Things to do in London this week

The Tate Modern kicks off its 2026 programme with a retrospective tracing the 40-year career of Croydon’s finest artistic export, Tracey Emin. Over 90 pieces will be exibited in the landmark exhibition, including some of the Young British Artist’s most defining works, from her famous neons and her controversial Turner Prize-nominated installation My Bed, to painting, video, textiles and never-before-exibited sculptures. Expect plenty of raw, confessional art exploring love, trauma and the female body.

Celebrate the Year of the Horse in Chinatown with a feast that keeps the good fortune flowing. Tucked in the heart of Chinatown, Leongs Legend is a long-running Taiwanese favourite offering 45 percent off its bottomless dim sum and prosecco brunch, with 90 minutes of unlimited handmade dumplings and a glass of fizz from a very enticing £24.95. Expect plent of baskets (over 40 dishes) of xiao long bao, and a lively, teahouse-style setting that makes it an obvious pick for ringing in the lunar celebrations with friends.

Save 40% with bottomless dim sum vouchers, only through Time Out Offers

Kruk is in a railway arch under Peckham Rye station. What separates Kruk from the glut of other Thai-inspired restaurants across Zone 2? Pleasingly unpolished location aside, not much. But that’s no bad thing. Years after the initial nu-Thai boom, there’s still a ravenous market for punchy papaya salads. What Kruk does bring to the table is a veggie-friendly take on Thai, with every dish having a vegetarian counterpart. There’s plenty of fish and meat with betel leaves wrapped around poached prawns, fried venison wontons with water chestnut and chicken thigh skewers with slippery cashew and coconut sauce. This is serious cooking with intoxicating flavours that won’t blow your head off but may leave it at a slight angle.

British painter Rose Wylie takes on films, celebrities and ancient civilisations in her work. Like a punkier, more feminist Philip Guston, the Kent-based artist often focuses on women, depicting figures from Elizabeth I to Nicole Kidman in exuberant, colourful, bold lines. She’s also a later-in-life success story, having taken up painting in her fifties, and only achieving critical success only arrived in her late seventies. All those decades of working away have paid off, though, as The Royal Academy of Arts will bring the largest collection of the 92-year-old’s work to date to the capital this February, showcasing her adventurous, socially observant paintings to a wider audience.

If, like Alan Partridge, you believe that Wings were ‘the band The Beatles could have been’, Morgan Neville’s propulsively upbeat music doc is a total treat. And, honestly, even if the merest waft of bagpipe on ‘Mull of Kintyre’ brings you out in hives, Man on the Run is still full of treasures. Piecing together a snappy collage of ’70s home video, unseen archive and gig footage, plus some insightful voiceover interviews, it revisits Paul McCartney as he tries to figure out what it is to be an ex-Beatle – and, ideally, how to graduate from it.

In UK and Ireland (and remote Scottish) cinemas now. Streaming on Prime Video worldwide Feb 27.

After a five-year-long world tour, this blockbuster exhibition on the ancient Egyptians is finally arriving in London. Ramses and the Pharaoh’s Gold will display 180 priceless treasures on loan from the Supreme Council of Antiquities, of which the pinnacle is the coffin of Ramses II, giving Londoners the chance to see an original sarcophagus here in the Big Smoke. Other gems on show will include gold masks,  silver coffins, animal mummies, amulets, jewellery and colossal sculptures. Although superficially sounding quite similar to the recent Tutankhamun immersive exhibition, this one seems a lot more based around Ancient artefacts, with none of the fanciful CGI frippery that’s come into fashion in the world of international touring exhibitions the last couple of years.

Everyone knew there was more to the late Chadwick Boseman than Black Panther, but even so it was somewhat startling when Deep Azure – a play he wrote in 2005 – popped up on the winter programming schedule of Shakespeare’s Globe. But, the fit with the Globe makes sense. Boseman’s play is not only written in street poetry-esque rhyming verse, but it features a ghost (kind of), a revenge plot and even actually quoted passages from Hamlet. It’s set in the aftermath of the death of Deep (Jayden Elijah), the free-spirited lover to Selina Jones’ intense Azure. He was killed by a cop, and she’s now stuck in a spiral of despair, compounded by her own underlying body image issues. It’s far more than a curio by a famous guy – it’s a work of powerful poetry. 

Try beers from more than 50 breweries from all over the world at the fourth edition of this two-day wintry festival. Notting Hill’s Mall Tavern is letting discerning drinkers discover cult brews including Sureshot from Manchester, Empire Brewing's stout from Huddersfield, Nerd Brewing from Sweden, and sour specialists, Trial & Ale, from the USA. There'll also be a newly enlarged Belgian beers room, plus a new Czech lager room. 

Tickets are £60, and get you all the beers you can sample during a five-hour session in this cosy but capacious pub.

Newsflash! The Idler has given Victoria a bit of a glow-up. The Mediterranean restaurant sits inside The July hotel and feels stylish without trying too hard, just the place to slide into a booth for a date or grab a solo seat at the bar and still feel right at home. The dishes lean on seasonal British produce with a bright Mediterranean lift. Until March 31 you can enjoy two or three courses with our exclusive Time Out offer.

Save up to 25% off vouchers, only through Time Out Offers

This musical adaptation of Rachel Joyce’s The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry – a 2012 novel that was made into a film a couple of years back – has a fair few unlikely moments of its own, in a good way. Katy Rudd’s production of this yarn about a taciturn man in his sixties having what I think is fair to describe as an elaborate mental breakdown has supernatural elements and uses rustic folk songs written by indie folkster Passenger. It’s a story about life and the scars we pick up on the way. There’s a wildness and darkness bubbling beneath the surface that means The Unlikely Pilgrimage packs a surprising punch.

2026’s first big whack of cosplay, meet and greets, comic culture and general fandom. The Olympia London plays host to a packed weekend of stuff catering to fans of iconic telly, video games and film. Appearances already announced include Ncuti Gatwa, Millie Gibson, Craig Charles and Brian Blessed. And of course, there'll be tons of opportunities to pick up limited edition merch, meet other fans, and see some of the most ambitious cosplay this city has to offer.

A revival of William Nicholson’s 1989 play, Shadowlands, stars Hugh Bonneville as the devoutly Christian Chronicles of Narnia author CS Lewis, and traces his real-life romance with the younger American poet Joy Davidman. And it’s largely delightful, not an odd couple meet cute, but a story about a genuine, real connection between two somewhat lost souls. It’s high-class MOR, a chaste romantic fantasy that plays great with the Bonneville stans. 

Groundbreaking Colombian artist Beatriz González gets her first solo UK show – and biggest ever European show – at the Barbican this spring. Famed for her vibrant, Pop Art-influenced depictions of Colombia during the decade-long civil war known as La Violenca and known in her native country as ‘la maestra’, González draws on found images to tell stories about power, grief, conflict, community and more. Featuring over 150 artworks made between the 1960s and the present day and spanning painting, sculpture, furniture and monumental printed curtains, this major will look at Gonzalez’s work not only from a Colombian and Latin American perspective, but a global one. 

Terence Rattigan’s Man and Boy is a truly extraordinary revival. Anthony Lau’s production is the first Rattigan we’ve seen that throws off the shackles of naturalism. Here, Rattigan joins Shakespeare, Chekhov, Ibsen et al in being deemed a playwright whose work can be given a batshit staging and still stand tall. Staged in the round, designer Georgia Lowe’s distinctly Brechtian, wilfully anachronistic set, it liberates star Ben Daniels from period constraints, freeing him up to deliver what is easily the best stage performance of the year to date. He plays Gregor Antonescu, a Machiavellian Romanian-born financier who on the cusp of triggering a fresh financial crash. It’s an extraordinary couple of hours of theatre, the performance of the year wrapped up in a wild production that tears up everything we thought we knew about how to stage good old Terence Rattigan.

Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota will bring her mesmerising web-like installation to the Hayward in her first major London solo show. Floor-to-ceiling woven artworks will take over the gallery, engulfing ordinary objects – such as shoes, keys, beds, chairs and dresses – within the huge structures. These will be accompanied by new large-scale sculptures, drawings, early performance videos and photographs. 

The NPG will be the UK’s first museum to stage an exhibition focussing on Lucain Freud’s works on paper, including some artworks seen on display for the first time. Focussing on Freud’s mastery of drawing in all forms, Drawing into Painting will look at the artist’s lifelong preoccupation with the human face and figure, from the 1930s to the early 21st century.

The Princess of Wales Conservatory at Kew Gardens is taking a voyage to China this February, courtesy of the latest annual mind-bending orchid display that takes over the iconic glasshouse each year. As ever, the exotic display will celebrate the natural beauty and biodiversity of its subject country: China is home to thousands of varieties of orchid, plus vast amounts of other flora and fauna besides. Look out for sculptures of dragons and Chinese lanterns, as well as intricately woven plant installations. There’ll also be ticketed after-hours events with live Chinese music, food, cocktails and dance performances.