What's on in London this week: 21 - 27 September 2026
Discover our pick of events in London this week: 21 - 27 September 2026.
Music
Wigmore Hall: Autumn International Piano Festival
A major, roughly two-week celebration of pianism opens this week as part of Wigmore Hall's 2026/27 season, spotlighting international pianists from emerging talent to established names. Within the 21–27 September window, confirmed events include Barry Douglas performing Brahms, Mussorgsky and Tchaikovsky on Monday 21 September at 1pm, Tamara Stefanovich giving a solo recital that evening at 7.30pm, and a lunchtime recital of Bach, Messiaen and Rameau on Tuesday 22 September at 1pm. The festival runs through to 4 October, with further names including Jason Moran and Jeneba Kanneh-Mason set to preform. Click here for the full programme.
Date: From Mon 21 September 2026 (festival runs to 4 October). Location: Wigmore Hall, 36 Wigmore St, London W1U 2BP. Price: Lunchtime concerts typically £15–£20; evening recitals typically £15–£45.Book now.
Jeneba Kanneh-Mason. Image credit: © Johanna Berghorn
fabric x Sennheiser: The View From The Shard 2026 Series
Following last year's sold-out run, fabric has reunited with Sennheiser for a second series at The View From The Shard, five curated dates celebrating the two brands' shared focus on sound and innovation, each showcasing a different side of fabric's musical identity, with globally respected artists playing sunset sets 62 floors above London. The series opened with Sven Väth, one of electronic music's celebrated figures. Playing this week, Kölsch, the Danish producer known for melodic, emotive house and techno, with support from Kariina, already sold out, with a resale queue active on RA.
Date: Friday 25 September 2026. Location: The View From The Shard, London. Resale via RA.
Theatre
Electra/Persona
Benedict Andrews brings together Sophocles's Electra and Ingmar Bergman's Persona in a single evening at the National Theatre's Lyttelton stage. Cate Blanchett and Nina Hoss decide by coin toss before each performance which roles they will play, so the production shifts subtly night to night. Running time is two hours ten minutes with no interval. The show contains sexual content, violence and references to suicide.
Date: until 10 October 2026. Location: Lyttelton Theatre, National Theatre, South Bank, London SE1 9PX. Price: From around £25–£30 for previews, rising for the main run; £10 Friday Rush tickets released weekly. Book now.
Nina Hoss and Cate Blanchett. Photo by Monika Rittershaus.
for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf
Ntozake Shange's 1976 "choreopoem", a blend of poetry, music and movement charting Black womanhood through love, violence, grief and survival, returns to London for the first time in decades. The production opens the newly rebuilt Yard Theatre, directed by Diane Page, with an all-female company of five and a score by grime artist Jammz.
Date: until 17 October 2026. Location: Yard Theatre, Unit 2A, Queen's Yard, London E9 5EN (Hackney Wick). Price: £10–£38. Book now.
Books & Literary Events
The Booker Prize 2026 Shortlist Announcement
Get a behind-the-scenes look at the judging process for the world's most significant award for a single work of fiction. Chair Mary Beard and fellow judges Raymond Antrobus, Jarvis Cocker, Rebecca Liu and Patricia Lockwood will reveal and discuss the 2026 shortlist live on stage, in conversation with Booker Prize Foundation CEO Gaby Wood.
Date: Tuesday 22 September 2026, 7pm. Location: Queen Elizabeth Hall, Southbank Centre, London.Price: From £22 + £4 booking fee. Book now.
Neo Gilder for Booker Prize Foundation.
New Canons 2: Readings from Independent Publishers
A showcase of the UK's small-press and independent literary scene, spotlighting writers who push form and genre in interesting directions. The evening features readings and conversation from Colin Bramwell, Claire Carroll, Babak Ganjei, Hannah Levene, D Mortimer, Holly Pester, and Aea Varfis-van Warmelo, alongside the winner of the 2026 Brick Lane Bookshop Short Story Prize. Past editions of this ICA series have featured presses like Tenement Press, Prototype, and Worms Magazine, expect something experimental, closer to a literary salon than a standard bookshop talk.
Date: Wednesday 23 September 2026, 6.30pm. Location: Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), The Mall, London SW1Y 5AH. Price: Typically £5–£10. Book now.
On The Bus Without A Phone by Babak Ganjei.
MixTape Poetry Festival
The flagship day of a five-day festival built to bring together London's grassroots open-mic and spoken-word communities. The day includes an open stage, where members of the public can sign up alongside booked poets, with live music from resident DJ Mike Funk, food vendors, creative workshops and stalls from independent presses.
Date: 26 September 2026.Location: Woolwich Works, No. 1 Street, Royal Arsenal, Woolwich, London SE18 6ST. Price:£22 adult / £19 student & concession / £12 child (7–17) / free under 7.Book now.
Barnes BookFest
A weekend-long literary festival in southwest London covering fiction, history, politics, economics, art and music, more "grown-up talks festival" than fringe or experimental. Highlights include William Boyd on his new Cold War spy novel Cold Sunset, Sebastian Faulks on Farewell to Eden, and Sajid Javid discussing his memoir The Colour of Home, alongside Andrew Graham-Dixon on Vermeer, Antony Beevor on Rasputin, Vince Cable on shifting global power, and Tim Rice on his career in music and theatre.
Date: 25 – Sunday 27 September 2026.Location:Barnes, southwest London, including St Mary's Barnes (Church Rd, SW13 9HL) and Barnes Green Centre.Price:varies by session. barnesbookfest.org
Libreria Bookshop to host Typographia on Saturday 26 August. Image credit FLO London/ MTotoe
Typographia: A Modern Fair for Print Culture
A one-day fair celebrating independent print and publishing culture, this one's for browsing rather than listening. More than 60 publishers, magazines and independent creative projects will have stalls, spanning poetry pamphlets, zines, art books and small-press fiction.
Date: 26 September 2026, 10am–10pm. Location: Libreria bookshop, 65 Hanbury Street, London E1 5JP. Price: Free entry. libreria.io
Cinema
The Colour of Lies (Au cœur du mensonge)
Claude Chabrol's 1999 film, showing at BFI Southbank, follows a small Breton coastal town where a young girl is murdered and suspicion lands on a local painter with a volatile temperament and a shaky alibi. Rather than a whodunit, it's a study of how a community turns on itself, comparisons to Vinterberg's The Hunt are apt, though Chabrol's focus stays on the social poison rather than the mystery. Starring Sandrine Bonnaire, Jacques Gamblin and Antoine de Caunes; Certificate 15, contains scenes of harm toward children and rape.
Date: 26 September, 15:00 (Screen NFT3); also 4 October, 15:10 (Screen NFT2).Location: BFI Southbank, Belvedere Road, London SE1 8XT. Price: £12.70–£14.50. Book now.
The Colour of Lies (Au cœur du mensonge) on show at BFI Southbank this weekend.
Art & Culture
Amar Kanwar
A major solo exhibition by the New Delhi-based artist and filmmaker, transforming the whole of Serpentine North into a meditative visual and sonic environment. The show presents a trilogy of films: the feature-length Such a Morning (2017), the multi-screen installation The Peacock's Graveyard (2023), and a new seven-screen installation, The Charcoal Man, premiering here. Kanwar's poetic work traces the legacies of decolonisation and the Partition of India and Pakistan, alongside displacement, nationalism, violence and memory.
Date: 23 September 2026 – 31 January 2027. Location: Serpentine North Gallery, West Carriage Drive, London W2 2AR. Price: Free. serpentinegalleries.org
Amar Kanwar. Photo: Monica Tewary.
William Kentridge: A Nicely Built City
Goodman Gallery presents the global premiere of South African artist William Kentridge's new stop-animation film, A Nicely Built City (Never Resists Destruction), the twelfth in his acclaimed Drawings for Projection cycle, running since 1989, alongside new drawings, sculptures and editioned works on paper.
Date: 24 September – 7 November 2026 (preview 24 Sept, 6pm). Location: Goodman Gallery , 26 Cork Street, London, W1S 3ND. goodman-gallery.com
René Magritte, La Lampe philosophique (The Philosopher’s Lamp), 1936, oil on canvas, 19 3/4 × 26 inches (50 × 66 cm). © 2026 C. Herscovici/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: courtesy Private Collection, Brussels, Kingdom of Belgium
This Is Still Not a Pipe: The Afterlife of Magritte
Gagosian's exhibition dedicated to René Magritte and his influence, curated by Jasper Sharp and Bernard Lagrange, brings together significant paintings, works on paper, sculptures, and photography from across his career - apples, pipes, bowler hats, and cotton-cloud skies - juxtaposed with new and existing work by more than forty contemporary artists responding to his legacy. It marks 20 years since LACMA's Magritte and Contemporary Art and the 90th anniversary of the International Surrealist Exhibition in London, coinciding with Frieze London.
Date: 24 September – 12 December 2026. Location: Gagosian, 20 Grosvenor Hill, London W1K 3QD. gagosian.com
William Kentridge, A Nicely Built City, Goodman Gallery (24 September–7 November 2026). Courtesy Goodman Gallery.
Evelyn Taocheng Wang: Being Poetic Ruins Life
Wang's first UK institutional exhibition, staged across the entire Goldsmiths CCA building, brings together new commissions and existing works in painting, ink on paper, handscrolls, garments, silk paintings, installation, video and text. Selected through her "make-up box" approach and narrated by her invented persona "The Cultural Whore," the show features fiction, autobiography and cultural projection woven into an idiosyncratic portrait of Britain, what Wang calls a "layered womb."
Date: 25 September - 13 December 2026. Location: Goldsmiths CCA, St James', New Cross, London SE14 6AD. goldsmithscca.art
Evelyn Taocheng Wang, Oversized Positive Energy, 2021. © Evelyn Taocheng Wang 2026. Courtesy the artist; Antenna Space, Shanghai; and Carlos/Ishikawa, London. Photo: Stephen James.
Jenkin van Zyl: Enclosure
Somerset House Studios presents a major new film installation by resident artist Jenkin van Zyl, co-commissioned with Film and Video Umbrella and HOME Manchester. Set in a decaying facility where tourists once inhabited "Cherubs", replicas of other people, the film takes place on Founding Day, when Donors must renew or terminate their doubles. Shown within a large-scale installation of fairground signage, holograms and decaying ephemera at the Lancaster Rooms, before travelling to HOME, Manchester.
Date: 24 September – 29 November 2026. Location: Lancaster Rooms, Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 1LA Price: Free / Pay What You Can. somersethouse.org.uk
Jenkin Studio portrait. Image Credit Eugenia Shiskina.
Museum Late
Soane Late
The first Soane Late back after the summer break, giving after-hours access to the whole museum, basement, ground floor, first floor and exhibition galleries, to wander sunlit corridors lined by Sir John Soane's vast collection, including works by Canaletto, Turner and Hogarth. The museum is especially striking at twilight, when expert guides bring the collections to life with spotlight talks on their favourite artefacts, works of art and stories from Soane's life. Admission includes a glass of prosecco or white wine in the Library Dining Room where Soane himself would have entertained guests.
Date: Friday 25 September 2026. Location: Sir John Soane's Museum, 13 Lincoln's Inn Fields, London WC2A 3BP. Price: £25. Book tickets.
Sir John Soane's Museum. Image courtesy of Sir John Soane's Museum
#FLOFavourites: Pick of the Week
Free event of the week
LSO Free Friday Lunchtime Concert
As part of its Free Friday Lunchtime Concert series at LSO St Luke's, the London Symphony Orchestra hosts a free, informal solo piano recital. Presenter Rachel Leach sets the scene before each piece, and pianist Owen Lee takes questions from the audience afterwards. On the programme this week is Franz Liszt's Les Jeux d'eaux à la Villa d'Este, Ravel's Jeux d'eau, Tania León's Homenatge, and Montsalvatge's Ritmos.
Date: Friday 25 September 2026, 12.30pm (doors 11.30am). Location: LSO St Luke's, 161 Old St, London EC1V 9NG. Price: Free, no ticket required. Info here.
Image credit Mark Allan.
Also this week: Creative Encounters: 2B or not 2B's Life Drawing
A relaxed, welcoming life drawing session hosted by the 2B or Not 2B Collective, a POC-run drawing group spotlighting underrepresented tutors and models. Charcoal, paper and guidance provided; all abilities welcome.
Date: 23 September 2026, 6pm, Location: Clore Ballroom, Southbank Centre. Price: Free, no ticket required. Book here.
Food of the week
La Maison Ani
Image credit La Maison Ani
La Maison Ani Chef Izu Ani's French-Mediterranean restaurant at Jumeirah Carlton Tower in Knightsbridge is bringing art to the table. It has partnered with London Art Exchange to showcase two new works by artist Gabrielle Malak, Love Letter and Eternal Été, each paired with a dish designed around it. Love Letter, inspired by her travels through Florence, comes with a peony and lemon meringue dessert echoing the painting's romantic, Italian character, while Eternal Été is served with a harissa-spiced lobster tagine and vegetables, plus yellowtail sashimi with olive oil, vinegar and caviar as a palate cleanser, nodding to its Moroccan influences.
Location: La Maison Ani, The Carlton Tower, 1 Cadogan Place, London SW1X 9PY. Website: lamaisonanilondon.com; Instagram: @lamaisonanilondon
Cause of the week
St Luke's Community Centre
St Luke's Community Centre
St Luke's Community Centre is a community hub in south Islington, based at 90 Central Street near Old Street, running a busy programme of activities and support at little or no cost, including a lunch club and transport service for the over-55s, social and exercise activities for all ages, employment support, a cookery school, and a wellbeing hub. It serves an area facing real need, from child poverty to social isolation among older people. Volunteer roles include supporting over-55s social sessions, helping in the cookery school, assisting with family events, cycling their trishaw bike for older or disabled passengers, supporting an LSO music project, outreach, gardening, and caring for their chickens.
Discover volunteering opportunities.
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