Things to Do Editor seven days a week.

Bookmark this page, and you’ll have absolutely no excuse to be bored in London ever again!

Find even more inspiration with our curated round-ups of the best things to do in London this week and weekend

If you only do one thing...

Where to watch the World Cup 2026 in London

  • Things to do
  • Sport events
Where to watch the World Cup 2026 in London
Where to watch the World Cup 2026 in London
Photograph: Luis Kramer

Summer is here, and so is another hotly anticipated FIFA World Cup, bringing with it more thrills, spills, soaring highs and beer-soaked disappointments than 15 Wimbledons combined.

With its five goals, two penalties, one red card and several thousand headed Dan Burn headed clearances, a lot of people are calling the Three Lions’ victory against Mexico in the early hours of Monday morning England’s greatest game since 1966. And that was far from the end fo the drama this week.

Belgium put four past the USA, Egypt went two up against Argentina before the holders launched one of the greatest ever World Cup comebacks, and Switzerland vs Columbia went to penalties.

Hopefully you’ve just about managed to catch up on your sleep, because now it’s time for the business end of the tournament. The four quarter finals take place across the latter half of the week, including England’s Saturday night fixture against Norway. 

Practically every pub and bar in London will be getting in on the action and vying for your attendance during the World Cup’s biggest games. However, we’ve whittled it down to the places that offer the best atmosphere and the best view of the screen, wherever you station yourself. 

RECOMMENDED: The best football pubs in London.

When is the next England World Cup match?

After triumphing over hosts Mexico in extremely difficult circumstances, England head to Miami to play Norway this Saturday July 11, kicking off at 10pm BST. The Vikings might be participating in their first World Cup since 1998, but they’ve been a real threat so far this tournament, knocking out Brazil in the last round thanks to a brace from talismanic striker Erling Haaland. 

RECOMMENDED: Where to watch the quarter-finals if you support a different team.

How can I watch England’s matches at home?

World Cup coverage is split between BBC Sport and ITV. England’s game against Norway will be broadcast on ITV1, with the broadcast starting at 8.45pm. 

Read more

More things to do in London today

1. Everyman on the Canal

  • Things to do
  • Film events
  • King’s Cross
Everyman on the Canal
Everyman on the Canal
Photograph: Everyman
Popping up each summer on the steps where the Regent’s Canal passes Granary Square, Everyman’s Screen on the Canal is one of the city’s best loved outdoor cinemas, thanks to its atmospheric setting, eclectic programming and the fact that it doesn’t cost viewers a penny. Pop down on a sunny afternoon to catch live coverage from Wimbledon every day of the tournament, plus the usual mix of live sports, classic movies, family-friendly flicks and recent hits. So far we know that Devil Wears Prada, Dune: Part One, Some Like It Hot and Paddington in Peru are all on the lineup, and there are plenty more still to be revealed. Best enjoyed with a couple of tinned cocktails and some picky bits from the nearby Waitrose, or classic cinema snacks from Everyman’s on-site bar.  This year, the pop-up has been pimped out by local Kings Cross artist and UAL Central Saint Martin’s graduate Alice Wilson. She’s created a unique folklore-inspired design that will appear across popcorn and the screen itself.   
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2. MC Escher: The Exhibition

  • Things to do
  • Exhibitions
  • Aldwych
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • Recommended
MC Escher: The Exhibition
MC Escher: The Exhibition
Photograph: Stephen Chung
Is it art, or is it maths? It’s a question even MC Escher himself couldn’t answer about his own work. While the Dutch printmaker known for his infinite staircases, metamorphosing tessellations and paradoxical buildings was rejected by the art world, he was revered by mathematicians, and is now one of the most famous optical illusionists of all time.  The OG creator of images that make you go ‘Huh?’ is going under the microscope in London with a blockbuster exhibition celebrating his life and work this summer. Created by Italian company Arthemisia and the immersive peeps at Fever, MC Escher: The Exhibition has arrived at Somerset House as part of its world tour.  The family-friendly display is surprisingly big. With more than 150 artworks on show, it tells the story of Escher’s life and work in chronological order, before it gets to the biggies – the ones that have been wheeled out in maths classrooms for decades – towards the end. You’ll see the originals of ‘Waterfall’, where water appears to run upwards, ‘Ascending and Descending’, the looping staircase that goes up and down simultaneously, and ‘Belvedere’ depicting an impossible tower. And you’ll learn about the techniques and mathematics that make these illusions possible along the way.  The meticulous craft that went into his totally baffling work is evident. On a personal level, I can see why Escher was rebuffed by the art world. Many of his works seem like something from a bad acid trip: giant, bulbous ants;...
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3. Liam Young: In Other Worlds

  • Things to do
  • Exhibitions
  • Barbican
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • Recommended
Liam Young: In Other Worlds
Liam Young: In Other Worlds
Photograph: Barbican Centre
This immersive exhibition from Australian filmmaker and architect Liam Young is impressively audacious, taking up multiple spaces in the Barbican, including a rather pungent underground carpark. What is In Other Worlds? Well, it’s not an art exhibition in the classic sense, but a sort of multimedia hybrid of visual art, storytelling, and speculative sci-fi, combined to make the point that while humanity has famously screwed up the planet, the means to un-screw it are within our grasp if we embrace radical solutions. If that sounds a bit worthy for you, then sure, it is kind of worthy. At the same time, it’s weird, psychedelic and vividly imaginative, offering more a sort of fever dream of a possible future than an actual pragmatic solution for climate change et al. At its centre is the mad vision of the Planet City, an unimaginably dense single urban environment in which all ten billion of Earth’s inhabitants live, while the rest of the planet is effectively allowed to rewild, with visits to nature confined to a sort of annual opportunity for every citizen on the planet to be dropped randomly somewhere on the planet. This is obviously an insane idea, but the vision Young and collaborators present is nonetheless really weird and cool. Physically, we’re presented with taller-than-a-person scale models of gargantuan tower blocks comprising of individual homes madly piled on top of one another, while a giant screen projects a Young-directed digital film shows us a vision of...

4. NIGO: From Japan with Love

  • Things to do
  • Exhibitions
  • Kensington
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • Recommended
NIGO: From Japan with Love
NIGO: From Japan with Love
Photograph: Luke Hayes
If streetwear is a religion, Nigo is one of its deities. The man behind A Bathing Ape (Bape, for short) is worshipped by hypebeasts the world over, not only for his pioneering approach to streetwear but also for his cultural footprint. Inextricably linked to hip hop – Nigo is besties with Pharell, and everyone from Biggie Smalls to Drake and Lil Wayne have donned his designs – the Japanese designer’s work is characterised by bold camo prints, Warholian pop-culture references and brash graphics.  For the first time, the man behind Bape and Human Made, and the creative director of Kenzo since 2021, has his own London retrospective. The Design Museum’s exhibition features 700 objects – 600 of which come from Nigo’s personal archive – including records, toys, magazines, music videos and a whole lotta clothes, spanning the ‘80s to the present day.  Nigo: From Japan With Love starts with a joyful recreation of the designer’s teenage bedroom – a dream of an ‘80s boudoir displaying Nigo’s own teenage relics: a lava lamp, a Kangol hat, stacks of hip hop records and his very first vintage piece – a shredded Levi’s type II denim jacket. It then moves through a selection of his most treasured objects, which range from Star Wars figurines to a Mr Peanut canvas jacket, and an absolutely amazing 1970s McDonald’s uniform from Hawaii, where the traditional flowers of the Hawaiian shirt are replaced by illustrations of burgers, fries and shakes. His obsession with Americana and vintage...
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5. Luminiscence: Westminster Cathedral

  • Things to do
  • Late openings
  • Victoria
Luminiscence: Westminster Cathedral
Luminiscence: Westminster Cathedral
Photograph: Mikhail Sytenkov
With its 210-foot tower, and walls adorned with over a hundred varieties of marble, Westminster Cathedral is already a sight to behold, but it’ll be looking more spectacular than ever this July, when this visual show wuill shed new light on the iconic building, quite literally. Known for hosting dazzling immersive experiences at World Heritage sites across the globe, Luminiscence will take over the neo-byzantine cathedral this summer, with an visual experience journeying through the history of the Big Smoke, told using light projections mapped onto its grand interiors, plus a voiceover by Hugh Bonneville, and classical hits from the likes of Beethoven, Vivaldi and Bach, performed live by the Lux Aeterna choir. It promises to be a truly special opportunity to familiarise yourself with one of London’s most iconic landmarks. 
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6. Smithsonian Starstruck: An Immersive Experience

  • Things to do
  • Exhibitions
  • South Kensington
  • 3 out of 5 stars
  • Recommended
Smithsonian Starstruck: An Immersive Experience
Smithsonian Starstruck: An Immersive Experience
Image: Smithsonian
While the Science Museum remains one of London’s quintessential free days out, there’s an ever-growing list of paying bolt-ons for those who are happy to spend a little (or a lot), from the glorious hands on experiments of the WonderLab to the retro videogames mecca of Power Up to a very decent science afternoon tea featuring petri dish jellies and test tubes filled with sweets. Joining them is Smithsonian Starstruck, a galactic VR experience from America’s prestigious Smithsonian Institution, in which the 360 digital imaginings of some of space’s most stunning and surreal vistas are rooted in hard astronomy, and not the fanciful slop that creeps into several nominally educational London VR experiences I could name.  It's basically a guide to all the mad shit in our galaxy, with a reassuring-voiced American man taking us on a virtual journey around various observatories and space telescopes, and the wild celestial phenomena they can nominally see. We watch the dawn of the universe. We visit an uninhabitable planet strewn with diamonds. We stand before the event horizon of a black hole. It is all, undeniably, pretty visually stunning: from a looming gigantic sun on another world to the bizarre spectacle of light being dragged into a physics-defying gravity well, this is spectacular (albeit, to be clear, often an interpretation of what these things might look like given available data). You’ll also learn a decent amount about the phenomena depicted without feeling...
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7. London Craft Beer Festival

  • Things to do
  • Food and drink events
  • Bermondsey
London Craft Beer Festival
London Craft Beer Festival
Photograph: Nic Crilly-Hargrave
Feeling thirsty? Desperate for a funky sour, cheeky saison or a fruity IPA? You’re in luck. The capital’s biggest beer celebration is back for 2026, and it’s moving to a brand new venue. Set over two days in Southwark Park, London Craft Beer Festival promises four-hour sessions of non-stop-beer-drinking bliss, with visitors getting to sample London’s best beers as well as some international standouts, including our faves Gipsy Hill, Verdant, Deya and more. Hungry? The food line up is pretty serious too, this year featuring Meltdown Cheeseburgers, Bone Daddies and Chick N’ Sours. A ticket gets you a four-hour session and access to more than 800 beers from over 100 brewers, and there are group discounts available too. All the beer is included in the ticket price. Happy drinking, folks. 
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8. Lost Oasis

  • Things to do
  • Trafalgar Square
Lost Oasis
Lost Oasis
Photograph: courtesy of Lost Oasis
With its abundance of big protests, buskers, pigeons and tourists, Trafalgar Square is famously one of the least chill bits of central London. But all that is about to change this summer with a new pop-up, designed to bring some of the plant-filled peacefulness of Cornwall's Lost Gardens of Heligan to Zone 1. Lost Oasis is the handiwork of leading landscape designers, who are transforming the space outside St Martin-in-the-Fields church into a plant filled dining, drinking and entertainment spot.  Ferns, palms and fragrant jasmine will surround eating spots manned by a rotating line-up of top chefs including Nathan Outlaw, Simon Stallard, Jordan Bailey, Emily Scott, Adam Handling MBE and Sally Abé.  On the entertainment side, there'll be screenings of FIFA World Cup, Wimbledon, Formula 1 British Grand Prix, alongside live music provided by Sofar Sounds and live comedy. In need of refreshment? There'll be drinks at the Mud Maid Bar, inspired by a famous Heligan sculpture, as well as the chance to pour your own pints of the appley stuff from the Cornish Orchard Cider Tree. Just check online before you turn up: Lost Oasis is only open to public walk-ins on days when there's not a special ticketed event. 
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9. Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art

  • Things to do
  • Exhibitions
  • South Kensington
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • Recommended
Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art
Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art
Photograph: David Parry
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...
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10. Gener8ion: Visions of 2034

  • Things to do
  • Exhibitions
  • Strand
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • Recommended
Gener8ion: Visions of 2034
Gener8ion: Visions of 2034
Photograph: Gener8ion
In April this year a Yung Lean music video went viral. Depicting schoolboys in Leeds, the excellent video shows the rapper as a menacing bully, cigarette dangling from his mouth, as he flushes heads down toilets, gets high in classrooms and rides through corridors on wheely tables. It also features some mesmerising choreography by Damien Jalet. Now this video is on display as part of a film exhibition at 180 Studios.  Created by Gener8ion, a creative duo comprising film director Romain Gavras and producer Surkin (real name Benoit Heitz), Visions of 2034 is promoting an audiovisual album, Love & Tears, made by the pair. It’s also a way for Gavras to show off several of his highly acclaimed music videos, created for the likes of MIA, Jamie xx, Foals frontman Yannis Philippakis and 070 Shake.  So what is the exhibition about? Imagine that it is the year 2034. Gavras and Surkin have created a series of short films (or are they music videos?) that postulate all the terrible things that will be happening in the world: Athens is uninhabitable thanks to toxic algae blooms; volcanoes are erupting; schoolboys are getting high on lithium from 6G antennas and bullying each other from within an inch of their lives.   Gavras and Surkin appear to have predicted the future In some of these films Gavras and Surkin appear to have predicted the future. In videos shot in 2010, 2018 and 2019, respectively, ICE-style raids round up redheads for social cleansing; an AI-type machine creates a...
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Theatre on in London today

1. The Oresteia

  • Drama
  • Tower Bridge
The Oresteia
The Oresteia
Photo: Manuel Harlan
Read our review of The Oresteia HERE. Aussie prodigy Simon Stone seems to be the de facto resident director at the Bridge these days: last year he directed Ibsen’s The Lady from the Sea, and next year he’ll direct Chekhov’s Ivanov. This year, he tackles The Oresteia, which is credited as ‘Aeschelus and others’. That’s a nod to the fact that Stone’s adaptations are extremely free and easy and you can expect only the loosest relationship to any one specific version of the story of Orestes, the son of Agamemnon who takes violent revenge on his mum Clytamnestra for his father’s murder. Excactly how Stone’s Oresteia will play out is TBC, but the sole line of description suggests a typicaly free adaptation: ‘A contemporary family wakes up in a Greek myth and can’t seem to find a way out of their hellish destiny.’ Stone’s plays invariably come with big names attached, and The Oresteia boasts a cast headed by US star Mary-Louise Parker as Montie (the character names seem to have little bearing on the originals), David Morrissey as Christopher, Tom Glynn-Carney as Augie, Rosie Sheehy as Alice, Lloyd Hutchinson as Melville, John Macmillan as Jerome and Archie Madekwe as Lorenzo.
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2. Cyrano de Bergerac

  • Drama
  • Covent Garden
  • 5 out of 5 stars
  • Recommended
Cyrano de Bergerac
Cyrano de Bergerac
Photo: Marc Brenner
There is evidence to suggest that giving the hero of Edmond Rostan’s French classic a big prosthetic nose is increasingly considered passé. Certainly the last major London revival – a brooding, rap-battling affair directed by Jamie Lloyd – was a case in point. James McAvoy starred as Cyrano, the brilliant wordsmith with an obtrusively big schnozz. But he did it sans stuck-on snout – it worked by suggesting Cyrano’s inability to directly woo his love Roxane was down to a crippling case of low self-esteem, amounting to body dysmorphia.  Lloyd’s take was a modern-dress masterpiece. So when posters appeared of this RSC transfer – with Adrian Lester in period clobber and sporting a spectacularly fake conker – it looked kinda stuffy by comparison. But not a bit of it! Yes, co-adaptors Simon Evans (who also directs) and Debris Stevenson restore the work to 1640 France – a time when the country was stuck in the Thirty Years’ War – and yes, it comes with all the trimmings of that era (pocket swords! Mournful violin players!). It’s very much the romantic tragicomedy Rostand wrote, but despite its period setting, it feels wholly current.  Lester’s Cyrano appears as a man of swaggering confidence – a soldier as adept with a sword as with a quill. Though there’s no mistake his nose has held him back in life – it seems to prompt a Tourettes-like response from those who meet him – he takes it on the chin, keeping his insecurities stoically bottled up. Rarely does limerence sound as...
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3. 1536

  • Drama
  • Seven Dials
  • 5 out of 5 stars
  • Recommended
1536
1536
Photo: Helen Murray
  Ava Pickett has had the career start every writer dreams of. Your debut play about Anne Boleyn (but not really about Anne Boleyn) becomes the hottest ticket in town at the Almeida Theatre and earns you two Olivier nominations. In the process, you gain the attention of it-girl star of the moment Margot Robbie, who declares you a generational talent. Oh, and you’re also writing a film about Joan of Arc with Baz Luhrmann. Because why not. Pickett’s ascension has been so swift, that, I must admit, I approached 1536’s West End transfer with slight scepticism. Could it really live up to all that the hype? The answer, thankfully, is: yes, and then some. Co-produced with Robbie’s production company Lucky Chap, 1536 is an astonishing production. Director Lyndsey Turner has crafted a heady, sensory experience, one that is jolted forward by faultless performances from the female leads. The 110-minute one-act run time might raise eyebrows, yet the show never loses pace, and refuses to overcook things either. 1536 is a once-in-a-blue-moon theatrical experience. I laughed. I cried. I probably could have screamed too. The year, it’ll come as no surprise to hear, is 1536, where three women in their early twenties sit in a field in rural Essex. With so little going on in their lives, the girls are scandalised by the goss Jane (Liv Hill) has heard from London: that King Henry VIII has had his second wife Anne Boleyn arrested. The practical Mariella (Tanya Reynolds) wonders aloud if Henry...
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4. Archduke

  • Drama
  • Sloane Square
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • Recommended
Archduke
Archduke
Photo: Helen Murray
If you’re in the market for a meticulously accurate, 100 percent culturally sensitive drama about the events that led to the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand… then approach US playwright Rajiv Joseph’s play with caution. Indeed, I spent the first half hour or so of Lyndsey Turner’s UK premiere slightly distracted by imagining the probable reaction of a Serbian friend of mine.  That’s not to say Joseph hasn’t done his research. His absurdist account of the recruitment and radicalisation of Ferdinand’s would-be assassins in the name of Yugoslav nationalism is very, very obviously not how it went down exactly. But this pointedly surreal play never pretends otherwise,and it has a spine of fact, particularly in its darkly comic but relatively illuminating depiction of Dragutin Dimitrijević, the Serb nationalist paramilitary who’d led the massacre of the country’s royal family in 1903 and who is widely held to have orchestrated – or at least enabled – the murder that triggered the First World War.  Were the assassins really the gormless, ideology-free naïfs that we see in Gavrilo (Stanley Morgan), Trifko (Abraham Popoola) and Nedeljko (Chris Walley) - sweet young men with no interest in Balkan politics at all, who Marc Wootton’s bonkers Dragutin grooms into enacting his plans? All evidence says no, although at the same time there’s no question that they were disaffected teenagers, not hardened soldiers. It is also clear that they had strictly regional ambitions and...
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5. The Truth

  • Drama
  • Shaftesbury Avenue
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • Recommended
The Truth
The Truth
Photo: Johan Persson
The Truth opens with a classic farce set-up: a rumpled bed from which the rumpled head of Stephen Mangan's Michel emerges, looking roguishly pleased with itself, next to the equally rumpled but less satisfied head of Alice (Sarah Hadland) who is, we soon discover, Michel's best friend's wife. Over the course of 90 tightly-plotted minutes, it becomes enjoyably clear that neither Michel, Alice nor their cuckolded spouses Paul and Laurence, would know what the truth was if it came and bit them on the bottom.  There is plenty to laugh at and to like about Lindsay Posner's production, which was a hit in 2016 at the Menier Chocolate Factory and is now revived, with extra star power, for the West End. It's a concise evening of polished, satisfyingly light entertainment, with a strong cast, an early finish time, and fairly reasonable ticket prices. Mangan fans won't be disappointed, his performance is more than worth the entry fee. He is fantastically enjoyable as Michel, bringing irresistible hangdog charm and ageing himbo vibes to the character who believes he is successfully deceiving everyone around him. His epic tantrum on discovering that he is the more deceived is hilarious: utterly hypocritical, and heartfelt. Michel's arc is the driving force of the story and when Mangan commits to his outrage, it lifts the comedy to the next level and really makes it grip. A comic ensemble often finds a deeper groove during a show's run. On opening night, it stopped just short of being...
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6. To Kill a Mockingbird

  • Drama
  • Charing Cross Road
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • Recommended
To Kill a Mockingbird
To Kill a Mockingbird
Photo by Marc Brenner
This review is from 2022 and the original, Ralph Spall-starring London run for Aaron Sorkin’s adaptation. The production returns in 2026 with a new cast headed by Richard Coyle as Atticus Finch. Meet Atticus Finch: centrist dad. Aaron Sorkin’s smash Broadway stage version of ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ makes a fair few tweaks to Harper Lee’s 1960 literary masterpiece.  Most predictably, there’s the ‘West Wing’ mastermind’s trademark sparkling dialogue. Yes, he remains faithful to the idea that we’re in ’30s Alabama, but his polished wit is very much present and correct, most especially in the goofily pinging three-way narration provided by his child characters: plucky Scout (Gwyneth Keyworth), chippy Jem (Harry Redding) and dorky Dill (David Moorst). The narrative structure has been tinkered with: the climactic trial scene is now parcelled up into chunks throughout the play rather than included as a single sweeping sequence.  The plot, however, is essentially unchanged. By far Sorkin’s most significant intervention via Bartlett Sher’s production is to pointedly reimagine the play’s white lawyer hero Atticus Finch. Rafe Spall’s interpretation of the role steers well clear of Gregory Peck’s immortal screen version and, to a large extent, the book. Peck’s Finch was famously sonorous-voiced and saintly. In both book and film, Finch was explicitly seen through the adoring eyes of his daughter Scout. Here, with his chipmunk Alabama twang, Spall simply *sounds* less like a wise...
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7. The Guilty

  • Drama
  • Seven Dials
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • Recommended
The Guilty
The Guilty
Photo: Helen Murray
This nailbitingly tense thriller is director Felix Barrett’s second ‘normal’ piece of theatre to open in London in the last year, following West End smash Paranormal Activity. If you don’t know the name, Barrett is the founder and driving force behind brooding immersive theatre legends Punchdrunk. But his straight plays aren’t so much a case of him moonlighting as a normie director as a fascinating extension of the day job. Yes, The Guilty is fairly straightforward as a text. Concerning a troubled police call centre operator, it’s writer Chloe Moss’s adaptation of the Danish film Den Skyldige and its Jake Gyllenhaal-starring Hollywood remake. You could probably have a fairly good time taking a version to the Edinburgh Fringe. But at the risk of throwing around an entirely debased term, this production is about as immersive as sitting in a seat watching a single guy onstage gets. The action is enhanced by an arsenal of disorienting light and sound tricks, some of which you might recognise from Punchdrunk shows (most notably the thunderous deployment of Massive Attack’s ‘Angel’ at the start, also recently used in Punchdrunk’s Viola’s Room). Gareth Fry, the sound designer for Viola’s Room and Complicité’s landmark The Encounter is back on board, as is much of the rest of the Paranormal Activity creative team. Subtle shifts in light and the crackly strangeness of the calls he receives take on a feverish, nocturnal quality, only growing stranger as the show wears on. The single...

8. Sting

  • Drama
  • Waterloo
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • Recommended
Sting
Sting
Photo: Helen Murray
Although Sophie Swithinbank’s slippery thriller has nothing to do with that latter day lutenist, Sting and the Police would actually be a pretty apt name for her play. Starting as a kind of office odd couple comedy, Sting quickly brings in whispers of witchcraft, but then becomes a story of bent coppers in an inadequate justice system. Swirling all those elements together in her cauldron, Swithinbank creates a masterful, destabilising examination of domestic abuse that plays out like if A24 got their hands on an episode of Line of Duty.She sets out exactly what the play is going to be about right from the beginning: Adelle Leonce’s Ash arrives – maybe still drunk from a heavy night out – at her new job in an archive dedicated to women killed as witches. Her archivist boss Lily helpfully explains the signs that would have got women accused: death of livestock, sexual activity, death of infants, seizures; she tells us that she is appalled by the similarities between a justice system built on misogyny then, and its echoes now.And all of that is exactly what we get, especially when we meet Ash’s policeman partner Dom: a contemporary story of an abusive relationship, comparing now against then, and threaded through with those witchy signs and symbols. Like if A24 got their hands on an episode of Line of Duty. Adelle Leonce steals this with an unpindownable performance as Ash, full of oddness, her mood and intonation veering wildly from line to line, manic laughter one moment...
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9. Jesus Christ Superstar

  • Musicals
  • Covent Garden
  • Recommended
Jesus Christ Superstar
Jesus Christ Superstar
Photo: Johan Persson
This review is from 2019. See our new review of the Sam Ryder-starring 2026 London Palladium version of Jesus Christ Superstar HERE. First seen in 2016 at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre, Timothy Sheader’s bombastic revival of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s rock opera arrives at the Barbican with superstar ratings, even if it’s lost some of its, well, superstar turns. It looks incredible: Tom Scutt’s set of rusty girders and a cross-shaped catwalk is moodily, then gloriously, lit by Lee Curran, especially a final, ascending beam of light behind the crucifixion. But the real touchstone is the show’s concert origins: characters swagger around the stage clutching microphones, or moon over acoustic guitars; later, electrical cords are the things they’re bound and hung by. But this staging also allows for rock-god excess, and it’s showered in gold and glitter. Herod is high-camp in a gold cape; Judas’s hands are dipped in silver for all to see, branded guilty by gilt.Drew McOnie’s edgy choreography turns the cast into a mob, whether united in juddering, convulsive devotion, or baying for blood. There’s a low-slung, swaggering looseness to the big chorus numbers that feels pleasingly modern, matched by costumes of artfully drapey grey marl: Jesus’s followers look like they’ve been dragged backwards through a branch of AllSaints.It also sounds incredible: musical director Ed Bussey drives relentlessly down the rock route, with an electrifying live band on set, turned up loud. There’s no...
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10. War Horse

  • West End
  • South Bank
  • 5 out of 5 stars
  • Recommended
War Horse
War Horse
Photo: Brinkhoff-Moegenburg
The last few years have seen some of the most celebrated theatrical blockbusters of the ’00s return to our stages with a whimper. That’s not to say that recent revivals of the likes of Art, God of Carnage or Copenhagen were bad – but they did not become raved-about, years-running theatrical phenomena a second time. Current productions of The Producers and Avenue Q are doing well enough in the West End, but neither embodies the zeitgeist the way they did 20 or so years ago. So here’s the National Theatre bringing back 2007’s blockbuster War Horse, a show that closed on the West End in 2016 but has lived on via endless tours and a Stephen Spielberg-directed screen adaptation of Michael Morpurgo’s source text. Surely its moment in the spotlight was a combination of the novelty of its many, many puppets and Britain’s endless obsession with the First World War? Surely it’s dated? Actually it turns out War Horse is still incredible.  Number one, the puppets are astonishing. Made by the South African company Handspring, it’s not just that individual puppets are good, but that there are so damn many of them, from horses to birds to a tank. Their warm wooden frames look wonderful, and the standard of the puppetry and puppet direction (originally by Handspring’s Adrian Kohler, now by Matthew Forbes) is second to none. On this watch I was quietly blown away by a scene in which main horse Joey was just munching away on a nosebag in the background while the human characters were having...
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Exhibitions on in London today

1. The Coming of Age

  • Museums
  • Euston
The Coming of Age
The Coming of Age
Image: A Leitner, ‘The Ages of Man’ (1820). © Wellcome Collection
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.

2. Henry Moore: Monumental Nature

  • Art
  • Sculpture
  • Kew
Henry Moore: Monumental Nature
Henry Moore: Monumental Nature
Photographer: Jonty Wilde
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’. 
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3. Hepworth and Nicholson: The Hampstead Studio Photographs

  • Art
  • Photography
  • Aldwych
Hepworth and Nicholson: The Hampstead Studio Photographs
Hepworth and Nicholson: The Hampstead Studio Photographs
Photograph: Courtesy of De Laszlo Collection of Paul Laib Negatives, Courtauld Institute of Art
There’s something irresistably fascinating about seeing into artist’s studios – messy materials, stacks of canvases, and a peek behind the curtain into the work spaces for some of the world’s best creative minds. To coincide with the Courtauld’s major Barbara Hepworth exhibition, the gallery is running a companion show of photographs taken by Paul Laib offering a look inside Hepworth’s London studio that she shared with Ben Nicholson in the 1930s. 

4. Hepworth in Colour

  • Art
  • Sculpture
  • Aldwych
Hepworth in Colour
Hepworth in Colour
Photograph: Courtesy of the National Gallery of Victoria
As one of Britain’s most celebrated sculptors of the 20th century, Barbara Hepworth made stunning modern creations inspired by the nature and lanscapes of Cornwall, where she lived. Her abstract shapes often featured smooth ovals, holes, undulating surfaces and strings. This summer the Courtauld will stage an exhibition interested in one aspect of Hepworth’s practice: her obsession with colour, which often came up in her work in unexpected ways.  Featuring 20 of her most significant sculptures, alongside 30 drawings, Hepworth in Colour will unite for the first time her early innovative sculptures with colour of the 1940s with major examples of her work with colour from the 1950s and 1960s.  
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5. Hurvin Anderson

  • Art
  • Painting
  • Millbank
  • 5 out of 5 stars
  • Recommended
Hurvin Anderson
Hurvin Anderson
Photograph: Tate Photography / Larina Annora Fernandes
This is a big show of big paintings. Big, energetic, happy paintings which are just as enjoyable to stand in front of as one can imagine they were to make. Hurvin Anderson is the artist responsible, and the 80 paintings on show at Tate Britain amount to 30 years worth of work. Some date back to 1995 when he was an art student at the Royal College of Art; others were made this year (some he even finished off once they’d been hung). ‘Ball Watching’ hangs by the door, next to the entrance. Painted at art school, it captures a moment in Anderson’s youth living in Birmingham, the city in which he was born and raised after his parents emigrated from Jamaica. He and his friends would play football in Handsworth Park, often kicking the football into the lake – here, as the title suggests, they stand watching it. Compared with the sun-bleached, paint-dripped, tree-filled tropicana that fill the later rooms, the palette is darker, the figures less defined, the sky, rendered in broad brushstrokes, feels as though a foaming sponge has been dragged across a car windscreen. The paintings do something similar for the viewer as they do for Anderson: they hold you between places What it establishes, however, is what has kept Hurvin Anderson returning to the studio for three decades: the urge to paint his experience as a Black man of Caribbean heritage, born and raised in the UK. That sense of inbetweenness – belonging to two places, either side of the Atlantic – plays out through...

6. James McNeill Whistler

  • Art
  • Painting
  • Millbank
  • 5 out of 5 stars
  • Recommended
James McNeill Whistler
James McNeill Whistler
Image: National Gallery of Art, Washington.
For Brits of a certain age, James McNeill Whistler will always conjure memories of that scene in the Mr Bean film. But while Rowan Atkinson’s 1997 opus was a memorable introduction to the American Gilded Age painter, Tate Britain’s grand new retrospective will properly acquaint you with his work – minus any snot-related hijinks – through his paintings, prints, and a litany of personal effects.  Using decoration from his Chelsea studio, the opening room establishes Whistler as a bohemian and fashionable man, but the contextual statement also foreshadows his fall from social grace later in his career (thanks to a lawsuit that left him penniless – more on that later). Thus, a unique, non-linear curatorial narrative is introduced. After arriving from New England in Paris in 1855, Whistler prolifically produced moody etchings that express the stoic dinginess of the French capital with dense and dynamic shadows. His first attempts at oil painting also happened here. The medium became an even bigger preoccupation when he moved to an equally morose city: London. Whether it’s choked by smog or cluttered with cargo, the Thames is his muse during his early years in the Big Smoke. The chaotic figuration of ships floating past in Wapping and the spectral abstraction of a frozen river in Chelsea in Ice represent two extremes of how Whistler turns urban ugliness into visual harmony. Conducting tone, colour, and blankness with orchestral balance, he’s acutely aware of the musicality...
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7. Julio Le Parc

  • Art
  • Installation
  • Bankside
Julio Le Parc
Julio Le Parc
Image: Julio Le Parc, ‘Unique Continual Light Cylinder’ (1962-2012). Lent by the Atelier Le Parc 2026 © ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2025. Photo © Everton Ballardin, Galeria Nara Roesler (2013).
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.

8. The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2026

  • Art
  • Piccadilly
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • Recommended
The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2026
The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2026
Photograph: © Royal Academy of Arts, London / David Parry
The Royal Academy’s first Summer Exhibition opened in 1769. That was the same year that Captain James Cook began his first voyage to the Pacific. In other words, this open-submission exhibition has been around for a very long time. This year, British sculptor Ryan Gander is at the helm, working under the broad curatorial theme of ‘Interconnectness’. Which is just as well, given there are nearly 2,000 works that he’s chosen to fill the galleries of the London institution. The result is that there really is something here for everyone. Paintings, sculptures, paintings of sculptures, and sculptures of paintings, such as Mark Alexander’s Mother and Child rendered in quartz sand. There are woodcuts of birds by Tom Hammick, and etchings camping under a starry sky by Heidrun Rathgeb. Some prints revel in solitude like the beautiful work of Lene Bladbjerg, while others, such as Karen Keogh’s views of a French village, are rendered with a level of detail that rivals a photograph – not that this exhibition is short of those either. Elsewhere, Paul Tecklenberg transforms discarded nitrous oxide canisters into a basketball hoop, while Joseph Grigely has constructed a leaning tower of wine-bottle capsules, almost ten metres high, from the foil found around the necks of bottles. It is the sort of exhibition where almost any material, subject, or idea can find a place.  Those looking for some art world bigwigs will find paintings by Frank Bowling, Gary Humes, Anselm Kiefer, and a...
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9. Tracey Emin: A Second Life

  • Art
  • Bankside
  • 5 out of 5 stars
  • Recommended
Tracey Emin: A Second Life
Tracey Emin: A Second Life
Photograph: Tracey Emin: ‘A Second Life’ at Tate Modern © Tate / Yili Liu
A stroll through Tracey Emin: A Second Life is an evocative experience. Positioned as a 40-year retrospective through the pioneering artist’s vast and varied repertoire, the show lays bare Emin’s life through her distinct and often unsettling art, from career highs – such as the iconic, Turner Prize-nominated ‘My Bed’, which is every bit as shocking and moving today as it was in 1998 – to stark personal lows in work depicting her experiences with sexual violence, abortion and recent life-threatening illness. As you can imagine, with such subject matter, it is not always a comfortable experience for the artist and the viewer alike. However, Emin’s flair for dark comedy adds moments of levity throughout. The second room of the exhibition features a large-scale projection of a work on video entitled ‘Why I Never Became A Dancer’. It begins with the artist recalling an incident in her youth when she entered a local dance competition only to run off stage mid-performance when a group of men with whom she’d previously had sexual encounters chanted ‘slag’ at her until she could no longer even hear the music. The film ends with a sequence of Emin dancing, totally uninhibited, to the disco classic ‘You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)’ by Sylvester, and the work is dedicated to each of her aggressors, calling them out by name. It is the perfect encapsulation of both Emin’s defiant approach to life and her ability to turn traumatic experiences into mesmerising art. Longform video is an...

10. Zurbarán

  • Art
  • Painting
  • Trafalgar Square
  • 5 out of 5 stars
  • Recommended
Zurbarán
Zurbarán
Zurbarán exhibition © The National Gallery, London
If you find a London greengrocer selling lemons and oranges as plump, waxy, and gorgeous as the ones in Francisco de Zurbarán’s still lifes on view at the National Gallery, do let me know. The Baroque master trained as a painter in Seville, the land of citrus, so he was well placed to get his eye in, but even so, this first UK exhibition makes a persuasive case that Zurbarán’s brush turned them into something approaching the divine. Which makes it all the more remarkable that he painted so few of them; only 10 still lifes are known today, and most of the examples in this exhibition are attributed to his son Juan.  Maybe he simply didn’t have the time. It was the beginning of the 17th century; gold was flowing into Seville from the Americas, the Catholic revival was in full swing, and Seville’s religious orders were trying to outdo one another with ever grander, more extravagantly decorated churches. Zurbarán’s earliest dated work, The Crucifixion (1627), promptly sent him shooting up the Baroque algorithm, and commissions soon came flooding in. Christ’s translucent body gleams like polished marble The Spanish artist and writer Antonio Palomino once wrote that ‘everyone who sees it, and does not know it, believes it to be a sculpture.’ It’s the first painting you encounter in the exhibition, and 399 years on, you understand what Palomino meant. Christ’s translucent body gleams like polished marble against the pitch-black background, while the white cloth around his waist...

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