Unmissable things to do and events in London in November 2025

Pitchfork Music Festival is gearing up for another edition, with a jam-packed schedule of eclectic live music encompassing everything from avant-rock and post-punk to psych-pop, UK rap and deconstructed dance music. 

This year's line-up features Aussie psych King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard at the Royal Albert Hall on November 4 and French electronic pop artist Oklou at the Roundhouse on November 7, followed by American experimentalist artist Laurie Anderson the next night. Of course, you've still got a plethora of other venues getting involved with shows at Colour Factory, KOKO and the Dalston Takeover with Panchiko, Indigo De Souza, underscores and Jay Som. 

Watch this space for more acts who will no doubt be on your Spotify Wrapped come December 2026. It’s basically the place to be if you consider yourself a music fan with a finger on the pulse.

Amazing news for lovers of neat symmetry, loud primary colours and twee outfits. Following on from autumn 2024's major exhibition on director Tim Burton, west London’s Design Museum will be staging a blockbuster show delving into the iconic aesthetic of another of Hollywood’s most distinctive auteurs, the Texas-born Oscar- and Golden Globe-winning director Wes Anderson. London has had several Anderson-inspired openings over the years, including the ‘Isle of Dogs’ exhibition at 180 The Strand and the ‘Accidentally Wes Anderson’ photo show, but the film director’s first official retrospective promises to be a different beast. A collaboration between the Design Museum and Cinémathèque Française, it has been curated in partnership with Wes Anderson himself and his production company American Empirical Pictures and follows his work from his early experiments in the 1990s right up to his recent Oscar-winning flicks, featuring original props, costumes and behind-the-scenes insights.

Belgian super director Ivo van Hove got his big English-language break with 2014’s astounding production of Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge, and a couple of years later lucky New Yorkers got a deluxe production of The Crucible that scored warm reviews (maddeningly it never played here despite its largely British and Irish cast).

Since then, Van Hove’s career has gone into overdrive and he’s famous dedicated a lot of time to making stage adaptations of classic films, to mercurial effect. 

It would be entirely misunderstanding Van Hove to imagine that he’s returning to the safety of Miller as a result of last year’s colossal West End flop Opening Night. But there will certainly be those glad he’d doing so as he tackles the US playwright’s first big hit, All My Sons. 

Set in 1943, the drama concerns Joe Keller, an upstanding pillar of the local community whose business partner has been found guilty of selling faulty parts to the US Airforce. Joe has escaped any blame. But should he have?

Van Hove has assembled a proper A-grade cast here, with US star Bryan Cranston – who led the director’s 2017 hit Network –  as Joe, with the wondrous Marianne Jean-Baptiste as his wife Kate and Paapa Essiedu as their son Chris. 

This exhibition will put the work of two rivals – and two of Britain’s greatest painters – J.M.W. Turner and John Constable side by side. Although both had different paths to success, they each became recognised as stars of the art world and shared a connection to nature and recreating it in their landscape paintings. Explore the pair’s intertwined lives and legacies and get new insight into their creativity via sketchbooks, personal items and must-see artworks.

Have we finally reached Peak Paddington? The Young Peruvian bear’s spectacular film-begat renaissance hasn’t just yielded a trilogy of hit film: there’s a tie-in TV series for younger kids, there was that skit he did with the late Queen, and 2024 saw the opening of official immesive attraction the Paddington Bear Experience. A really banging computer game aside, it’s hard to see what else there is to do with the character beyond ‘more films’. Apart from, of course, a big splashy West End musical. Which we’re now getting: West End super-producer Sonia Friedman has done the honours, assembling a crack team headed by playwright Jessica Swale doing the book and kids’ author and McFly member Tom Fletcher on songs, all directed by Luke Shepherd, who did such a good job with the smash revival of Starlight Express.

Beyond that we don’t know a huge amount, other than the plot will roughly trace Paddington’s classic origin story of turning up at the titular station and being taken in by the kind-hearted Brown family.

As with all noveaux Paddington stuff, the musical is co-produced by the film company STUDIOCANAL, who have hitherto been quite painstaking about tying everything back to their films – the Paddington Bear Experience was based around an exact replica of the Browns’ house from the movies, and the redoubtable Ben Whishaw has provided the voice for films, TV show and Experience. A musical would however seem like an understandable and probably advisable opportunity to do something a bit different.

All will be revealed this autumn, with casting announcements when they come presumably giving a few clues as to what we can expect – most notably the question of what the deal is with Paddington himself. Will he be some bloke in a beat suit? A puppet voiced by a pre-recorded Whishaw? A puppet with a live voice actor who probably won’t be Ben Whishaw? All will hopefully become clearer in relatively short order. 

It’s aimed at ages six plus.

Every year, the EFG London Jazz Festival brings together the best and brightest of the genre in venues across the city, from capital’s arts venues like Southbank Centre and Barbican, to atmospheric gig spots like Village Underground and Union Chapel. This year is no different. The 2025 line-up promises a bounty of bops, whether you’re looking to discover new artists on the scene (Rita Payés, Nov 19), or want to witness some legends in action (Dee Dee Bridgewater, Nov 15). As well as tons of concerts every day, there’s also sessions, workshops, talks and more to take part in and enjoy. More announcements to come. 

This year has seen the Globe stage productions of Romeo and Juliet in both its outdoor and indoor seasons. You’d accuse it of cynically flogging a play everyone loves, except they’re pretty weird takes. Sean Holmes’s outdoor version was Wild West themed; and this co-production with Theatr Clwd is only on for a week and also a bilingual English/Welsh staging. It’s not quite clear how this will pan out in Steffan Donnelly’s production, but one wonders if languages will be divided between Montagues and Capulets. 

Things tend to look different in the glow of candlelight, whether that’s the curious faces of people or stony sculptures sitting spectre-like in the shadows. It’s a phenomenon that Joseph Wright of Derby interrogates in the pieces displayed here – the first major exhibition dedicated to his candlelight paintings – questioning what we see and the act of looking itself. Submerging his work in darkness, he explores themes like death, morality and scepticism in a way that challenges more typical views of his output as a painter.

Returning for a second Christmas season, the National Theatre’s big festive family show is a sumptuous adaptation of Noel Streatfeild’s classic 1936 children’s novel Ballet Shoes. Slick, classy and meticulously directed by Katy Rudd, the story follows the eccentric household initially headed by Justin Salinger’s Great Uncle Matthew (aka GUM), a paleontologist in the old-school explorer vein. A confirmed bachelor, he is initially aghast when he is abruptly made legal guardian of his 11-year-old niece Sylvia (Pearl Mackie). But he soon changes his tune when freak circumstances lead to him taking in three baby girls: Petrova (Yanexi Enriquez), Pauline (Grace Self) and Posy (Daisy Sequerra), each of whom he found orphaned while out on an expedition. The three women’s journey to self realisation is an enjoyable enough watch, even if the production won’t go down as an all time classic, and makes for a classy, Christmassy night out with the family. 

Every year, thousands of professional and amateur photographers around the world submit their best portraits to The Taylor Wessing Photo Prize – a contest that has helped launch the careers of many top photographers. Around 60 finalists are selected and put on display at the National Portrait Gallery, giving an insight into the lives of friends and family of those behind the lens, or capturing a moment in time with stars in the spotlight. One image will take home the big prize, while the annual ‘In Focus’ display will feature a new work by an established photographer.

November is the month when London gets transformed into the sparkliest, blingiest, most festive place on earth with the switching on of Christmas lights all over town. There's nothing like the sparkle of London Christmas lights to give the city an instant festive makeover. Head to one of these display for a good old dose of Christmas cheer. 

Need an opportunity to get stuck into an utterly decadent feast just a month before Christmas dinner? Then let us present Thanksgiving: the American holiday dedicated to eating piles of turkey and lashings of pumpkin pie. There’s a bunch of different ways you can celebrate in London come November 25 – here are a few of our faves.

Looking for gift inspiration? Look no further than London's Christmas markets and fairs, which start to pop up all over town from mid-November. Among a raft of special festive events you'll find foodie gifts, hand-crafted pressies and usually a bit of glühwein to help you get into that merry spirit.