Christmas pop-up cinema in London

Backyard Cinema is back with a mega immersive cinema to give you all the festive feels. Roam through a fairylit winter forest and you'll find screenings of Christmas classics including Elf, Home Alone, Love Actually, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, The Holiday, The Muppet Christmas Carol, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Miracle on 34th Street, The Grinch, and It’s a Wonderful Life.

Things begin in a Christmas cabaret room with live performances of festive classics and table service so you can enjoy seasonal refreshments. Then, you'll enter an enchanted forest, with real bark underfoot, surprise performances, themed bars and photo opportunities. Finally, you'll end up at the Forest Cinema, a retro-style cinema where snow flutters down before every screening. A trip to the movies really doesn't get more festive than this. 

If hunkering down in the dark of the cinema watching movies sounds like the perfect way to get amped up for Christmas, then boy does the Prince Charles Cinema have a programme for you. This year, its festive slate is so jam-packed, you could spend every day from the start of December until Christmas Eve watching its screens, watching everything from the very seasonal The Muppet Christmas Carol, Home Alone, Scrooged and Elf. If Christmas movies aren’t quite your thing, there’s plenty else on offer, too, from Interstellar and The Godfather to The French Connection and Eyes Wide Shut. For the full list of screenings visit here. 

Tucked above a very posh Spar, the glorious Castle Cinema is an Art Deco dream with its stylish bar, retro sets and ornate gilded plaster work. It’s always a treat to catch a film here, and over Christmas even more so. In keeping with their ecclectoc programming, the picture palace will be showing festive favourites as well as under-the-radar classics. On December 2 and 7 see a screening of Hitchcock’s Spellbound followed by a Q&A from a local historian and Hitchcock expert, on December 10 Jellied Reels presents Francis Ford Coppola’s The Cotton Club, on December 16 see Sean Baker’s brilliant Tangerine and on December 18 and 21, projection experts Cine-Real presents Christmas classic It’s A Wonderful Life. Look out for the cinema’s Christmas Art Fair (December 6) and its Christmas Movie Pub Quiz (December 18 – email to book a table), too. 

Nestled in a quiet corner of Covent Garden, the gorgeous Art Deco Garden Cinema is a perfect spot to hole up and take in a movie. And that’s before you take in a Christmas screening programme boasting such seasonal classics as It's a Wonderful Life and Miracle on 34th Street (1947). The cinema’s regular Sunday ‘pay what you can' screenings spreads the joy to families of all means, with Little Women, Oliver!, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe and Happy Feet to watch, as well as plenty of post-movie activities to enjoy. 

W London’s film club lets you watch film favourites in its cosy and plush private cinema, tucked away off Leicester Square. Over December, it’s getting a wintery makeover with an Après Skate, Veuve Clicquot-partnered takeover of cinema bar featuring spiced cocktails, faux-fur lounging and freshly popped popcorn. Settle in to watch Christmas classics like Love Actually, Elf and Home Alone. The projectors will still be whirring on Christmas Day for its ‘Made the Brunch List: Christmas’, where guests get champagne on arrival, brunch, a live DJ and access to the day’s festive films.