The Time Out London blog team

The City of London, particularly in the darks days of January, can be awfully grey. Grey skyscrapers, grey suits, grey pavements, grey skies... you get the gist. But at the end of this month, there’s a brand new festival arriving to inject some colour into the financial district.  ‘Vibrance’ will light up Roman ruins, medieval churches and secret gardens across the Square Mile on Thursday January 29 and Friday January 30 from 5.30pm until 8.30pm.  Created by Guildhall Production Studio, it brings together more than a dozen artworks and live performances by emerging artists from Guildhall School of Music & Drama. Photograph: Guildhall Production Studio Guildhall Yard will be illuminated with a series of different large-scale projections; St Gile’s Cripplegate will host an something called an extended reality installation, which combines sound, light and virtual reality (VR) technology to create an otherworldly effect; St Alphage London Wall and Garden, meanwhile, will host live music performances merging opera and electronic music.  A stone’s throw away, there’ll be a sonic installation at Salters’ Garden which will guide visitors down a route with speakers hiding in the greenery. Finally, Milton Court will come alive with visual lightworks that organisers say will reflect on ‘inner-city life and its impact on the human experience’.  The whole thing is completely free and there are no tickets needed – just turn up and wander around the kaleidoscopic light and sound scapes...

We already know that London is a stalwart of the global food scene. The capital is home to bougie Michelin-starred eateries, authentic family-run restaurants offering every cuisine under the sun, world class gastropubs, hangover-annihilating greasy spoons, and some of the best curry houses around. Now TripAdvisor has confirmed that tourists from around the world really rate London’s grub, because the capital has been named the world’s best city for food in 2026 in the TripAdvisor Traveler’s Choice Awards.  Based on 12 months of review data from TripAdvisor, the awards have named the highest-rated destinations around the world in the following categories: Top Destinations, Trending Destinations, Culture & History Destinations, Food Destinations, Honeymoon Destinations and Solo Travel Destinations. When it came to food, 46 percent of travelers told TripAdvisor that trying the cuisine was what they were most excited about for their upcoming trips. London took the top spot for food thanks to its ‘neighbourhood spots’ and ‘cuisine from around the world’ according to the travel review website.  Photograph: Shutterstock Currently, Time Out’s number one resto in London is Miga, a Korean eatery in Hackney which ticks the boxes of both neighbourhood joint and international cuisine. Time Out’s food and drink editor Leonie Cooper loved Miga for its ‘burly, full-bodied plates of exceptional, nuanced cookery’. Miga’s stand out dishes include yughwe – a beef tartare topped with crisp...

Brick Lane is one of London’s most beloved, and buzzing, areas. Home to the largest Bangladeshi community outside of Bangladesh, nowadays the cobbled street in the East End is known just as much for its curry houses and vintage shops as its ubiquity of fashionable young shoppers, TikTokkers and trendy coffee shops.  At the centre of Brick Lane is the great Truman Brewery. Currently, the building that was once London’s largest brewery is home to food and vintage markets, record stores, music venues and more. But that could all change in the future, as the building’s landlords are pushing ahead with plans to redevelop the beloved brewery, despite widespread opposition.  The building’s owners, the Zeloof family, have been trying to secure planning permission from Tower Hamlets council for years to redevelop the brewery. The latest attempt could see the iconic building turned into a data centre, alongside 44 flats and a new retail space. The 44 flats would include 11 social housing units. The Brick Lane server could be one of dozens of new data centres proposed for London. In October, the government declared data centres ‘nationally significant infrastructure projects’, and vowed to make it easier for developers to win approval. But building new servers in a city that’s already short on space could be at odds with the government’s plans to build new homes in the capital.  Photograph: Shutterstock There’s also the issue of how new data centres could strain grid capacity in...