The 25 best new things to do in the UK in 2025 – for you to start planning now

The West End is so last year. In 2025, the far reaches of northeast London will be the place to catch theatre and dance. Not only is Sadler’s Wells opening its brand new 550-capacity dance theatre in Stratford come February, but Soho Theatre is taking over the erstwhile EMD Cinema in Walthamstow. Sadler’s Wells East is one for dance fans to get excited about: the high-tech space will stage more experimental contemporary works than the OG Sadler’s; their season kicks off with Vicki Igbokwe-Ozoagu’s clubbing inspired blowout. Meanwhile, the 1,000-seat Walthamstow venue hasn’t announced its programme just yet, but it’s set to open ‘early 2025’ and is likely to be stacked with cabaret, comedy and plays.

🎟️ The best theatre shows in London for 2025

Nights out are too much about headliners, superstar DJs and expensive tickets these days. But one Manchester club wants to change all that. Enter Amber’s, a new double-room 1,000-cap venue that doesn’t reveal its DJs and has tickets going for as little as a fiver. They (supposedly) don’t care about viral moments, or booking the biggest names – instead, they’re asking punters to trust the event programmers. Nights are organised by genre, spanning everything from house, to techno, trance, breaks and disco. Run by industry heavyweights, including Fabric and Rinse FM alumni, we have high hopes for this new club which opened early December 2024.

🍸 The 21 best bars in Manchester

Scotland is home to almost 150 working distilleries – and it’s about to get a bunch more. Orkney’s Highland Park whisky distillery and visitor centre is set to reopen in March after a green upgrade; then, there’s Glencadam Distillery in Angus, which is opening a new visitor centre in summer, and the Ardgowan Estate, whose new distillery and visitor centre will be just a 45-minute drive away from Glasgow. That’s not to mention Eden Mill gin, in St Andrew’s, which is on track to open its swanky new distillery in early 2025, powered by 100 percent renewable energy, followed by its visitor centre in time for summer. Distillery crawl, anyone?

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Two years on from the reopening of the Young V&A comes the next phase of the iconic museum’s building projects. Opening its doors in May 2025, the V&A East Storehouse is a brand new venue in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. Purpose-built to house more than 1,000 archives from the museum’s collection, comprising more than 250,000 objects, the storehouse promises to offer a peek behind the scenes to show how a working museum goes about cataloguing artefacts, from vintage footie kits and Glastonbury festival ephemera to a collection of samurai swords. Oh, and did we mention it will house the David Bowie Centre, a massive archive of more than 80,000 objects related to the music icon? We can’t wait to have a good old poke around when it opens slightly later, in September. 

🤓 The 25 best museums in London

If you need another reason to stop buying fast fashion, the successful second-hand clothing pop-up Charity Super.Mkt is opening a bunch of new stores across the UK in 2025. Depop princesses and bargain hunters, get ready: 12 new pop-ups are arriving at locations including Edinburgh, Leeds, Sheffield and London’s Canary Wharf, as the market will take over former fast fashion stores for a few months at a time. It’s all for a good cause as well, as Charity Super.Mkt brings together 55 local and national charities to haul loads of pre-loved garms.

🛍️ The 100 best shops in London

Scottish Ballet has been leading the way when it comes to gender neutral ballet casting. Following on from its 2023 Cinderella, where audiences didn’t know whether Cinders would be played by a man or a woman until the curtain lifted, in 2025 the dance company will put on a new gender and age fluid performance. This time they’re taking on Mary Queen of Scots with a production that focuses on Mary through the eyes of her cousin, Queen Elizabeth I. Premiering at the Edinburgh festival in August, the show, which directors hope will challenge audiences, will have male and female dancers of all ages taking on a range of fluid roles.

💤 The 27 best hotels in Edinburgh

Hyped hospitality outpost Boxpark has stumbled upon a winning formula: good food, good booze and live sport beamed on massive screens. With a smattering of venues around London and one in Liverpool, the Boxpark team have now turned their sights to Brum, planning to set up shop in the trendy Digbeth. Boxpark Birmingham will pack the same punch as its well-loved predecessors: revolving street food vendors, plenty of cocktails and its signature mix of music and entertainment. All of that will be packed into a spacious 17,000-square-foot warehouse, located under the Floodgate Street Arches. 

🍻 The 14 best pubs in Birmingham

Sauna culture is really having a moment right now, and the hottest new opening is in Liverpool: the UK’s first ever public floating sauna, which opened in November 2024. Wyld Sauna combines open-water swimming in the dock with a sweaty detox, consisting of a 30-person sauna, waterfall showers, four ice baths and changing rooms. Sessions start from £5 an hour, too, so you can chill out on the cheap. 

🏠 The 13 best Airbnbs in Liverpool

Arriving just in time for Bradford to be named the 2025 City of Culture, the Yorkshire city’s massive museum is re-opening after a mega year-long renovation. The new and improved National Science and Media Museum will open its doors on January 8 with a very festive sounding Wallace & Gromit-themed extravaganza, followed by a David Hockney exhibition on January 15. Having undergone a ‘once-in-a-generation’ £6 million glow-up, the museum will now have two new permanent galleries. It will also see the return of the well-loved café, a redesigned gift shop and the re-opening of the IMAX screen.

What’s so special about London hosting the Grand Sumo Tournament in October 2025, you might be asking? Well, this will be the second time any Sumo competition has ever taken place outside of Japan, so it’s a pretty big deal. The last time the massive five-day wrestling comp happened overseas was in 1991, when the Royal Albert Hall took it on. At the time, a strengthened stage had to be built, and specialist soil was imported. 34 years later it will return to the London arena, as 40 of Japan’s elite sumos will compete in the Kensington venue to be crowned the 2025 Sumo champion. Exciting stuff.

🛌 The 106 best hotels in London

The legendary South by Southwest (SXSW) festival will host its inaugural UK edition in June, which is going to be massive. The mammoth festival, born in Austin, Texas, showcases ‘the convergence of tech, film, music, education, and culture’, and past performers have included the likes of Johnny Cash, The White Stripes and Billie Eilish. The UK edition will feature 78 music events across 20 east London venues, including Shoreditch Town Hall and Village Underground, as well as 250 film screenings (including international premieres) and 420 conference sessions diving into the most pressing issues in business, tech and more. Exciting stuff.

🚶The 20 best things to do in Shoreditch

First we had the phenomenal performance of the Lionesses in the 2022 Euros, now it’s time to get excited about the Red Roses, AKA England’s women’s rugby team. The Women’s Rugby World Cup will be hosted by England next summer for the first time since 2010; the action will unfold at stadiums around the country throughout August and September, with the grand final taking place at Twickenham on September 27. England are currently favourites to win the whole thing, relishing a 20-match winning streak at the moment. If they do pull it off, it’s likely to be unbelievable scenes here in Old Blighty.

Folkstone’s quaint funicular has been closed for what feels like forever, but not for much longer. At some point TBC in 2025 we will see the grand reopening of the red and white hillside Leas Lift that looks like it’s been taken right out of a Wes Anderson movie. The Grade II-listed railway was built back in 1885 and is one of just eight water balance lifts in the whole UK – and while it stopped operating in 2017, it will emerge fully primed and preened from its £6.6 million makeover. It will return with improved accessibility, an upgraded waiting room, new café, outdoor terrace and exhibition detailing the lift’s history.

🌊 The 15 best things to do in Kent

We had this on our list for 2024, but as it turns out, creating a 2,700 mile long footpath is actually a pretty big job – so 2025 it is. After opening more of the King Charles III Coast Path in phases across 2024, the entire trail is finally going to be completed at some point in the new year, looping all the way around the English coast by linking up old time walking routes and freshly made new trails. The first stretch, in Kent and East Sussex, launched in July 2016, so you could say it’s been a long time coming. 

🏔️ 11 of the most breathtaking hikes in the UK

If you’re making the trip to the Scottish highlands, you could do a lot worse than paying a visit to the revamped Inverness Castle, which is due to open in summer and promises to bring Scotland’s history to life via an ‘interactive journey’. You’ll be guided by a ‘seanchaidh’, the gaelic word for a storyteller, who will lead you through various rooms to uncover more than 100 Highland stories, myths and legends. The castle, comprising of two buildings dating from the early 1800s, sits on the banks of the River Ness, and is a pretty majestic beast itself.

🏞️ The 11 best beaches in Scotland to visit 

Get ready for Newcastle’s largest outdoor festival to date: Come Together, taking place at Newcastle Town Moor in June. With a capacity of 45,000, this exciting five-day event will kick off with pop icon Robbie Williams headlining the first day. The stellar line-up also features the Kaiser Chiefs, former Little Mix member Perrie Edwards, plus rising stars Nell Mescal and Andrew Cushin. But it’s promising to be more than just music. Come Together will also celebrate the rich culture and community of the northeastern city, featuring local food vendors and immersive art installations.

🍴 The 21 best restaurants in Newcastle

I’m a huge fan of Radiohead’s somewhat underrated 2003 album Hail to the Thief. I’m also a huge fan of Shakespeare’s very much not underrated 1601 tragedy Hamlet. I did not expect the twain to ever meet in any significant way, but the universe had other plans and 2025 will see the debut of Hamlet Hail to the Thief, a collaboration between the RSC, Radiohead’s Thom Yorke and Factory International (where it will debut from April 27 until May 18, before heading to Stratford-upon-Avon from June 4 to 28). Quite how it’s going to really work is very much TBC: Shakespeare and Yorke don’t exactly have complimentary lyrical styles. But even if it doesn’t entirely click, who cares? The chance to hear Where You End and I Begin performed live in a theatre, hung off the greatest play ever written, is sure to have something to it.

🍔 The 27 best restaurants in Manchester right now

Folkestone’s rep as an awesome destination for art isn’t new; the coastal Kent town is now well-established as a magnet for artists and galleries – which makes the return of Folkestone Triennial from July to October 2025 even more tantalising. Under the helm of new director Sorcha Carey, the sixth triennial will see Folkestone’s public spaces filled with art all about the town’s geology and geography. A host of UK and international artists will dive back 6,000 years and link Folkestone’s ancient past with contemporary issues, with the results displayed in one huge four-month show.

🎨 The 9 most amazing sculpture parks across the UK

We love a train here at Time Out. And it just so happens that 2025 is a big year for trains. This year marks the 200th anniversary of the modern railway, and Britain is going ham on celebrations. Not only is York’s National Railway Museum reopening Station Hall, a former goods shed now hosting locomotive exhibitions, after years of renovations – there will also be Stockton and Darlington Railway’s inaugural S&DR200 festival, offering all sorts of free, trainy things to do across nine months from March 29.

🚂 The UK’s 12 most beautiful train stations

The past 12 months saw UK tours by everyone from Taylor Swift and Olivia Rodrigo to Sam Fender and Bruce Springsteen – and it seems the next 12 months will somehow get even bigger. We’ve got the Oasis reunion, sure, but 2025 will also see massive tours from the likes of Billie Eilish, Dua Lipa, Coldplay, Robbie Williams, Sabrina Carpenter and Lana Del Rey. I was on the ground reviewing Coldplay and Dua Lipa at Glastonbury for Time Out in 2024 – believe me, you do not want to miss ’em.

If you fancy yourself as a bit of a history buff, you’re probably going to want to take note about Corfe Castle in Dorset: the tower built for King Henry’s ‘luxurious personal quarters’ has opened to the public for the very first time since the English Civil War in 1646 thanks to a National Trust conservation project. The structure, built by William the Conqueror in the 11th century, now has a viewing platform where visitors will be able to access the former royal living quarters for the first time and gaze out over sweeping views of the Purbeck countryside. Lush.

🏰 The 13 best castles to visit in the UK

If you enjoy the finer things in life, this one’s for you. Brought to you by the people behind the Royal Scotsman, The Britannic Explorer is a luxury sleeper train with an even more luxurious price tag, offering three-day itineraries from the capital to Cornwall, the Lakes and as far afield as Wales. From July, riders will get the chance to hop on and explore a list of idyllic locations including St Ives, Penzance, Porthmadog and Ribblehead Viaduct in North Yorkshire – but the real fun is in the journey rather than the destination. Boasting a spa, menu from a Michelin-starred chef and butler service all on board, perhaps its eye-watering £11,000 a night price tag is pretty reasonable after all.

🛤️ The 11 most scenic train journeys in the UK

This is the year it finally happens. After years of teasing and a pushed-back opening date, 2025 is the year Guinness’s huge 50,000-square-foot, £73 million London venue is definitely (well, hopefully: the exact date hasn’t been confirmed yet) opening its doors to the public. Old Brewer's Yard in Covent Garden promises event spaces, a 360-degree rooftop, a restaurant, a merch shop and, most important of all, a micro-brewery pumping out new brews and the city’s freshest Guinness. 

🍻 The 50 best pubs in London

Although Jane Austen didn’t write any of her novels in Southampton, she did live there, and drew a load of inspiration from the port city. That’s why 2025 will see Southampton host the Jane Austen 250 celebrations, kicking off with an exhibition of her travelling desk at God’s House Tower until February 23, in addition to the launch of a heritage walking trail around locations such as the Dolphin Hotel, where she once danced in the ballroom. More events will be happening all year, so keep an eye out.

⛪ The 8 best things to do in Southampton

Bradford is the next UK City of Culture, which means a year of events spanning the arts and a nice bit of investment from the government for future-looking projects. A load of events have already been announced, and they’re pretty good: a brass weekender with a closing show from London octect Kokoroko, a drawing project backed by David Hockney, an immersive sound walk over the moors, an exhibition of ice age art and film screenings exploring queer culture in the north. Proper eclectic stuff – and they also offer a Youth Pass for West Yorkshire locals under 25, with cheap tickets, priority booking and more.