What's on in London this week: 19 - 25 October 2026
Discover our pick of events in London this week: 19 - 25 October 2026.
British Summer Time ends and the clocks go back an hour at 2am on Sunday 25 October 2026. Sunset comes an hour earlier from Sunday evening onwards.
London Literature Festival
The Southbank Centre's annual festival of writing and spoken word. Dua Lipa is this year's guest curator and programmes her own Service95 Book Club weekend on 24 and 25 October, alongside readings, panels and performances across the site.
Date: 20 October - 1 November 2026. Location: Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, London SE1 8XX. Price: varies by event, with free events in the programme. Click here for the full programme of works.
Dua Lipa, curator of the London Literature Festival in the Southbank Centre's 75th year. Credit Madison Phipps.
Celebrating Free Thinkers
A six-day festival at the ICA marking The Independent's 40th anniversary, with screenings, conversations and cultural events bringing together voices from across film and culture.
Date: 20 - 25 October 2026. Location: ICA, The Mall, London SW1Y 5AH. Price: from £13. Click here for the full programme.
Bloomsbury Festival
The festival's 20th anniversary edition, with more than 150 events across over 40 venues, most of them free. Highlights this week include African Eye to the Sun, an African jazz fusion night at Holy Cross Church on 24 October, and New Wave Music: A Journey Through Ciudades, a free walk-in concert on 25 October.
Date: 1 - 31 October 2026. Location: venues across Bloomsbury, central London. Price: free and paid events. Visit bloomsburyfestival.org.uk to book.
Spiritland at the Barbican. Image credit Charlie McKay
Spiritland at the Barbican
The King's Cross listening bar opens a second London site in the Barbican's Lakeside Room, a 100-capacity space on Level 2 looking over the fountains, fitted with a bespoke Living Voice sound system and dressed with furniture by Tom Dixon. The programme covers jazz, soul, contemporary classical, ambient and electronica, with listening sessions, talks, tastings and supper clubs, and an album played in full every evening at 5pm. The bar menu is European and Japanese influenced, with brunch at weekends. The residency is temporary and closes at the end of July 2027.
Date: opens 20 October 2026, open six days a week. Location: Lakeside Room, Level 2, Barbican Centre, Silk Street, London EC2Y 8DS. Price: free entry, no ticket needed. Visit barbican.org.uk.
London City Ballet: Ghost Light and Firebird
A double bill at Sadler's Wells, with John Neumeier's Ghost Light performed outside Hamburg for the first time and a revival of Glen Tetley's Firebird. Both are UK premieres.
Date: 22 - 24 October 2026. Location: Sadler's Wells, Rosebery Avenue, London EC1R 4TN. Price: £15 + £4 transaction fee. Book now.
Firebird. Image credit ASH.
Carl Stone
The American composer, one of the earliest musicians to perform live with a computer, plays Café OTO, the Dalston room that has been the home of experimental music in London for nearly 20 years.
Date: 25 October 2026, 8pm. Location: Café OTO, 18 - 22 Ashwin Street, London E8 3DL. Price: from £15. Book now.
FABRICLIVE x Critical Sound
The Critical Music label takes over all three rooms at Fabric for a night of underground drum and bass and jungle. Room one has Simula, Skantia b2b SMG, Kyra st b2b VISLA, En:vy, Sabrina and Sequent. Room two has Kasra b2b Samurai Breaks, QZB, Waeys b2b Gino, Amoss, Autopski and a special guest set from Dub Phizix. Room three has Sully, Ruffhouse, Spectral and Rotate, hosted by MC GQ, SP:MC, Jakes, Mantmåst, Sydney Bryce, Limmz and LX One. Several ticket tiers have already gone.
Date: 23 October 2026, 11pm - 6am. Location: Fabric, 77a Charterhouse Street, London EC1M 6HJ. Price: from £15 plus booking fee for entry before 11.30pm, later tiers higher. Book. Book now
Isabel Adomakoh Young (Orlando), Nina Bowers (Rosalind), and Macy-Jacob Seelochan (Celia). Image credit Ellie Kurttz.
As You Like It
The last week of Shakespeare's Globe's summer season, in the open-air playhouse before it closes for the winter. Sean Holmes and Charlie Josephine co-direct, with Josephine also playing Orlando and music direction by Katie Richardson. The Globe's Much Ado About Nothing is also on to 24 October if you want to make a pair of it.
Date: until 25 October 2026. Location: Globe Theatre, 21 New Globe Walk, Bankside, London SE1 9DT. Price: standing £5 and £10, seated galleries £29 - £89 including fees. Book now.
at the cinema
My Father's Shadow
Lakin Ogunbanwo/BBC Films
Akinola Davies Jr.'s debut feature is set over a single day in Lagos in 1993. Two young brothers, Akin and Remi, spend a rare day out in the city with their largely absent father Folarin, played by Sope Dirisu, while Nigeria waits on the results of a contested presidential election. Co-written with his brother Wale Davies, it was the first Nigerian film in the official selection at Cannes and won Outstanding Debut at the 2026 BAFTAs. 12A, 93 minutes.
Date: Monday 19 October, 18:40. Location: Rio Cinema, 107 Kingsland High Street, London E8 2PB. Price: £7 standard, £6 concession. Book now
Akinola Davies Jr. presents Belly and Rockers
Rockers is the 1978 Jamaican film in which reggae musicians including Leroy "Horsemouth" Wallace play versions of themselves.
Akinola Davies Jr. returns to the Rio on Wednesday 21 October as its Rio Forever guest curator for one night only, his first time programming at the cinema. He has chosen a double bill of films led by musicians, Belly and Rockers, and introduces both, with Zain Gibson hosting. Belly is Hype Williams's 1998 thriller starring DMX and Nas, at 18:30, and Rockers is the 1978 Jamaican film in which reggae musicians including Leroy "Horsemouth" Wallace play versions of themselves, at 20:50. Tickets are sold separately and booking one gets the other half price. The night forms part of Rio Forever, the season marking 50 years of the Rio as a community run cinema, which ends on 31 October, and follows earlier guest appearances from Rose Glass, Ben Whishaw and Jarvis Cocker.
Date: Wednesday 21 October, Belly at 18:30 and Rockers at 20:50. Location: Rio Cinema, 107 Kingsland High Street, London E8 2PB
Price: £11.50 standard, £9.50 concession. Book now.
Arts & Culture
Exhibition openings
Freddie Mercury | Splendid Things
A free trail through the V&A's permanent galleries bringing together eight of Mercury's looks, created with Mary Austin, his former fiancée and friend of 20 years, who has lent seven of them. The Mercury Wing catsuit, the crown and cloak from the Magic Tour in 1986 and the outfit from the Made in Heavenvideo are included, alongside accessories and pieces from his personal wardrobe and a monochrome outfit he wore as a student at Imperial College. The display is designed by Tom Piper, who also did the V&A's Taylor Swift trail, and is laid out across six stops rather than in a single room. It marks what would have been his 80th birthday year.
Date: 24 October 2026 - 17 January 2027, 10am - 5.45pm. Location: V&A South Kensington, Cromwell Road, London SW7 2RL. Price: free, no ticket needed. vam.ac.uk
Freddie Mercury in the Made in Heaven music video. Photography by Simon Fowler © Mercury Songs Ltd
Hokusai: Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji from the Iuchi Collection
Hokusai: Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji from the Iuchi Collection opens at Dulwich Picture Gallery on 20 October, bringing together the complete series by Katsushika Hokusai in the UK for the first time. Hokusai made the prints between 1830 and 1833, when he was in his seventies, and the series sold well enough that the publisher commissioned ten further designs beyond the original thirty-six. All 46 are on show, lent from the Iuchi Collection, a private collection held on deposit at the National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo and known for the condition of its early impressions. The display includes an impression of Under the Wave off Kanagawa, known as The Great Wave, and a rare variant of Clear Day with a Southern Breeze, known as Blue Fuji.
Date: 20 October 2026 - 17 January 2027, Tuesday to Sunday 10am - 5pm, closed Mondays. Location: Dulwich Picture Gallery, Gallery Road, London SE21 7AD. Price: adults from £21.50 with donation, members free. Book now.
Katsushika Hokusai, Clear Day with a Southern Breeze ('Red Fuji'), from the series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, c. 1830 - 33, 25.6 x 37.6 cm, colour woodblock. The Iuchi Collection, on deposit at the National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo. Photo by Norihiro Ueno.
two we would send you to
Salman Toor: Someone Like You
The New York painter's first solo museum show in Europe, around 20 paintings on queer and immigrant life, with a companion display of drawings.
Date: 2 October 2026 - 10 January 2027. Location: Denise Coates Exhibition Galleries, Floor 3, Courtauld Gallery, Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 0RN. Price: from £16 including the permanent collection, members and under-18s free. Book: courtauld.ac.uk
Salman Toor (b. 1983), The Bar on East 13th, 2019, Oil on panel, 36 x 48 inches, 91.4 x 121.9 cm. © Salman Toor; Courtesy of the artist, Luhring Augustine, New York, and Thomas Dane Gallery.
Pope.L: Selected Works: 1978–2022
A survey of the late American artist, who died in 2023, and his second solo show with the gallery. Performance, video, installation, sculpture, painting and drawing, including the last large-scale painting he made, and a screening room carrying several of the performances he was best known for.
Date: 13 October - 14 November 2026, Tuesday to Saturday 10am - 6pm. Location: Modern Art, 8 Bennet Street, London SW1A 1RP. Price: free. modernart.net
Installation view, Selected Works: 1978–2022, Pope.L. Image credit MTotoe. Courtesy of FLOLondon.
Exhibitions closing soon
Richard Dadd: Beyond Bedlam
Last chance to see the first major retrospective of the Victorian painter in over 50 years, with around 100 works. Dadd killed his father in 1843 and spent the next 42 years in Bethlem and then Broadmoor, where he made most of the work he is known for, including The Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke. Click here for our review.
Date: 25 July - 25 October 2026, Tuesday to Sunday 10am - 6pm, Fridays to 9pm, closed Mondays. Location: Royal Academy of Arts, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London W1J 0BD. Price: £15, free for Friends of the RA and under-16s. Book now.
Richard Dadd, Contradiction. Oberon and Titania, 1854-58. Oil on canvas. 61x75.5cm. Private Collection. Image credit David Parmiter.
Endless Frieze: Become Part of the Art
The London street artist Endless, represented by Cris Contini Contemporary and Indelible Fine Art, fills the gallery with a single large frieze built from wooden panels, taking its imagery from the streets, buildings and people of Notting Hill around it. The work was left unfinished at the opening and completed live in the gallery on 16 October, when people who came were photographed so elements of their faces could be worked into the panels. It is the latest of his exhibitions on consumer culture, identity and contemporary worship.
Date: 12 - 31 October 2026. Location: Cris Contini Contemporary, 1 Lonsdale Road, London W11 2BY. Price: free.
Image courtesy of Cris Contini Contemporary.
Talks
Staging Freddie
Textile designers Wendy de Smet and Diana Moseley on how Mercury's most recognisable looks were made, from the Mercury Wing catsuit to the crown he asked to be a real one. Part of the public programme around the V&A's Freddie Mercury trail.
Date: 23 October 2026. Location: V&A South Kensington, Cromwell Road, London SW7 2RL. Price: £15 - £20 in person, currently sold out, livestream £8. Book now
Museum late
Friday Lates at the National Gallery
The gallery stays open until 9pm with a programme around the rooms. On 23 October that includes The Living Pictures, a live performance piece by Tom Lovelace made with the Royal College of Art, drop-in drawing with Camberwell Fine Art from 6.15pm, a free concert by pianist Karim Kamar on the theme of the love song, and a ticketed talk on Monet's letters.
Date: 23 October 2026, from 5.30pm. Location: National Gallery, Trafalgar Square, London WC2N 5DN. Price: free, with some ticketed talks from £8. Book now.
Photo © Hydar Dewachi
#FLOFavourites: Pick of the Week
Free event of the week
This Must Be the Place: Artists for Whitechapel Gallery
An exhibition and sale put together with artists and their galleries to mark the Whitechapel's 125th anniversary, with the proceeds going back into the gallery's programme.
Date: 8 October - 8 November 2026. Location: Whitechapel Gallery, 77 - 82 Whitechapel High Street, London E1 7QX. Price: free. whitechapelgallery.org
Simone Kennedy Doig studio. Courtesy of the artist. Photo © Eva Kennedy Doig, 2025
Interview of the week
In conversation with Guillaume Sardin
Guillaume Sardin, Wheely cabin at Frieze London, 2026. Image credit Callum Kettles.
Wheely, the luxury services company and Official VIP Chauffeur Partner of Frieze, has unveiled its first artist collaboration for the fair with French artist Guillaume Sardin. At the entrance of Regent's Park, right outside Frieze London, Wheely's 30sqm pavilion is a space to relax and recharge, built around Sardin's commissioned oil triptych The Course of the Sun. We spoke with Sardin at the fair about the work and the references behind it.
Click here to read the full interview.
Food of the week
Bubala Covent Garden
Proposed design for Bubala Covent Garden. Image courtesy of Bubala.
The fourth and largest site from Marc Summers' vegetarian Middle Eastern group, in a Grade II listed building on Garrick Street in the old Lima Cantina space. Around 60 covers on the ground floor, a 32-seat dining room downstairs and 30 outdoor seats looking onto Floral Street. The opening comes with a price cut of almost 20 per cent on the Bubala Knows Best set menu across all four restaurants.
Date: opens 19 October 2026, Monday to Saturday 12pm - 11.15pm, Sunday 12pm - 9.15pm. Location: 14 Garrick Street, Covent Garden, London WC2E 9BJ. bubala.co.uk
Cause of the week
The Listening Place
The Listening Place gives free, confidential, face to face support by appointment to people who feel life is no longer worth living, across four London sites in Pimlico, King's Cross, Hammersmith and near Liverpool Street. Listening Volunteers do a four-hour shift once a fortnight and commit to a year. Helping Volunteers greet people and keep the place warm, with a six-month minimum. No experience needed, since they train you.
Visit listeningplace.org.uk to discover more about volunteering.
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