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Things to do in June
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London events in June

June in London is here. Make it the greatest month of your year yet with our guide to the best art exhibitions, plays and general shindigs taking place around the city in June 2023.

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June in London is one of those months filled with a sense of excitement. It’s that ‘school’s out!’ feeling, until you remember that you left school years ago, and ‘summer holidays’ don’t really exist for adults. Shame. 

June is also the start of summer in London, which means the capital’s beer gardens are at their prime, the city parks are at their prettiest, the open-air theatre season gets into full swing and eating alfresco is on the cards at some of London’s best restaurants. Plus, expect to see long queues in south west London as tennis fans line up to bag a place at the epic Wimbledon championships

June in London also means its time for London Sundance Film Festival, the Roundhouse’s poetry festival The Last Word and Open Square Gardens. So mark them all off in your calendar and prepare to have a ball fit for a queen.  

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The best things to do in June in London

  • Theatre
  • Musicals
  • Covent Garden

Musical theatre fans, get ready for outdoor dancing and sing-a-longs with some of the West End's biggest stars: West End Live is back! It's the initiative that turns some of the most expensive forms of entertainment in London into the cheapest fun going. Each year, casts of some of London's best West End musicals emerge blinking into the open-air for a weekend of free alfresco performances in Trafalgar Square, accompanied by fun photo ops, merch stalls, and bags of showbiz atmosphere.

Lambeth Country Show
  • Things to do
  • Herne Hill

The Lambeth Country Show is back. Just as it has done since 1974, this year’s show will bring countryside pursuits to Brockwell Park. Over its history, certain traditions have developed, like getting a glimpse of Vauxhall City Farm’s alpacas, downing a massive carton of Chucklehead’s super-strong cider and joining the long queue to see the pun-derful entrants in the vegetable sculpture competition. Look out for sheep-shearing, sheepdog and owl displays, an on-site mini farm and lots, lots more. Live music will be heard from two stages over the weekend, too

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  • Music
  • Music festivals
  • South Bank

Joining a long list of legendary names that includes David Bowie, Yoko Ono, Patti Smith, Grace Jones and David Byrne, Chaka Khan is taking on Southbank Centre’s fabulous annual Meltdown Festival, and the first few performers have just been announced. Todrick Hall (June 16), Speakers Corner Quartet and the Guildhall Orchestra (June 17), Incognito (June 19) and Morcheeba (June 22) are just a handful of the names on the programme, with plenty more to be announced. You can expect a celebration of all things Chaka, as it marks a whopping 50 years of her career as a musician. In that time, she's sold 100 million records, won ten Grammys and released absolute bangers like 'Ain't Nobody', 'I'm Every Woman', 'I Feel for You' – need we go on?

  • Theatre
  • Musicals
  • Strand

Twenty years after the classic comedy film briefly threatened to make Lyndsey Lohan a global icon for the right reasons, Tina Fey’s musical adaptation of her smash ‘Mean Girls’ finally makes it to the West End. Following the misadventures of Cady Heron, a home-schooled student totally naive to the cliquey ways of the high school she starts at aged 16, the musical version of ‘Mean Girls’ did decent business on Broadway a few years back but then became a victim of the pandemic. General word on the street was that the script was as funny as ever. 

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  • Things to do
  • London

London is a famously green city – nearly half of its many square miles is parks, heaths and other open space. A lot of that open space, though, consists of private squares and gardens, most of which we never get to see, never mind hang out in. London Square Open Gardens Weekend is here to address that, prising the keys out of the capital’s secretive gatekeepers to fling open more than a hundred secret green spaces.

 

  • Art
  • Bankside

This mid-career survey of South African visual activist Zanele Muholi captures the breadth and power of an extensive body of work dedicated to presenting a multifaceted view of Black LGBTQI+ individuals. This show originally opened near the start of the pandemic, and has now been expanded with more recent work, all tackling big important themes like labour, racism, sexism and sexual politics.

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  • Art
  • Piccadilly

The RA’s annual showcase of all the artists you need to know about right now will return for its 256th edition to brighten up the summer holidays. The world’s oldest open submission exhibition (which means anyone can enter their work to be considered for inclusion), the artist with the big job of sifting through the works and curating them this year is sculptor Ann Christopher. 

 

  • Things to do
  • Literary events
  • Chalk Farm

Taking over north London’s iconic Roundhouse throughout June, The Last Word Festival is back for its brilliant eleventh edition. The fest is one of the best in the UK for championing exciting voices and emerging talent in the world of spoken word, and what better live venue could there be to host it? This year, there’ll be poetry slam heats, where 18-25-year-olds can compete for a cash prize, and a session called ‘redacted’ where poems are created by removing words from articles, chapters or magazines, plus much, much more.

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  • Theatre
  • Experimental
  • South Bank

Even by Complicité’s lofty standards, 1999’s ‘Mnemonic’ is regarded as something truly exceptional. Devised by company founder Simon McBurney – and originally starring him –  it’s a wild ride show about humanity, memory and loss that starts as a jokey biochemistry lecture and ends up as something vast and transcendent involving an ancient body found in the ice and a woman searching for her vanished lover. You kind of jut have to see it, really, but if it lives up to the hype, it’ll change your life. McBurney directs again, though it seems unlikely he’ll star this time: the only cast members confirmed so far are Richard Katz and Kostas Phillippoglou.

  • Things to do
  • Food and drink events
  • Regent’s Park

Munch your way through dishes from the great and the good of the capital’s restaurant scene at this sprawling culinary festival. Set in the picturesque surroundings of central London’s Regent’s Park you can chow down on food from Korean rabata (barbecue) restaurant Roka, South American fusion from YOPO and Big Mamma’s quintet of maximalist Italian joints (that’s GloriaCircolo PopolareAve Mario, Jacuzzi and Carlotta) are among the line-up of restaurants peddling plates to celebrate the events 20th anniversary. If you’re not in a food coma by the end, there’ll also be kitchen masterclasses, chef talks and tastings to get involved with. Our advice? Have some Rennies on hand. 

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  • Music
  • Music festivals
  • Tulse Hill

After a knock-out event last year, pop festival Mighty Hoopla has just announced its 2024 line-up, and it’s just got even more raucous. Known for showcasing the best of pop and queer culture in the UK, the two-day weekender launched in 2016 with a mission to celebrate pop classics and give a platform to established and emerging LGBTQ+ performers.

  • Things to do
  • Exhibitions
  • Aldwych

Have you noticed that everyone’s wearing kilts at the moment? It’s partly down to Glaswegian fashion designer and radical creative Charles Jeffrey, whose fashion brand Loverboy reimagined the textile, creating checked lewks that were more high club night than Highland fling. This exhibition – fittingly at Somerset House, where Jeffrey has a studio – will go behind-the-scenes, exploring how Jeffrey built the brand from scratch. Expect intriguing sounding ‘sensorially led spaces’ full of archival artefacts from Jeffrey’s unique collections and newly commissioned works. Plus, it’s pay what you can, so everyone can appreciate the fabulousness. 

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  • Theatre
  • Experimental
  • Covent Garden

Jeremy O Harris’s frenzied satire about a trio of interracial couples who seek to get their sex lives back on track by indulging in Antebellum-styled master-slave roleplays was both a massive smash and wildly controversial over its two Broadway seasons (for reasons that are presumably obvious from that description). Harris’s second play ‘“Daddy”’ was better received over its 2022 Almeida run than it was back home, but a UK transfer for ‘Slave Play’ has been a long time coming. Finally, though, here’s Robert O’Hara’s production, which boasts a cast to die for, with James Cusati-Moyer, Chalia La Tour, Annie McNamara and Irene Sofia Lucio returning from its the original Broadway production, plus an infusion of Brits headed by ‘Game of Thrones’ man Kit Harington and the reliably hilarious Fisayo Akinade.

 

Kew Midsummer Fete
  • Things to do
  • Markets and fairs
  • Kew

With over 100 stalls, a traditional Victorian fun fair, a beer tent and a tea tent, a dog show with a VIP judge, tug of war, and live local bands, Kew’s Midsummer Fete is a brilliant way to chill out on the village green this month. But there’s plenty more to 2024’s edition of the popular afternoon, including a karate display, inflatables and a charity raffle, too. The best part? Entry is free, but all your well-spent cash will be going to some very worthy causes – last year raised more than £22,000 for local charities like Richmond Food Bank and the Riverbank Trust. 

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  • Art
  • Barbican

He’s pushed a block of ice across Mexico City, kicked a flaming football, painted a line across Palestine and moved a mountain: Belgian artist Francis Alÿs goes for big gestures to make big points. He’s one of the most affecting and recognisable conceptual artists working today, and now he’s taking over the Barbican for an exhibition about children’s games in all their different forms around the world. 

  • Theatre
  • Musicals
  • Wembley

Perhaps more so than ‘Cats’, more so than ‘Phantom’, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s ‘Starlight Express’ is his most quintessentially ’80s musical, its world of highly competitive trains played by people on rollerskates somewhat unimaginable as a product of any other era. This new UK production, which will convert the Troubadour Theatre in Wembley Park into the Starlight Auditorium and what we’re promised will be an ‘immersive’ take on the show directed by Luke Sheppard of ‘& Juliet’ fame. 

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  • Film

At Time Out we’re big fans of cosying up in our favourite London cinemas and entering a whole new world through the power of projection. But, when the sun’s out and the weather’s at its best, hiding away in a dark, stuffy room isn’t quite as appealing. Thank god then, for outdoor cinemas letting us get our film fix under the stars and with a sweet summer breeze in our hair. London is home to some brilliant alfresco movie spots, which will be popping up all over the city in 2023. Welcome to the summer of the big-screen extravaganza.

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