Rosie Hewitson

We’re mere days out from the official beginning of spring in London, which means that 2025’s cherry blossom season is drawing close. Along with daffodils, bluebells and other spring flowers, the sight of these pastel pink blossoms popping up around the city is a joyful signal that warmer days are on the way.  Cherry blossom season is a major event in Japan, with visitors from around the world flocking over to get a glimpse of the petals in full bloom during sakura season. But there are plenty of bloomin’ marvellous displays closer to home too. When is cherry blossom in bloom in London? The pastel pink blooms tend to grace our parks from April, but in warmer years cherry blossom can be seen as early as mid-March, while cooler years might mean it doesn’t come out until May. You can find cherry blossoms in some of London’s best parks and lining pretty suburban streets. From the candyfloss arches of Greenwich Park, to the Cherry Walk in Kew Gardens, London folk are spoilt for choice. Get your camera at the ready and find out if one of these top places to see cherry blossoms in London is conveniently on your doorstep. RECOMMENDED: The best places to see spring flowers in London

Want a drink? You've come to the right place. This is Time Out’s list of best bars in London, our curated guide to London’s drinking scene, featuring the buzziest booze dens in the capital right now. If it’s on this list, it’s excellent. These are the 50 places we'd recommend to a friend, because we love drinking in them and have done many times over. From classy cocktail joints to delightful dives, hotel bars, speakeasys, bottle shops, rooftops and wine bars, London's got them all. But what makes a truly good bar? Well, our critieria for inclusion on this list is simple; a menu of genius drinks is important, but so is overall vibe – there’s no point having the perfect paloma if you have to drink it in a bar that smells of bins. To make the Top 50 a bar has to be fun, full of lovely folk, be inclusive and also look the part.  The latest additions to our list include whisky wonderland Dram Bar on Denmark Street, the hypnotic Bar Lotus in Dalston, Below Stone Nest in Chinatown, Rasputin’s by London Fields, and Bar Lina, an Italian aperitivo spot underneath a famous Soho deli. Now go forth and drink. RECOMMENDED: Like bars? Then you'll love London's best pubs.  Leonie Cooper is Time Out London’s Food and Drink Editor, and she'll have a dirty gin martini if you're buying. For more about how we curate, see our editorial guidelines.

March 2025: The days are getting gradually lighter, spring flowers are popping up in London’s parks and the city’s cultural scene has burst into life after a mid-winter lull. Yes, London! March has arrived! From St Paddy’s to Mothering Sunday, Pancake Day to International Women’s Day, the early days of spring pack in a whole host of big celebrations.  And it’s also an especially great month for culture vultures; here are a host of film festivals happening around the city, including BFI Flare and the inaugural London Soundtrack Festival, and you’ve also got Deptford Literature Festival, a Young Barbican Takeover music conference series AVA London and the Other Art Fair to look forward to over the month.  So if you’ve been hibernating until winter is over, it’s time to wriggle out from underneath your weighted blanket and get out there. Springtime London is waiting for you! No matter what your vibe, tastes or interests, there is always something to do in London. Whether you want to see cutting-edge art exhibitions, iconic attractions, secret spots, world-beating theatre, stunning green spaces, it’s all here and you can probably fit all this in and more still barely feel like you’ve scratched the surface of the city. And that’s before you factor in all those historic London pubs, the latest must-visit restaurants and vibrant LGBTQ+ venues. And if you need somewhere to stay? Check out London’s best hotels or Airbnbs. This London bucket list (curated by our editors and always hotl

  The craic is coming. It’s London’s St Patrick’s Day parade this weekend, which means London will be emerald-hued and full of Guinness to celebrate Ireland’s patron saint. Join the crowds in Trafalgar Square or check out one of the smaller dancing and music events taking place across town all this weekend.  If you’re an art lover hit up The Affordable Art Fair giving Londoners the chance to pick up original pieces for cheap(er) prices alongside a whole host of shows, exhibitions and DJ nights. Cinephiles have plenty of film festivals to pick from including Cinema Made in Italy at the BFI Southbank and Donne di Mafia mini which aims to illuminate the lives of women in mafia cinema.  Still got some gaps in your diary? Try your luck bagging tickets to the new production of Chekhov’s The Seagull starring Cate Blanchett, chow down roti at our restaurant of the week Tamila in King’s Cross or step into a pint-sized homage to 70s punk in Soho.  Head to one of London’s best bars or restaurants and take in one of these lesser-known London attractions. This is also a great time of year to explore London on a budget and without the crowds. Plus, lots of the city’s best theatre, musicals, restaurants and bars offer discounted tickets and offers. What are you waiting for? Put your coat on. Start planning a great month now with our round-up of the best things to do in March.  Stay in the loop: sign up to our free Time Out London newsletter for the best of the city, straight to your inbox.

The craic is coming. It’s London’s St Patrick’s Day parade this weekend, which means London will be emerald-hued and full of Guinness to celebrate Ireland’s patron saint. Join the crowds in Trafalgar Square or check out one of the smaller dancing and music events taking place across town all this weekend and into next week.  If you’re an art lover hit up The Affordable Art Fair giving Londoners the chance to pick up original pieces for cheap(er) prices alongside a whole host of shows, exhibitions and DJ nights. Cinephiles have plenty of film festivals to pick from including Cinema Made in Italy at the BFI Southbank and Donne di Mafia mini which aims to illuminate the lives of women in mafia cinema.  Still got some gaps in your diary? Try your luck bagging tickets to the new production of Chekhov’s The Seagull starring Cate Blanchett, chow down roti at our restaurant of the week Tamila in King’s Cross or step into a pint-sized homage to 70s punk in Soho.  Head to one of London’s best bars or restaurants and take in one of these lesser-known London attractions. This is also a great time of year to explore London on a budget and without the crowds. Plus, lots of the city’s best theatre, musicals, restaurants and bars offer discounted tickets and offers. What are you waiting for? Put your coat on. Start planning: here’s our roundup of the 25 best things to do in London in 2025 Stay in the loop: sign up to our free Time Out London newsletter for the best of the city, straight to y

London is absolutely world-class when it comes to museums. Obviously, we’re pretty biased, but with more than 170 of them dotted about the capital – a huge chunk of which are free to visit – we think it’s fair to say that there’s nowhere else in the world that does museums better.  Want to explore the history of TfL? We’ve got a museum for that. Rather learn about advertising? We’ve got a museum for that too. History? Check. Science? Check. 1940s cinema memorabilia, grotesque eighteenth-century surgical instruments, or perhaps a wall of 4,000 mouse skeletons? Check, check and check! Being the cultured metropolitans that we are, Time Out’s editors love nothing more than a wholesome afternoon spent gawping at Churchill’s baby rattle or some ancient Egyptian percussion instruments. In my case, the opportunity to live on the doorstep of some of the planet’s most iconic cultural institutions was a big reason why I moved here at the first chance I got, and I’ve racked up countless hours traipsing around display cases and deciphering needlessly verbose wall texts in the eleven years since. From iconic collections, brilliant curation and cutting-edge tech right down to nice loos, adequate signage and a decent place to grab a cuppa; my colleagues and I know exactly what we want from a museum, and we’ve put in a whole lot of time deliberating which of the city’s institutions are worth your time. So here’s our take on the 25 best ones to check out around London, ranging from world-famou

London is a bookworm’s paradise. With a literary history even older than the printing press, the city has been a home and an inspiration for Chaucer, Shakespeare, Dickens, Virginia Woolf, Zadie Smith, and countless other titans of the written word. Scrooge, Holmes and Potter are just three of the fictional heroes to have trodden our streets. And then, of course, there are the bookshops. I’ve visited dozens of London booksellers, from Richmond to Crouch End, and I’m delighted to report that the rise of online retailers hasn’t put a dent in the city’s characterful, welcoming bookselling scene. Instead, bookshops have upped their game, offering personalised recommendations, readings, book clubs and cosy cafés where you can enjoy your purchases over a steaming cuppa. Whether you’re after novels, comics, antiquarian tomes, or just somewhere beautiful to curl up with a good read, you’ll find it here in one of the many shops dedicated to the printed word. Ready to get turning pages? Here’s our guide to the best bookshops in London, whether you’re in central, north, east, south or west London. And if you’re more of a borrower? Head to these lovely London libraries.James Manning is the co-author of An Opinionated Guide to London Bookshops, and Time Out’s content director for Europe.  

The Six Nations rugby tournament is back for 2025, taking over boozers, beer gardens and outdoor screens across London most weekends up until Saturday March 15.  Last year, Ireland claimed back-to-back titles for the third time since 1949, and will be looking to be triumphant for a third consecutive year. Games take place at venues including Paris’ Stade de France, Rome’s Stadio Olimpico, Dublin’s Aviva Stadium, and London’s very own Twickenham Stadium as England, France, Italy, Scotland, Wales and Ireland compete to take home the championship trophy.  The penultimate week of action kicks off this Saturday with a huge match between top-of-the-table Ireland and second-placed team France, who stand the best chance of preventing a three-peat from the Wolfhounds. Scotland play Wales later on Saturday, before England take on Italy at Twickenham on Sunday afternoon.  And you could just watch on your telly at home, but if you’d prefer to catch every scrimmage, try and conversion in a lively atmosphere with a nice freshly-poured Guinness in hand, head to one of the rugby pubs, bars, beer halls, markets and social clubs listed here, where you’ll find free-flowing pints, special guest appearances and countless renditions of ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot’. RECOMMENDED: More great things to do in London this weekend 

From top-tier off-licences to under-the-radar vintage shops, specialised delis, plant havens and everything in between, we’ve shopped (and dropped) our way through the capital’s retail offering. You really can buy whatever you want in this city – you just need to know where to look. That’s why we’ve put together this definitive list of the capital’s 100 best shops for 2025.  You won’t find massive famous ones like Liberty, Selfridges, Harrods and Hamleys here: everyone knows them. You won’t find obvious high street names or the big shopping centres either.  What you will find is a selection of excellent independent shops, including some delightfully quirky places you might have never known existed. Did somebody say 150-year-old umbrella emporium? What about an expert collector of old-school tech? A bookshop which specialises in witchcraft? Or a boutique where you’ll find gorgeous retro furnishings for bargain prices?  This is our ultimate guide to shopping in the capital. Just don’t blame us if you get a little carried away next payday.  Chiara Wilkinson is Time Out London’s Deputy Editor. For more about how we curate, see our editorial guidelines. RECOMMENDED:London’s best secondhand shops, picked by expertsThe best markets in London for shopping and browsingThe best car boot sales in London

We don’t know about you, but we think we’re pretty damn lucky to have world-class festivals just a tube ride away. Forget trekking across the country to live in a field for five days. When you live in London, you can hop on a tube, and an hour later you’re listening to your favourite artists, tinny to hand, knowing that there’s a hot shower and a cosy bed waiting for you once the day is over. We Londoners love live music, so it’s no surprise that we’re absolutely spoilt for choice when summer rolls around. You’ve got festivals devoted to hip-hop, jazz, leftfield pop, afrobeats, heavy rock ‘n’ roll. Whatever your taste may be, my god does London have a day festival for you. Have a scroll through some of our recommendations and start planning a fantastic summer in 2025.  But be warned, most London festivals get more expensive the later you leave it, and plenty of them will sell out long before summer starts. Grab your tickets right now if you know what’s good for ya! RECOMMENDED: ⛺ The best UK music festivals🌍 The best festivals in Europe

Since the early 1900s, some form of International Women’s Day has existed, giving focus to the women’s rights movement and issues such as gender equality and violence against women. Unfortunately, over 100 years on, it’s still a much-needed spotlight on societal problems that remain today. Now a huge global affair, each IWD sees the city taken over by talks, debates, parties, gigs and more, all celebrating female talent and solidarity, and highlighting the areas that we still need to improve. So, if you’re ready to dismantle the patriarchy with some like-minded women, here are our top picks of events to mark this year’s edition of IWD in London. RECOMMENDED: More great things to do in March. When is International Women’s Day? International Women’s Day takes place every year on March 8. In 2025, that’s on a Saturday. Celebrating International Women's Day in London

This city is absolutely rammed full of amazing art galleries and museums. We’ve got everything from major contemporary art museums to high end commercial galleries, stunning local institutions to incredible independent spaces. That means that there are a lot of exhibitions to see, especially in 2025.  But how do you sort the good from the bad? How do you decide which shows are worth spending your meagre free time on? Well, we’re here to help. We go to every major exhibition in London, and a lot of the smaller ones, and we figure out what's a masterpiece and what's a disasterpiece. Our art editor (me!) spends his week trudging the streets of London, going from gallery to gallery, to help you figure out what's worth heading into town for. Our critera is simple: we want the best. It doesn’t matter if it’s painting or conceptual installation, if it’s old or new, it just has to be good. Really good. And this list right here is the best art we've seen recently, and it's updated throughout the week. Eddy Frankel is Time Out’s art editor, he literally forces himself to get out of bed every day just to go look at paintings and sculptures. It’s a tough job, but apparently someone's got to do it.  Stay in the loop: sign up to our free Time Out London newsletter for the best of the city, straight to your inbox.

As is now an annual tradition, beloved Brixton boozer and gig venue The Windmill will once again transform into Paddy’s Pub, the iconic drinking hole from long-running sitcom It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, for its St Patrick’s Day celebrations this month, laying on a brilliant roster of Irish indie music for the occasion. This year’s line-up features Cork-born alt-pop singer Balderdasch, new wave-inspired electronic duo Nixer and experimental producer, Neil Kerr AKA Mount Palomar, who has previously Bicep and Joy Orbison. 

Leicester Square’s Cecil Court has long been home to a cluster of antiquarian booksellers, and Goldsboro Books is arguably the best of the bunch. As the largest signed first-edition specialist in the UK, its premises may not bulge with the weight of stock at neighbouring repositories, but everything on sale here has been autographed by its author. Writers – including household names like Salman Rushdie, Ian Rankin and Margaret Atwood – regularly sign consignments of first editions for the shop, which often sell for the same price as unsigned editions elsewhere. Goldsboro is also responsible for one of the world’s largest first-edition book clubs; there’s a new title each month and many are exclusive to the store and bound in limited-edition slipcases.  

Tucked away above Wardour Street’s shopfronts in an unassuming second-floor office space and available to visit by appointment only, IDEA’s Soho ‘book room’ is a bit of an open secret. With its clean white walls and artfully displayed titles on art, fashion and photography sitting alongside branded accessories and apparel, the space feels more like a chic lifestyle store or commercial art gallery than a bookshop. Be sure to email ahead if you‘re keen to browse its discerningly curated edit of books and magazines, which may feature anything from the Spice Girls official 1997 photo album and a first-edition Robert Mapplethorpe photobook to a 2011 Helmut Lang catalogue and a vintage copy of The Face featuring Kate Moss’s first cover. And check out the merch too. The shop collaborates with some very eclectic names – most recently, Finnish cartoon series The Moomins and Paris, Texas director Wim Wenders – and its tongue-in-cheek range of slogan caps and tees have achieved cult status among London fashionistas.

Choreographed by Kenneth MacMillan and first performed in 1966, The Royal Ballet’s much-loved ‘Romeo & Juliet’ returns to the Royal Opera House this March. Prokofiev’s music is familiarly stirring, the costumes are rich in earthy tones and there’s all sorts of swaggering and swashbuckling from the rival families, but it’s the intimate drama between the central couple that makes this show soar, or not. Leads pairings for this run include Fumi Kaneko and Vadim Muntagirov, Marianela Nuñez and William Bracewell, and Francesca Hayward and Cesar Corrales, alongside other ROH principals. 

Established in 1978 as a community project, this lovely little bookshop was first based in Whitechapel and known as the Tower Hamlets Arts Project. It’s gone through numerous iterations since then, first becoming Eastside Books before a third name change after moving to its current location on Brick Lane. It stocks a great range of fiction, local history and the usual non-fiction sections, along with cards, wrapping paper and gifts. The shop has played an important role in its local community from its beginning – you can read all about this on its website – and these days hosts various community events, including an annual short story prize, monthly book clubs (with discounts on the selected books for members), regular writers’ workshops and book launches. It offers free delivery to any residents in the borough with orders over £15. No surprise, then, that the shop was named as as London’s regional winner in 2024’s Independent Bookshop of the Year awards.

Charing Cross Road was once a noted centre for bookshops in London, and while many have sadly been priced out, a few remain. One of the most delightful to explore is Any Amount of Books, which entices you in with its stalls of cut-price paperbacks. The shop frequently buys up extensive book collections, making for an ever-changing selection to suit book-buyers of any budget, with prices ranging from £1 to £2,000 (including, amusingly, a ‘medium-rare’ section). It had a scoop in 2007 by acquiring the library of Angela Carter, while more recently, the books of noted bon viveur Norman Douglas made their way here. Diversifying a little never hurts business either, and the shop has developed a sideline selling collections of leather bindings to interior decorators, set designers and posh drinking establishments. It’s also much bigger than it first appears, so don’t forget to check out the basement when you pop in.   

From the inviting and stimulating presentation to the quality of the books selected, this is an inspiring bookshop. Politics, current affairs and history are well represented on the ground floor; downstairs, audiobooks lead on to exciting poetry and philosophy sections, everything you’d expect from a shop owned by the purveyor of long-form critical writing that is the London Review of Books. It also hosts an excellent programme of evening in-conversation events, usually taking place once or twice a week and often recorded for the shop’s podcast.

With eight miles of shelving and over 200,000 books in stock at any one time, the Piccadilly branch of the UK’s largest bookstore chain is the biggest bookshop in the whole of Europe. Housed in an Art Deco building that was once home to department store Simpsons, the branch opened in 1999 and features six floors of books alongside two cafes, a bar/restaurant and a few event spaces. Particularly worth checking out is its second-floor children’s section, which is decorated with a circus theme and features a large games section and plenty of activities, including weekly storytime sessions on Sundays. The store also stages an eclectic events programme, with the likes of Hilary Mantel, Stephen Fry, Margaret Atwood, Keanu Reeves and Hillary Clinton having previously popped in for talks and book signings, and regular book clubs themed around everything from YA fiction and sci-fi to London love stories.

Founded in 2008, this boutique bookshop in London Fields is known for its idiosyncratic selection of books and magazines covering art, photography, music and fashion, many of which are sourced directly from indie publishers and individual creators. Expect an in-the-know selection that’s heavy on critical theory and countercultures, as well as helpful advice and a good range of hard-to-find and out-of-print titles. And keep an eye on the shop’s Instagram to hear about upcoming events; it’s hosted book launches, talks and literary salons with the likes of Wolfgang Tillmans, David Armstrong, Eileen Myles, Worms Magazine and The Archive of Modern Conflict.

Promising ‘cutting-edge technology with rich historical narratives’, this Ancient Egypt-themed show is the latest experience to arrive at the ImmerseLDN, the ExCeL’s sprawling, 26,909 sq ft space for staging all things ‘immersive’. Tutankhamun: The Immersive Exhibition has apparently been viewed by 1.8 million visitors on a global tour, and arrives in London for 14 weeks this spring. Using splashy technology and 8-metre-tall projections, the exhibit will be divided into six galleries, each bringing the maximum amount of razzle dazzle to bear on the time of the Pharaohs. You’ll be able to experience such thrills as an immersive movie about the discovery of the tomb, a VR experience taking you ‘into the Egyptian afterlife’ and an AR walk through the Valley of Kings. Gimmicky it might sound, but it’s been endorsed by the Grand Egyptian Museum in Cairo, so we’d imagine it will at the very least nail the historical accuracy. Got a kid that’s going through an Ancient Egypt phase? They’ll probably love it. 

A purveyor of hard-to-source tomes on art, photography and culture, Climax Books was founded by former Dazed Editor-in-Chief Isabella Burley in 2020, and had already achieved cult status among the chicest members of London’s fashion crowd by the time its physical shop opened in 2023. Stocking everything from rare first edition art books and cultural ephemera to some very cool merch including latex tote bags and underwear and t-shirts made in collaboration with Chopova Lowena, Climax has also hosted collaborative events with the likes of Heaven by Marc Jacobs and Sadie Coles HQ, and opened a New York outpost in 2024. The physical shop on Soho’s Wardour Mews is currently open from Thursday to Saturday. You’ll want to buy something for the hot pink shopping bags alone.  Find more great bookshops in London

What is it?  Situated in a herb garret in the roof of St Thomas’s Church in Southwark, the Old Operating Theatre Museum is Britain’s oldest surviving purpose-built operating theatre. Built in 1822 as part of the women’s ward for St Thomas’s Hospital, it predates both anaesthetics and antiseptics, and offers a unique (and often grisly) insight into the history of medicine and surgery. The theatre has been restored with original furniture and equipment, including a nineteenth-century operating table, surgical instruments and pathological specimens. Visitors enter via a vertiginous spiral staircase to view a semicircular operating theatre with tiered viewing seats for up to 150 medical students. The venue’s programme of temporary exhibitions often combine art with explorations of pathology. Be warned, you will have to climb a precarious spiral staircase, but once you’re up there, the whole exhibition takes around 45 minutes to an hour to explore.  Why go? To go off the beaten track and be transported back to the dark and fascinating world of nineteenth-century medicine. Don’t miss Sanitised reenactments are sometimes held – just as gruesome as the operating tools that look like torture implements – alongside more light-hearted events ranging from craft workshops to comedy nights, while When to visit Open Thursday to Sunday 10.30am-5pm. Last admission is 4.15pm.  Ticket info  Tickets into the Old Operating theatre are £9 for adults, £7 concessions and £5.50 children. Children u

From Chaucer, Shakespeare and Dickens to Zadie Smith, Kazuo Ishiguro and Bernardine Evaristo, London has long been home to some of the greatest writers on the planet. Often considered one of the literary capitals of the world, it’s no surprise that the city’s bookworms are brilliantly served by its excellent variety of bookshops.  Whether you’re after novels, comics, magazines, chic coffee table books or antiquarian tomes, you’ll find them in one of the city’s many brilliant shops dedicated to the printed word. We’ve collated 45 favourites in our newly updated list of London’s best bookshops.  And the number one pick probably won’t come as a huge surprise to the city’s bookworms. Said to be the first custom-built bookshop in the world, the original branch of Daunt Books in Marylebone is known for its hugely Instagrammable Edwardian interiors, featuring oak balconies, conservatory ceilings, viridian-green walls and stained-glass windows. But it also stocks a great collection of books, too. The shop’s specialism is travel writing, so you’ll find a brilliant curation of guidebooks, maps, language references, history books, travelogues and related fiction, handily arranged by country. Travel aside, Daunt is also a first-rate stop for literary fiction, biography and gardening.  In second place is Bookmongers on Brixton’s Coldharbour Lane – where visitors can browse an overflowing collection of second-hand titles under the watchful eye of resident cat Popeye – with Foyles’s mammot

A celebrated Fitzrovia art gallery that has been in operation for 13 years has made the difficult decision to close, citing a downturn in the art market as a contributing factor. Founded in 2012 by gallerist Hannah Watson and the late publisher Gigi Giannuzzi, TJ Boulting is considered among London’s best commercial galleries. Known for championing female artists, in particular those working in the fields of video and photography, in recent years TJ Boulting has garnered several great reviews from Time Out, for shows by the likes of Juno Calypso, Maisie Cousins and Daisy Collingridge. The gallery’s final show, An Oeuf is An Oeuf, featured works by Sarah Lucas, Man Ray and Francesca Woodman, and received a four-star review from Time Out’s Eddy Frankel, who called it a ‘brilliant, joyful, funny’ exhibition.  The gallery was based in a two-storey art nouveau building on Riding House Street. TJ Boulting took its name from the green and gold tiling advertising its former occupier, an electrical company named T J Boulting and Sons, and the space was also home to the gallery’s publishing arm, Trolley Books, which will continue operations without a permanent base.  Speaking to the Art Newspaper, Watson said that the art market’s downturn had ‘certainly been a factor’ in the decision. ‘I don’t know many galleries that are having an easy time right now,’ said the co-founder. ‘I managed to keep going without compromising, but looking ahead to the next five to ten years you have to cons

After selling out her first night at Hyde Park’s British Summer Time, two-time Grammy winner Sabrina Carpenter has announced a second date at the July festival.  The American singer – whose hit single ‘Espresso’ was the UK’s second-most streamed song on Spotify last year – replaces Hugh Jackman, who cancelled his appearance at the festival earlier this month citing ‘an unforeseen conflict’.  🎤 The best gigs in London this month🎸 The best music festivals in London Here’s everything you need to know about the new date, including ticket prices and on-sale dates. When is Sabrina Carpenter playing BST Hyde Park 2024?  The singer of ‘Espresso’, ‘Taste’ and ‘Please Please Please’ headline Hyde Park for a second night on Sunday July 6 2025, following a sold-out night one on Saturday July 5 2025. When do tickets go on sale?    General release tickets go on general sale at 10am GMT on Monday February 24 2025. You’ll be able to buy on Ticketmaster here. You can try StubHub too. Is there a presale?  There are a couple of presales. One kicked off today (Wednesday February 19) at 10am for American Express cardholders, while another for the artist’s fanclub starts at 10am on Friday February 21. You can sign up for that latter presale here. How much will tickets cost? Judging from Carpenter’s first BST date, here’s how much tickets will cost, with the most affordable ones starting from around £80.  General admission – from £79.95 Primary entry – from £99.95 Ground level viewing area –

It’s been a busy couple of weeks for 2025 festival announcements, particularly for new additions to London’s already packed line-up of summer festies. The inaugural SXSW London and Greenwich’s new Labyrinth on the Thames have both released line-up news, alongside the announcement that Little Simz will curate Meltdown festival this summer. This week Wireless announced that Drake will top the bill on all three days of the festival in Finsbury Park. And now comes news that Massive Attack will headline Victoria Park’s brand new LIDO Festival. The Bristol-born trip-hop collective – which currently consists of Robert ‘3D’ Del Naja, Grant ‘Daddy G’ Marshall – are the fourth headline act to be announced, alongside ‘brat summer’ progenitor Charli xcx, Grammy-winning producer and DJ Jamie xx and indie-pop trio London Grammar, with a fifth date curated by legendary hardcore festival Outbreak. Massive Attack will perform their acclaimed live show featuring visuals created in collaboration with United Visual Artists and BAFTA-winning documentary filmmaker Adam Curtis, and have also partnered with clean energy provider Ecotricity to ensure that the performance is 100 percent battery-powered, radically reducing the carbon emissions and local air pollution produced by the event. Here’s everything you need to know about Massive Attack’s LIDO headline slot.  When are Massive Attack playing Victoria Park? Massive Attack will be head of LIDO’s bill on Friday June 6 2025.  Who else is on the li

The BFI’s annual festival of LGBTQIA+ cinema is a major fixture in London’s cultural calendar, and the announcement of the festival’s full programme is always hotly anticipated in the Time Out office.  Now in its 39th year, the 2025 edition of the festival takes place at the BFI Southbank and online from 19-30 March. This year’s programme is as jam-packed as ever, featuring more than 130 films from 41 different countries, including 34 world premieres. And that’s on top of the panel discussions, workshops, talks and after-hours events that make the BFI’s riverside headquarters such a buzzy place to be over the twelve day festival.  As previously announced, the festival will open with the international premiere of Andrew Ahn’s joyful reimagining of Ang Lee’s 1993 classic The Wedding Banquet, fresh from its well-received world premiere at Sundance.  Award-winning writer-director Shatara Michelle Ford’s second feature film, road trip drama Dreams in Nightmares, will feature as a special presentation in the middle of the festival, with Brazilian psychosexual drama Night Stage closing out the festival.  Other highlights on the programme include Rebecca Lenkiewicz’s atmospheric adaptation of Deborah Levy’s Booker Prize-nominated novel Hot Milk starring Emma Mackey, Fiona Shaw and Vicky Krieps, Trương Minh Quý’s Un Certain Regard-nominated romance Viet and Nam.  It’s also a strong year for feature-length documentaries, which include Peaches Goes Bananas, an intimate portrayal of the

Having kids is expensive. Living in London is expensive. So it stands to reason that having kids in London can be especially expensive, especially when the half-term holidays roll around and you’re faced with the challenge of keeping them entertained for nine long days. But family days out in the city don’t have to mean remortgaging your house or selling a vital organ, particularly during the February half term, when London’s museums, galleries and cultural institutions really step up to help London’s harried parents out by staging a plethora of free activities.  Looking for some family-friendly fun on a budget this week? Here are 10 ideas: Imagine Children’s Festival A huge programme of family-oriented shows, workshops, play experiences and exhibitions, the Southbank Centre’s annual kids’ festival features over 100 events for everyone from babies to pre-teens, with over half of them completely free. Find out more here. Southbank Centre, SE1 8XX. Until Sun Feb 23.  Out At Sea Check out arts and craft workshops, storytelling sessions and live performances suitable for all ages as the National Maritime Museum, the Cutty Sark and Queen’s House come together for this annual LGBT History Month celebration. Find out more here. Royal Museums Greenwich, SE10 9NF. Until Sun Feb 23. Lunar New Year Family Day This family fun day at Hoxton’s Museum of the Home celebrates the arrival of the Year of the Snake via serpent-themed crafts, soft play and musical storytelling. Find out more he

English Heritage’s blue plaque scheme is a beloved London tradition. Set up all the way back in 1866 to commemorate famous and noteworthy figures to have lived and worked in this great city, it has honoured over 1000 Londoners including the likes of Freddie Mercury, Emmeline Pankhurst, Samuel Pepys and Enid Blyton.  This year, actress and fashion icon Audrey Hepburn and influential glam rock musician Marc Bolan will be added to the auspicious list of names with plaques dotted around the city, with English Heritage having just announced its latest recipients. The locations of the plaques hasn’t yet been revealed.  The list of 2025 honourees focuses on cultural icons whose creative endeavours have helped to shape London. Also receiving plaques this year are ballerina, choreographer and English National Ballet co-founder Alicia Markova; Jamaican poet, playwright and equal rights campaigner Una Marson; acclaimed novelist Barbara Pym; and portraitist and landscape artist Graham Sutherland.  Recipients of the plaques must have been deceased for at least 20 years, and must have lived or worked in a surviving building in Greater London, the exterior of which has not been substantially altered.  Love a bit of London history? You can find out more about 2025’s recipients, and delve into the database documenting past honourees on the English Heritage website here.London’s first Roman basilica has been uncovered in the City The Natural History Museum is opening a new gallery, and it’s fr

With its 30th edition taking place this summer, the Southbank Centre’s Meltdown Festival has long since established itself as a key date in London’s cultural calendar.  Each year, the Southbank invites one celebrated artist to curate the festival, getting them to select a range of established and emerging musical talents and nightlife promoters to star across a two-week programme of gigs, participatory events and after-hours parties at the prestigious venue. Such luminaries as David Bowie, Yoko Ono, Grace Jones, David Byrne, Nick Cave, Anohni and Chaka Khan have previously stepped into the role, so news of who will curate each summer’s edition is always hotly anticipated. This year, Mercury Prize-winning rapper, Top Boy actor and previous Time Out cover star Little Simz joins that list of legendary names, promising a boundary-pushing line-up that will feature plenty of local organisations and grassroots collectives, plus the one-of-a-kind performances that have characterised Meltdown over the years, culminating in a headline gig from the artist herself.  It seems like the Brit Award winner has a taste for curation, having shut down the Tate Modern back in August last year when she curated a free Tate Late featuring appearances from author Open Water author Caleb Azumah Nelson and renowned skateboarder and artist Slawn.  Speaking about the festival, the Islington-born musician said: ‘I'm super excited to be the 2025 Meltdown festival curator! My team and I are preparing eleven

When it comes to American sports, it doesn’t get any bigger than the Super Bowl. The NFL’s most prestigious competition is arguably the most important annual fixture in the country’s sporting calendar, with millions of Americans getting together at screening parties to watch the action on TV. But with over 200,000 Americans living in London, and the sport steadily growing in popularity among Brits, it’s also a reasonably big deal here too. Thousands of Londoners will be staying up til the early hours this Sunday to watch all the action from the New Orleans Superdome, where the game kicks off at 11.30pm UK time. Super Bowl LIX sees the Kansas City Chiefs attempt a three-peat against the Philadelphia Eagles, in a replay of 2022’s event, the first of the Chiefs’ back-to-back titles. As well as all the cheerleading, interceptions, touchdowns and numerous cutaways to Taylor Swift cheering on boyfriend Travis Kelce from the stands, there’s also the epic half-time show from Kendrick Lamar, who arrives in New Orleans fresh from picking up five awards at the Grammys last weekend. Of course, you could catch all the action on your TV at home. But for a raucous atmosphere, freshly-poured pints, themed snacks and all manner of live entertainment, head to one of these Super Bowl screening parties around the city.  The best places to watch Super Bowl LIX in London Bad Sports: Super Bowl LIX Remember Hackney’s Bad Sports Bar? The now-closed (but never forgotten) US-style bar that served slam

You might not have realised, given all the Christmas chaos and the fact that it’s been freezing for weeks already, but winter officially arrives this weekend. With the coldest, darkest months of the year on the horizon, it’s natural to want to bunker down under a weighted blanket as soon as the turkey has been carved and the presents have been opened, not to emerge until mid-March when your bank balance, social battery and liver have finally recovered from all the festive excess. But with most people’s calendars tending to be a little bit quieter, winter is a great time to pay a visit to all of those museums, galleries and cultural institutions that you’re always saying you want to check out. This is especially true if you’re attempting Dry January and suddenly have endless hours of hangover-free weekend to fill. If you can manage to tear yourself away from the sofa – and series three of The Traitors – for five minutes, there’s loads going on around London over the next few months. Here are five things I’m especially looking forward to. World Darts Championship Final Like many unsuspecting pub-goers, I was swept up in the Luke Littler-fuelled darts mania that descended on the nation last Christmas, and now officially consider myself a ‘festive darts ultra’. After finishing as runner up last year, the kebab-loving teenage sensation will be attempting to go one better as he returns to Ally Pally over the holidays, and while you’ll be hard-pressed securing tickets to the live

Beaujolais Nouveau Day is one of the biggest days in a wine drinker’s calendar, but it’s also a great excuse for a party. This year, Bojo Novo Day takes place this Thursday November 21 – and, as always, London will be marking the occasion.  Now, a fair few of you may be thinking: what on Earth is ‘beaujolais nouveau’? And why does it have its own day? Beaujolais nouveau is a red wine produced in France’s Beaujolais region. It’s a vin de primeur, which means it’s a wine sold in the same year it’s harvested – and it’s famously released at 12.01am on the third Thursday of November. In France the day is famous for its festivals, celebrations and parties. But France doesn’t hog all the fun when it comes to Bojo Novo. The day is marked all around the world, including London. Whether you’re a Frenchie abroad or simply fancy a bit of wine-based fun, here are the best places to mark Beaujolais Nouveau Day 2024 in the capital.  Le Beaujolais  Where else? The clue’s in the name at Le Beaujolais, which currently sits at third in Time Out’s list of the best wine bars in London. On Thursday Bojo Novo Day will be marked by Le Beaujolais in a very classic, French sort of fashion – which is no less than we’d expect from a very classic, very French sort of place. 25 Litchfield St, WC2H 9NJ. Find out more. Marceline  Looking for a bit more than a few glasses of fresh gamay? Canary Wharf joint Marceline has both vino and a solid deal to celebrate Bojo Novo Day, offering a steak French dip sandw

Halloween’s over, now it’s time for the properly scary stuff. The future of one of the world’s most powerful countries hangs in the balance, with Kamala Harris and Donald Trump set to battle it out this week to be named the 47th President of the USA. And it’s currently far too close to call. Whoever has your backing, there’s only one proper way to watch those states turn red or blue (or independent, who knows what’ll happen?). That’s right, we’re talking about an election night all-nighter. There may be an entire ocean between us and the mighty US of A, but that doesn’t stop Londoners from fuelling up on bourbon for a spectacular presidential election party. Here are five of the best to head to on the night of November 5/6.  Three Crowns, Stoke Newington Spacious Victorian boozer the Three Crowns hosts plenty of late night parties in its basement club The Waiting Room, but it’ll be staying open even later than usual for this free screening. It’s promising plenty of drinks and snacks to keep you going until closing time at 5am. No need to book a ticket for this one, just show up and grab a seat. 175 Stoke Newington High St, N16 0PE. 10pm-5am. Free. The American Bar at the Stafford One of the longest-surviving American bars in London, this swish cocktail bar in St James’s hotel The Stafford is undoubtedly one of the more decadent places to celebrate/drown your sorrows come election night. There are plenty of classic American drinks on the menu, including seven varieties of old