Mama Goose, Stratford East, 2025
Photo: Mark Senior
Photo: Mark Senior

The best Christmas pantomimes in London

Pantomime season has finally returned to London – oh yes it has!

Andrzej Lukowski
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Oh yes it is! London panto season is back for 2025, and here’s Time Out’s complete rundown of every major pantomime in the city.

London's best pantomimes at a glance:

For some Londoners the only time of year they'll visit a theatre, panto season is a bizarre, joyful, quintessentially British time to come together and watch some light-hearted spoof fairytales that revolve around men dressing up as women and/or farm animals.

Within that, though, there’s huge variation, from the megascale London Palladium show with its filthy figurehead Julian Clary, to Clive Rowe’s brilliant panto purism at the Hackney Empire and JW3’s amusing Jewish spin that runs on Christmas Day itself.

I’m Andrzej Łukowski, Time Out’s theatre editor, and while this page is simply intended as a round-up of London pantomimes, then it’s an *informed* round up – I have seen approximately four billion pantos over the last 15 years or so, and know what they’re all like, plus we’ll update this page with star ratings when our reviews of this year’s crop start rolling in in late November.

London is a city that takes pantomime seriously, and even if the idea of seasonal frivolity fills you with dread, there’s a panto out there for you.

RECOMMENDED: The best London theatre shows to see in 2025.

The best Christmas theatre shows in London.

Pantomimes in central London

  • Panto
  • Soho

What is it? This is the tenth anniversary of the Palladium panto, which is remarkable in a way as it kind of feels like London’s biggest festive show has been around forever. In part that’s because there is relatively little annual variation: as ever it’s built around Julian Clary, who effortlessly walks off with the show by playing a series of flimsily disguised variants on himself, with his every utterance a virtuosically smutty innuendo that blessedly sails over the heads of primary schoolers. This year big guest star is Catherine Tate, who’ll be playing Carabosse the Wicked Fairy.

Where is it? London Palladium.

Pantomimes in south London

  • Panto
  • Greenwich

What is it? Though it’s had a change of personel in recent years, the Greenwich panto remains a low key but well-regarded affair that serves up old school, celebrity-free pantomime that largely flies under the radar of London as a whole but has a loyal local following. In this take on JM Barrie’s creations, writer Anthony Spargo stars, and James Haddrell directs.

Where is it? Greenwich Theatre.

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