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Everyone enjoys a good snoop, whether that’s sneaking a peek through the window of the fancy townhouses in Notting Hill or ambling around an empty old church you’ve just stumbled upon. London’s annual Open House Festival gives you permission to snoop around hundreds of buildings to your heart’s content.
The week-long event gives members of the public the chance to poke around places that normally have their doors firmly shut to outsiders. All sorts of buildings across all 33 of the capital’s boroughs take part. Creative studios, royal dwellings, secretive municipal offices, historic archives and even private homes. Some are historic structures that are embedded in London’s DNA. Others are just really cool to look at.
The 35th edition of Open House London is taking place from September 12 to September 20. It’s all free, but many of the buildings require booking in advance and tickets get snapped up incredibly fast. So, get it in your diary: bookings open on August 19. Don’t know which places are worth booking? Here’s a roundup of the buildings we’re most excited to peek inside.
The 7 best London buildings to visit during Open House 2026
Lloyd’s Building
This year marks four decades since the revolutionary Lloyd’s Building became part of London’s skyline. The building is home to the Lloyd’s of London specialist insurance market, but that’s the least interesting thing about it. Designed by Lord Richard Rogers, it consists of a series of towers around a central space, with ducts, vents, stairwells and lift shafts on the outside and 12 glass lifts that were the first of their kind in the UK. Open House 2026 will be a rare opportunity to see this famed ‘inside-out building’ from the inside.
One Lime Street, EC3M 7HA.
The Zaha Hadid Foundation archive
Visionary architect Zaha Hadid designed some of the most mesmerising buildings on earth. From the wave-like London Aquatics Centre to Glasgow’s zigzagged Riverside Museum to the softly curving Heydar Aliyev cultural centre Baku, her flowing, abstract style is unmistakable. This year, for the very first time, her archives are included in Open House London. There’ll be guided tours through the collection, which comprises of everything from Hadid’s architectural models and blueprints to paintings to pieces from her personal collection of clothes and jewellery.
Zaha Hadid Foundation, Shad Thames, SE1 2YD.
The BT Tower
The BT Tower (previously known as the Post Office Tower) was designed to provide support for radio, TV and telephone aerials by means of microwave signals. When it opened in the 1960s, the tower’s crowning glory was its revolving restaurant on the 34th floor, 158m in the sky. That closed to the public for security reasons but the revolving floor is still there and for Open House 2026 will be accessible to the public. You’ll get to ride in one of the two high-speed lifts and enjoy a rare panoramic view over the capital.
45 Maple Street, W1T 4BG.
RECOMMENDED: The BT Tower is being turned into a hotel.
Lincoln’s Inn
The oldest of London’s four Inns of Court – its records date all the way back to 1422 – Lincoln’s Inn has been home to London’s elite legal minds for more than 600 years. The 11-acre site is a trove of medieval, Victorian and Georgian architectural gems. There’s the Grade I-listed Old Hall and Grade II-listed Great Hall, a chapel, one of the UK’s most important law libraries and a variety of lecture theatres and meeting rooms. Usually closed to the public, its drop-in day during Open House is a chance for a peek inside these historic corridors of power and to sit down for one of the hourly history talks.
The Honourable Society of Lincoln's Inn, WC2A 3QA.
National Theatre Studio
You’ll find the National Theatre Studio, the place where productions are rehearsed, where ideas are workshopped, where writers draft plays and where scripts are archived, in the Old Vic Theatre’s grade II former annex. It was created in 1984 as a five-year experiment that aimed to develop new work away from the glare of the public. Obviously, it stuck around. Guided tours through the Brutalist space will give the public a behind-the-scenes look at how some of the nation’s greatest theatre shows are brought to life.
83-101 The Cut, SE1 8LL.
Senate House
At 64m high, the art deco Senate House was once the tallest secular building in the city. Looming over Bloomsbury, it was the inspiration for the ‘Ministry of Truth’ in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and reportedly survived the Blitz in part because Hitler took a shine to it and had plans to make it the Nazi Party’s HQ. In reality, it belongs to the University of London and is the site of its main library, which holds one of the UK’s largest collections in arts, humanities and social sciences and is usually reserved for the eyes of bookish students and academics. But in September, members of the public will be let in to get lost among its marble-lined corridors and maze of bookshelves via self-guided or expert tours.
Malet Street, WC1E 7HU.
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