What’s on in London this week: 16 - 22 February 2026
Discover our pick of events in London this week: 16 - 22 February 2026.
Ryoji Ikeda Weekend
Ryoji Ikeda will take over the Barbican this weekend, presenting a programme of acoustic compositions that translate his internationally acclaimed work in sound and visuals into live performances. Known for exploring the fundamental properties of sound and light with mathematical precision and aesthetics, Ikeda orchestrates instruments, ensembles, materials, and physical phenomena into immersive experiences. Performances will feature Ensemble Modern, Solem Quartet, the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, and percussionists Alexandre Babel, Stéphane Garin, Julien Garin, and Amélie Grould.
Click here for the full weekend programme.
Date: 20 – 21 February 2026. Location: Barbican Centre, Silk Street, London, EC2Y 8DS. Price: from £20. Concessions available.
Ryoji Ikeda: music for strings. Image courtesy of the Barbican Centre.
In the Round: 99CHANTS
Taking place this week as part of the ICA’s February In the Round series, 99CHANTS, the label founded by David August, returns for a special live showcase. The event features August alongside sound artist Haedong Lee and olfactory artist Yidan Kim, who together explore the ritualistic origins of art through immersive sound and scent, designed to evoke expanded awareness and transitional states of consciousness. Presented in-the-round, all sets will make full use of the venue’s cutting-edge 360° d&b Soundscape system, with additional guests still to be announced!
Date: 21 February 2026. Location: ICA, The Mall, St. James’s, London SW1Y 5AH. Price: £26.50 (including DICE fees + £1.50 venue levy). Book now
Mosaic Rooms reopens
Mosaic Rooms reopens on 18 February 2026 as an independent organisation led by Pip Day, launching a new chapter for the London cultural space. The programme opens with the UK solo debut of French-Moroccan artist Bouchra Khalili’s Circles and Storytellers, alongside Dima Srouji’s permanent stained-glass commission Four Moons from Home. New and expanded spaces include The Salon, a fully accessible Play Room, an enlarged Bookshop, the Sound Capsule radio project, and a redesigned Garden with an amphitheatre. The reopening begins a 2026 programme of festivals, talks, performances, and participatory projects, reinforcing Mosaic Rooms as a hub for contemporary Arab art and cultural exchange.
Reopening: 18 February 2026. Location: Mosaic Rooms, Tower House, 226 Cromwell Road, London SW5 0SW. mosaicrooms.org
The Circle still, Bouchra Khalili, courtesy of the artist
FAC51 The Haçienda
This weekend, Drumsheds London hosts FAC51 The Haçienda, celebrating the legacy of the legendary Manchester club with a multi‑room electronic music experience. Featuring a star‑studded line‑up including Groove Armada (DJ set), Deep Dish, Roger Sanchez, Todd Terry, Inner City, Danny Tenaglia, Kevin Saunderson, Josh Wink, Satoshi Tomiie, and more. The Haçienda Classical room offers orchestral reinterpretations of classic dance tracks, while vocal legends such as Alison Limerick, CeCe Rogers, and Robert Owens perform live. Other rooms showcase pioneering UK DJs like Greg Wilson, Graeme Park, Jon Dasilva, and David Holmes, alongside sets from Peter Hook, Justin Robertson, James Holroyd, and DJ Paulette. It will be an all‑day celebration of house, techno and classic club culture!
Date: 21 February 2026. Time: 1 pm – 11 pm (last entry 5 pm). Location: Drumsheds, 6 Glover Drive, London, N18 3HF (entrance via Meridian Way). Price: from £29.50 + booking fees. Book now.
Kingdom of the Sick: The Architecture and Topography of Disease
Barbican continues their Architecture on Stage series with Kingdom of the Sick: The Architecture and Topography of Disease, featuring architect Andrea Bagnato and journalist Oliver Basciano examining how disease has influenced colonisation, segregation, and stigma. They discuss the role of architects, planners, and health experts in shaping responses to illness. Bagnato presents his book Terra Infecta (MACK), exploring how modern sanitation transformed Italy’s urban and rural landscapes, including Venice’s wetlands and urban renewal in Naples and Matera, while highlighting moments of community and resilience. Basciano discusses Outcast (Faber & Faber), tracing leprosy from Romania to northern Mozambique and revealing how nineteenth-century myths contributed to the mistreatment of patients.
Date: 19 February 2026. Time: 7pm. Location: Frobisher Auditorium 1 Level 4, Barbican Centre, Silk Street, London, EC2Y 8DS. Price: £15. Concessions available. Book now
Midnight – A New Original Musical by Todrick Hall
MIDNIGHT: A New Original Musical by Todrick Hall
Internationally acclaimed artist Todrick Hall brings his bold new original musical Midnight back to London. Set in America’s South during the nineteenth century, Midnight is a sweeping, sung-through story of love, conflict, and empathy, with a score spanning gospel, rhythm and blues, classical, pop, rock, opera, folk, and musical theatre. Through its soaring music and powerful drama, the show explores humanity and understanding, encouraging audiences to imagine life through another’s eyes. The cast features Todrick Hall as Rail alongside Jeremy Beloate, Rachel Webb, Maia Gough, Ayana George, Rachel Tucker, Marisha Wallace, Charlotte Jaconelli, Ahmed Hamad, Isaac J Lewis, Nick Rashad Burroughs, George Maguire, Brandon Lee Sears, and a talented ensemble.
Date: 20 February – 8 March 2026. Location: Sadler’s Wells, Rosebery Avenue, London EC1R 4TN. Price: £15 + £4 Fee. Book now
anyone can dance w/Eastern Margins @nickcheo + KOLLIN + Jianbo + MEYY
anyone can dance kicks off at the Barbican’s ClubStage with Eastern Margins, the UK collective celebrating alternative East and South-East Asian (ESEA) culture. This late-night party series brings together underground club sounds from across the ESEA diaspora, featuring bedroom-DJ @nickcheo, Seoul’s Bass Queen KOLLIN, and local artists Jianbo and MEYY. Founded in 2018, Eastern Margins curates a mix of J-Pop, hyperpop, techno, rap, pop-punk, jazz, grime, and more, creating a space where diaspora and local communities connect through music, building on the energy of their Margins United festival.
Date: 20 February 2026. Location: ClubStage, Level -1, Barbican, Barbican Centre, Silk Street, London, EC2Y 8DS. Price: £17 + BF. Concessions available. Book now
Barbican’s anyone can dance is a new series of late-night parties kick off this week.
This Grief Thing pop-up
Fevered Sleep’s This Grief Thing pop-up shop is in its final week at the Barbican Studio, running until 22 February 2026. The installation transforms the studio into an interactive space for exploring grief, featuring items designed to spark reflection and conversation, all available on a Pay What You Want basis. Visitors can also join small group Grief Gatherings, hosted by co-artistic directors David Harradine and Sam Butler, to share experiences and discuss cultural rituals around loss. Part of the Barbican’s Scene Change programme, the project continues Fevered Sleep’s 30-year tradition of creating experimental arts experiences outside traditional theatre spaces.
Date: 15 – 21 February 2026. Location: Barbican Centre, Level G Studio, Silk Street, London EC2Y 8DS. Price: Free (shop collection Pay What You Want). Book now
Cinema
Artist’s Film Picks : Laura Lima
As part of the ICA’s Artist’s Film Picks and coinciding with Laura Lima’s exhibition The Drawing Drawing, this curated selection of Brazilian films includes the silent experimental feature Limite (1931) by Mário Peixoto, which follows a man and two women lost at sea as their memories unfold in poetic flashbacks, inspired by a photograph by André Kertész. The selection also features Um Filme para Ehuana (2018) by Louise Botkay, a sensitive portrait of Yanomami leader Ehuana, and O Túmulo da Terra (2021) by Yhuri Cruz, a fable exploring Black Brazilian history and identity.
Date: 22 February 2026. Location: ICA, The Mall, St. James’s, London SW1Y 5AH, Price: £14. Concessions available. Book now
Limite, dir. Mário Peixoto, Brazil 1931, 120 min
Arts & Culture
Opening this week
Chiharu Shiota: Threads of Life
Threads of Life presents an exhibition of large-scale installations by Chiharu Shiota, filling the Hayward Gallery with intricate web-like structures made from woollen thread. Enveloping everyday objects such as shoes, keys, beds and dresses, the works explore themes of the body, memory, consciousness and the fragility of existence. Drawing on personal experience while addressing shared human concerns around life, death and relationships, the exhibition also includes new sculptures, drawings, early performance videos and photographs. Shiota’s installations respond directly to the Hayward Gallery’s brutalist architecture, creating an atmospheric environment that includes new iterations of her monumental works, with selected installations activated by live performances during the exhibition’s run.
Date: 17 February – 3 May 2026. Location: Hayward Gallery, Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, London SE1 8XX. Price: £19 / Members free. Book now
Shiota, Breathing from Earth, 2000 Performance/Installation: metal beds, bedding, black wool Kunstraum Maximilianstrasse, Stadtforum München, Munich, Germany. Image credit by Sabine Klem
Conceptual Art and Christine Kozlov
Conceptual Art and Christine Kozlov explores Kozlov’s influential yet often overlooked role in the development of Conceptual Art from the mid-1960s to the late 1970s. The exhibition showcases her objects, ideas, and collaborations with artists such as On Kawara, Joseph Kosuth, and Art & Language, highlighting her dematerialised, politically engaged approach to art-making and her international impact, including her later work in the UK.
Date: 19 February–26 April 2026. Location: Raven Row, 56 Artillery Lane, London E1 7LS. Price: Free. ravenrow.org
Christine Kozlov, Self-Portraits (detail), 1968–70 © Christine Kozlov Estate Photo: Chloe Page
Dana-Fiona Armour: Serpentine Currents – Fragments of a Changing Future
A courtyard installation returns to Somerset House this week as Dana-Fiona Armour’s Serpentine Currents – Fragments of a Changing Future opens. The work combines sculpture, responsive light, and ocean data to highlight the changing conditions of the world’s oceans and fragile ecosystems. Suspended above the Edmond J. Safra Fountain Court, the LED-lit sculpture of the endangered sea snake Aipysurus fuscus shifts with sea temperature and salinity, creating a moving, data-driven reflection on environmental change and our relationship with the natural world.
Date: 19 February – 26 April 2026. Location: Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 1LA. Price: Free. somersethouse.org.uk
Dana-Fiona Armour’s Serpentine Currents – Fragments of a Changing Future. image courtesy of Somerset House.
Daphne Wright: Expectations
Daphne Wright’s exhibition Expectations opens at Frith Street Gallery. Known for her multi-narrative sculptural practice, Wright works with materials including tinfoil, plaster, unfired clay, sound, and video to explore human preoccupations, the passage of time, and the boundaries between childhood and adulthood, life and death. The show features new works including Sons and Couch (2025), a Jesmonite installation capturing her children on the cusp of adulthood, continuing a series that began in 2011. Fragile unfired clay works like Fridge Still Life (2021) reflect intimate domestic spaces, while wall-based sculptures of animals reflect on childhood imagination, transforming everyday objects and memories into nuanced, contemplative forms.
Date: 19 February – 18 April 2026. Location: Frith Street Gallery, 17-18 Golden Square, London W1F 9JJ. Price: Free.
Daphne Wright, Sons and Couch, 2025 (detail), 2025. Credit: Jed Niezgoda
Last chance to see
Wayne McGregor: Infinite Bodies
This weekend is your final chance to experience Wayne McGregor: Infinite Bodies at Somerset House, closing on 22 February 2026. The exhibition celebrates the 30-year career of Sir Wayne McGregor, exploring the future of the human body and identity through dance. Combining choreography with AI, robotics, and motion capture, it features immersive, multi-sensory installations, new commissions, and live activations by his world-class dance company.
Date: 30 October 2025 - 22 February 2026. Location: Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 1LA.Price: Under 25s: £10, full price from £19.50. Book now
Wayne McGregor's FAR, Company Wayne McGregor (Catarina Carvalho), 2010, Photo Ravi Deepres.
#FLOFavourites: Pick of the Week
Free event of the week
Giant Chalkboard
Children and families can get creative with the Giant Chalkboards at the Southbank Cente.
Children and families are invited to get creative with the Giant Chalkboard, scribbling, doodling, and drawing to their heart’s content. It is part of the Southbank Centre’s Imagine Festival for kids.
Date: 13 February – 21 February 2026. Location: Queen Elizabeth Hall Foyer, Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, London, SE1 8XX. Price: Free – no ticket required. Book now
Interview of the week
In conversation with Dr Georgina Portelli, Vice Chair of Malta International Contemporary Arts Space (MICAS)
Dr Georgina Portelli. Vice Chair, MICAS (Malta International Contemporary Arts Space). Image credit Lourdes Photography
We spoke with Dr Georgina Portelli, Vice Chair of Malta International Contemporary Arts Space (MICAS), about the vision behind Malta’s major new contemporary art institution. Set within the historic Floriana bastions near Valletta, MICAS marks a significant moment for the island’s cultural landscape.
A long-time advocate for a national contemporary art museum, Dr Portelli shared insights into the institution’s development and its ambitions for Malta’s cultural future.
Click here for our full interview.
Food of the week
Gold Mine
Image courtesy of Gold Mine
With Chinese New Year on 17 February 2026, Gold Mine is the perfect place to celebrate. The restaurant is renowned for its authentic Cantonese cuisine, including signature dishes such as roast duck, dim sum, and traditional noodles. Its lively atmosphere and warm, inviting setting make it an ideal spot to enjoy a seriously good festive meal with friends or family. You won’t be disappointed!
Location: 100-102 Queensway, Bayswater, W2 3RR and 45 Wardour Street, Chinatown, W1D 6PZ. Website: goldminerestaurant.com. Instagram: @goldminerestaurant
Cause of the week
Heath Hands
Heath Hands
Heath Hands is the charity dedicated to caring for and enhancing some of North London’s most treasured green spaces, including Hampstead Heath, Highgate Wood, and the Kenwood Estate. They work to maintain these areas for both people and wildlife, running a wide range of conservation, education, and community engagement programmes. Volunteering with Heath Hands offers numerous ways to get involved, from practical conservation and gardening tasks, wildlife interpretation, and ecological monitoring, to leading community and youth activities, supporting walking programmes, or assisting with office and administrative work. No prior experience is required, as full guidance and training are provided, and volunteers are asked to commit roughly once a month. Drop‑in opportunities such as litter picking and light gardening are also available, welcoming people of all ages, including children with a responsible adult.
Click here to become a volunteer.
