The Time Out London blog team

Alright, you had all of January to hibernate. Now that the evenings are finally getting a little bit brighter and the days are becoming ever so slightly warmer, it’s time to defrost and get out there to once again enjoy everything this brilliant city of ours has to offer.  Short though it may be, February is packed with important dates for your diary. There’s Valentine’s Day, Lunar New Year, LGBTQ+ History Month and half-term, not to mention big cultural happenings like the Super Bowl, the Six Nations and London Fashion Week. That doesn’t mean you have to spend loads, though. Whether you’re on a strict budget or have money to burn, there are a bunch of great things happening in the capital over the next few days that happen to be completely free. From watch parties to a relaunched queer museum to a night of improvised jazz, here are all the best free things that London’s got going on this weekend.   The best free things on in London this weekend, February 6-8 2026 1. Visit some of London’s greatest galleries after hours  The National Gallery, Royal Academy of Arts and National Portrait Gallery will be staying open beyond their normal hours on Friday as part of this year’s Art After Dark. While you’ll have to pay entry as normal for the RA, the National Gallery and National Portrait will, as always, be totally free to enter. They’ll all stay open until 9pm, after which you should head to Piccadilly Circus to see the centre piece of the Art After Dark festival. Standing in...

Council tax paying Londoners (and, to be honest, that’s most of you), you know what time of year it is. That’s right, councils are gearing up to reveal how much tax you’ll be paying to your local authority for the 12 months from April. The joy. The sheer joy..  Most boroughs haven’t confirmed how much council tax rates will be going up in April (though a few could be increasing by much more than others). But we do know that some residents in one London borough could be paying twice as much as they did in 2025/26. The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea is considering doubling council tax bills for second home owners in the area. If it goes ahead with the proposals, the borough would follow in the footsteps of the likes of Wandsworth, Westminster and Hackney, which all already have council tax premiums for second homes. The aim of the policy is to raise revenue and discourage properties from sitting empty.  So why is Kensington and Chelsea introducing the higher fees, and why now? Well, the proposal comes as the council grapples with an estimated potential £139 million budget shortfall by 2030. The forecast deficit follows planned cuts to local authority funding by the central government. Photograph: IR Stone / Shutterstock.com But it’s not just second home owners that could be impacted by higher taxes in K&C. The council are suggestions that some of the it’s poorest residents, who currently receive full council tax support, could be forced to pay for the first time....

Oh, London. While residents of the Big Smoke might have plenty to be smug about – we’ve got culture, restaurants and attractive people coming out our ears – there’s a fair amount that’s not so rosy with our city too (*cough* rent prices). Now a ranking of the 100 greatest cities in the world has decreed that the UK capital is indeed no longer what it once was. London has slipped down the Top 100 City Destinations Index, created by data analytics company Euromonitor International, for a second year in a row. Once firmly in the ranking’s top 10, London moved down to 13th place in 2025. In 2026 things are looking even worse for the capital, because it has dropped again to 18th.  Data analysts at Euromonitor International compared cities across the world on key criteria including tourism policy, tourism infrastructure, economic performance, sustainability, and health and safety, in order to create the list of the top 100. While London came in fourth place globally for tourism infrastructure, it lagged in tourism policy, health and safety, and sustainability. However, that didn’t mean that people don’t want to visit the Big Smoke, as London was the third most-visited city in the world according to the research.   Photograph: Shutterstock The UK capital may have fallen (a little) from grace, but European cities dominated the top 10 for 2026, with Paris taking top spot. Gay Paree was named the world’s greatest city for the fifth year in a row thanks to its tourism...