Things to do on New Year’s Day in London

There are so many great New Year’s Day parties happening across London, meaning that the NYE fun doesn’t have to stop on January 1. So if you’re still standing after New Year’s Eve, head to one of these great events and start 2022 in the best way possible.

Had a raucous New Year’s Eve? Grab a hat and shake off the cobwebs by heading out on a wintry walk around one of London’s picturesque green spaces. We reckon these routes are the most beautiful of the bunch. 

While there are always more than enough festive things to do in London – light displays, ice rinks, endless department-store browsing – sometimes we all need to get out of the capital. Away from the noise, smog and, yes, all that endless shopping. What’s needed is crisp country air, a stiff walk or a serene spa day. Here are our fave day trips from London to enjoy this winter, all under two hours from Zone 1.

Is there anything more wonderfully wintry than wrapping up warm, pulling on some ice skates and gliding around a frosty slab of ice with your loved ones? Each winter, London fills up with pop-up rinks, from the legendary Somerset House to the newer Glide at Battersea Power Station. At all, you’ll find festive vibes ramped up to the max – and a lot of fellow Londoners vying for a spot on the ice. Book in advance to guarantee you can show off your best ice moves (or your ability to stay upright, at the very least). Here are some of the best rinks to soar across this winter. 

As fun and festive as Christmas is, the idea of having to head out into the crowds and scour the shops for the perfect presents for everyone in your life might not fill you with excitement. Instead of turning to the temptation of online ordering, skip the high street and head straight for one of London’s many markets.

In the run-up to Crimbo, the capital becomes home to tons of wintry fairs, stacked with stalls selling unique pressies from small businesses and independent designers that you’d never find in the big shops online or off. They’re perfect for browsing as the big day looms and a good excuse to treat yourself to Christmas snacks and mulled wine as you tick gifts off your list.

In the days after Christmas Day, some markets are still going, so go for a stroll around and pick up some post-Xmas gifts for yourself – or those you missed off your list the first time around. 

How much light can you pack into a painting? How much love, despair, hope, anxiety? In the case of Vincent Van Gogh, the answer is: infinite.

This mesmerising show of kaleidoscopic, emotional art brings together work from the last two years of his life, years spent in Provence turning painting inside out and mentally falling apart in the process.

It’s a show full of themes: poets, lovers, gardens, peasants. He paints the wild, rocky, parched landscapes of southern France, the psychedelic, jagged gardens of the asylum he placed himself in, the calm, domestic peace of his yellow house. There are figures here – walking down avenues, sitting for portraits – and there are things – sunflowers, teapots – but they all serve a purpose greater than their own representation: Van Gogh was trying to paint meaning.

Even if you’re the biggest Scrooge in the game, you can’t deny that London looks pretty magical once the Christmas lights have been turned on and tinsel-covered trees greet you at every turn. Luckily, the city is never in short supply of festive light displays, whether you’re looking for something classic – like Regent Street’s trumpet-playing angels, or a themed display, like those found on Carnaby Street. Each string beams bright enough to warm the coldest of hearts quicker than you can say ‘Bah, humbug’. Most of London's lights will stay up til the first weekend in January, so you'll be able to get in some final glimmers as 2025 hits. 

On the face of it a stage version of Stanley Kubrick’s immortal Cold War satire 'Dr Strangelove’ is as hubristic a conceit as adapting ‘2001’ or ‘Full Metal Jacket’: not only was the 1964 masterpiece intentionally shot in black and white, but it also boasted a lead performance from Peter Sellars – more accurately, a trio of lead performances – so iconic and singular as to seem literally impossible to replicate.

Nonetheless, here we are: the Kubrick estate has given the stage rights to master satirist Amando Iannucci (‘The Day Today’, ‘I’m Alan Partridge’, ‘The Think of It’, ‘Veep’. ‘The Death of Stalin’, etcetera etcetera) to adapt Kubrick’s classic about a rogue American general who decides to pre-emptively nuke Russia. Iannucci has in turn cast his old mucker Steve Coogan as the lead: it’s not entirely clear if the stage version will exactly mirror the film, but Coogan is billed as playing ‘multiple roles’ including the title and there is no official casting for Group Captain Lionel Mandrake or President Merkin Muffley – the other roles Sellars played – so it seems likely Coogan will do similar. He’ll head a cast that also includes serious stage heavyweight Giles Terera as General Buck Turgisdon.

It’s co-written and directed by Sean Foley: a safe pair of comic hands who is unlikely to reinvent the wheel but should ensure the laughs are front and centre.

While it might return if it’s a big hit, it will definitely wrap up its first West End run in January as the production is transferring to Dublin afterwards.

Everyone’s got an opinion of Barbie. Whether you adored playing with her growing up, loathed her for her wildly unrealistic body measurements, or came to appreciate her for her cultural impact, there’s no denying the 11.5inch leggy blonde is one of the most famous toys – if not women – on the planet. Now one year after Barbie-mania had London in a chokehold, Barbara Millicent Roberts has once again tottered back into the capital’s collective conscience, this time via a Design Museum exhibition celebrating 65 years of the iconic doll. 

The clothes, the handbags, the mansion, the seemingly perfect boyfriend. Barbie has it all. And so does this exhibition. It provides an extensive look into how the toy was designed, how she has evolved over the years, and how she has influenced fashion, design and wider culture. Created in partnership with Mattel, Barbie’s parent company, the show looks at the toy not just as a kicky blonde doll, but as a brand, and from a design angle it can be considered a real success. 

‘Ah, the Silk Road!’ you nod, sagely. That romanticised overland route between Asia and Europe that flourished in the Middle Ages as intrepid Chinese merchants took silk over the arduous routes in the West. Camels! Deserts! Caravans! Marco Polo!

In fact, as with much of history, ‘the silk road’ was somewhat made up in retrospect to describe a less tangible phenomenon.

The British Museum’s new exhibition Silk Roads contains little in the way of first person accounts of adventurous journeys from one end of the world to the other, because a few intrepid explorers aside, this simply wasn’t a thing that happened. Instead the silk road of myth was the sum of myriad trading networks – of everything, not just silk – between Japan, north-east Europe and West Africa.

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.

Okay, let’s just get this out of the way. ‘Hamilton’ is stupendously good. Yes, it’s kind of a drag that there’s so much hype around it. But there was a lot of hype around penicillin. And that worked out pretty well. If anything – and I’m truly sorry to say this – Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical about Alexander Hamilton, the first secretary of the US Treasury, is actually better than the hype suggests.

That’s because lost in some of the more waffly discourse around its diverse casting and sociological import is the fact that ‘Hamilton’ is, first and foremost, a ferociously enjoyable show.

You probably already know that it’s a hip hop musical, something that’s been tried before with limited success. Here it works brilliantly, because Miranda – who wrote everything – understands what mainstream audiences like about hip hop, what mainstream audiences like about musical theatre, and how to craft a brilliant hybrid. Put simply, it’s big emotions and big melodies from the former, and thrilling, funny, technically virtuosic storytelling from the latter.

Curling has been growing in popularity in recent years, nudged on by its compelling showings at various Winter Olympics, and you can try your hand at it in King’s Cross this winter. This pop-up outdoor arena boasts six synthetic curling lanes, on which you can curl your heart out for 45 minutes before rewarding yourself with a tasty cocktail at the Curling Club bar. Last year’s 90s theme is being replaced by bright neons, with Walthamstow’s God’s Own Junkyard recreating their warehouse in the bar. 

There's been a gaping chasm, an unfillable abyss, in London's recreational heart ever since the Trocadero finally closed its doors in 2011. It has left the city crying out for an arcade experience, somewhere to go and lose yourself in gaming. And now, Power Up is here to answer all of your RPG prayers. Admittedly, it doesn't have a rocket-shaped escalator or countless dark corners for snogging, but what it does have is bank after bank of classic videogames.

Few have worked with as many designers, publications and photographers in the fashion industry as model and activist, the legendary Naomi Campbell. And now, the V&A has created a dazzling exhibition to delve into this icon’s 40-year career, which she has collaborated with. Campbell’s haute couture wardrobe, as well as loans from designer archives and the V&A’s own collection, will be on display, and there’s a photography installation curated by Edward Enninful OBE, former editor of British Vogue.