Things to do in London this weekend

Grab your rainbow flags and banners and join the million or so people who are expected to march through the streets at London’s Pride parade, which marks the anniversary of the 1969 Stonewall riots. With stages set up across central London, it’s a fun and life-affirming event, but we can’t deny that it doesn’t get a little overwhelming with all the crowds. The route kicks off in Green Park at 12pm, by Hyde Park Corner tube station. It then travels along Piccadilly towards Piccadilly Circus station, before finishing outside Big Ben. Pick your Pride stage and then line-up one of the many after-parties across the city to live out the day in style.

London summer has officially kicked into gear. And that means that the Wimbledon Tennis Championships – aka the oldest, and arguably the very best, tennis tournament in the world – is back. This year the tournament is happening from Monday June 30 to Sunday July 13. Thousands will be descending on SW19 to see the matches go down in real life, but live screenings will be peppered all over London for thousands more who missed the ticket ballot or can’t be bothered to queue in the hopes of getting in for the day. With a jug of Pimms in one hand and a punnet of strawberries in the other, you’ll hardly know the difference. Even better – most of watch parties won’t cost you a single penny. So, pack your picnic blanket, fill your flask and pull up a pew at a summery screening near you. 

Women’s football fan collective Baller FC has teamed up with craft beer heroes Signature Brew to bring the Women’s Euros to the big screen. Every single England and Wales game will air at the brewery’s Haggerston taproom, as well as a curated pick of group stage clashes and all the knockout stages. This is not just a bunch of screenings, though. This is an all-out month-long footie fiesta. Besides the games themselves, there’ll be DJs, street skills challenges, foosball contests, karaoke, art takeovers, barber cuts, temp tatts, WoSo-inspired makeovers and the return of Baller’s ‘guess the player by the ponytail’ quiz. No Euros watch party is quite as fun-filled as this one.  

It’s a trap, almost, to think of Eugene O’Neill’s final play A Moon for the Misbegotten as a sequel to his miserable masterpiece Long Day’s Journey Into Night. But you go in expecting despair and instead find something that’s more like an episode of Steptoe and Son. Maybe that’s down to director Rebecca Frecknall, who creates not the faded grandeur of a seaside home here, but a wooden yard full of splintered timbers. Peter Corboy and Ruth Wilson as siblings Mike and Josie burst onto the stage and whack each other with dialogue, fed up with dad Phil’s drunkenness and slave-driving on their rock-infested farm. Frecknall turns the tilth on a half-buried play, and digs up something extraordinary.

Lupa not only promises ‘Roman comfort food’, but also the slim chance of catching sight of its Very Handsome co-founder, the actor Theo James. Carousel co-founder Ed Templeton is also behind this new opening, and in the kitchen is the extremely capable Naz Hassan, who we last encountered as head chef of the much-missed Pidgin. This isn’t a delicate menu of rural farm fare, but a ballsy offering of big, bold food: a tomato carpaccio covered in a vigorously crispy pangrattato, a punchy, gleaming yellow Carbonara and a cacio e pepe humming cracked black pepper. If the food is legit, so is the space, an old shoemenders turned tiny 28-cover room, a fitting facsimile of a cosy Trastevere osteria. 

This unceasingly silly and consistently entertaining sequel delivers more of the knowing, campy shocks that made 2023’s original a box-office hit and TikTok sensation. 2.0 picks up a little after M3GAN left off. The murderous robot girl-doll has been vanquished; its creator, repentant toy inventor Gemma (Allison Williams) has emerged from a stretch in prison vowing to bring kids’ tech usage under control. Meanwhile, Gemma’s niece, Cady (Violet McGraw) has learnt some key life lessons from her doll friend’s kill spree. But, soon the FBI come knocking looking for help to track down a rogue militarised AI doll called AMELIA (Ivanna Sakhno). It’s another goofy brand of cautionary tale against AI, tech dependence, and Silicon Valley types who want to stick a chip in our brains.

It’s been more than a decade since Dickie Beau broke through with his uniquely weird shows that involve him lip-syncing to archival recordings, while he embodies the voices with movement and props and fun stuff like that. But Showmanism feels like a reckoning with the form and with himself. On the surface, the show is a history of acting. And it starts out on brief: some classic ‘I’m stuck in a box’ miming, recordings about Ancient Greek theatre, interesting musings on audiences and actors from the likes of Ian McKellen and Fiona Shaw. Beau puts on costumes, strips down, embodies each voice in a different way. And then halfway through, the themes and motifs criss-cross (a religious Passion play in an Austrian village! Hamlet! Cilla Black!). He starts to question why he’s on stage at all. It’s complex, richly layered, and a very moving celebration of the stage.

Enjoy £50 off 'Showmanism' tickets at Hampstead Theatre with only with Time Out Offers.

The festival bringing some of the biggest stars on the planet to London continues in Hyde Park this weekend. The second weekend opens with a headline show from folk-pop artist Noah Kahan, before 2024 breakout star Sabrina Carpenter headlines for two consecutive nights. 

Popping up each summer on the steps where the Regent’s Canal passes Granary Square, Everyman’s Screen on the Canal is one of the city’s best-loved outdoor cinemas. This year’s pop-up will be looking more Instagrammable than ever before, thanks to designer and architect Yinka Ilori, who has created an eye-popping screen design. Head down on a sunny afternoon to catch live coverage from Wimbledon every day of the tournament, plus the usual mix of live sports, classic movies, family-friendly flicks and recent hits. 

Get adult tickets for £19 (down from £25) and student tickets for £10 only with Time Out Offers.

Can’t afford tickets to the big name gigs at BST Hyde Park? As well as putting on mega stars, BST Hyde Park also hosts Open House, an eight-day-long event that’s mostly free to attend. This year’s Open House lineup includes House Gospel Choir, Dub Pistols, Trojan Sound System, South London Samba and many more. Plus, if you feel like getting raucous there’s a Bongo’s Bingo party. There are plenty of kid-friendly events, such as West End Kids and Brainiac Remixed. And other than the music, BST is hosting eight open-air cinema nights, showing flicks including The Goonies, Wicked singalong, The Fall Guy and Dune Part 2. 

There aren’t that many bits of London that are actually secret anymore, but the residents of Eel Pie Island have done a very good job at keeping their island as clandestine as possible. Only accessible by boat or via a little footbridge reaching over the river, a ‘private property’ sign at the entrance usually keeps people out, except for twice a year when the public is allowed to snoop around the place at the island’s Open Studios event. The summer open days are usually a laidback affair and a chance to see inside the workspaces of 26 artists, from painters and potters to sculptors. View, commission or purchase yourself some art or craft and leave having experienced a still-hidden part of the city.

Omnibus Theatre’s 96 Festival has proven to be rich territory for coming across new LGBTQ+ writing, and its headline one-man show ‘Get Happy’ is very much worth discovering. This intriguing debut from Joseph Aldous, sees the writer-actor play Adam, who is fully embedded in a hot gay summer of partying, sex and directionless, but enjoyable, hedonism. That’s until his best friend and housemate, Ryan, gets engaged to his boyfriend. Suddenly, about to turn 30, Adam starts to reassess his life. Can he be just as seemingly happy, settled and secure as Ryan? Written with the Soho Writers’ Lab and packed with a playlist of queer bangers, this debut show navigates the thorny question: how do we ‘get happy’ when we don’t actually know what it looks like? 

Can you truly call yourself a south London queer if you don't hightail it to Clapham Grand on Pride eve? During the day, there's a camp spectacular with Nadine Coyle. Then, things hot up with an afterparty (ticketed separately) that'll boast a packed dance floor with 1,000 revellers dancing to electropop classics and pride anthems. This year the star appearances are Drag Race rebel Bimini and Tulisa, who'll be doing sets alongside DJs Bestley and Tete Bang. There'll also be all the usual trappings of a big Clapham Grand night out: balloon drops, shot, cocktails, glitter make-up and all round sweaty good times. 

The RA’s annual showcase of all the artists you need to know about right now is back to brighten up the summer holidays. Now in it’s 257th year, the world’s oldest open submission exhibition (which means anyone can enter their work to be considered for inclusion) is curated by a different member of the Royal Academy each year. The artist tasked with the big job in 2025 is British-Iranian architect Farshid Moussavi. The great thing about the Summer Exhibition is that it’s open to all, and the selectors pick from thousands of entries. That means that your mate’s mum’s weird little whittled sculptures of George Michael might be shown alongside something by Antony Gormley. 

The Cosmic House is one of those rare places deserving of the name ‘hidden gem’. A Victorian villa on a residential street near Holland Park station and the former home of revered postmodernist landscape architect Charles Jencks. Since 2021, it’s operated as a museum, and each year an artist responds to the surroundings. This time round, it’s a video work by Lithuanian-born musician Lina Lapelytė, composed of 12 screens dotted around the house to be hunted down like a game of hide and seek. Each screen shows a video of a musical performance taking place in the home, often right where you’re standing. There’s even a screen in the ‘Cosmic Loo’, complete with a mirrored ceiling and postcard-like tiling. Beautiful and peculiar, this is immersive art as it should be.

Warmth and wit is central to Danny James King’s Miss Myrtle’s Garden, a tender play in which every cast member is as magnetic as the other. The story unfolds in the overgrown Peckham garden of Miss Myrtle (Diveen Henry) – a space dense with ghosts and flowers. Into this tangled setting steps her grandson Rudy (Michael Ahomka-Lindsay), who has just moved in with his (secret) boyfriend Jason (Elander Moore). Myrtle is also slipping into dementia. She spends her days bickering with Eddie, her kind but slightly oafish Irish neighbour (a charming Gary Lilburn). What begins as comedy softens into a portrait of two lonely people reaching – awkwardly – for connection. What the play gets so right is the way it creeps up on you: one moment you’re laughing, the next you’re holding back tears. 

The 99-year-old living legend that is Sir David Attenborough is still going strong: fresh off the back of his new documentary Ocean, he now drops a new film at the Natural History Museum in the form of Our Story. The 50-minute ‘immersive’ documentary will be projected across the walls of the Jerwood Gallery, subsuming you in what we can only describe as raw nature (it sounds like a relatively similar idea to 2023’s BBC Planet Earth Experience, albeit with more Attenborough and more of a narrative) as he takes us on the story of humanity, from origins to the present. Blending wildlife footage with animation, it’s human-centric but has plenty of room for animals too. 

The Orange Tree’s new production is Terence Rattigan’s penultimate play In Praise of Love and Amelia Sears’s revival is exquisite. Its protagonists are Sebastian Cruttwell (Dominic Rowan) – champagne socialist manchild and superstar book critic – and his Estonian wife Lydia (Claire Price). As an intelligence officer in postwar Berlin, Sebastian married Lydia to get her out from behind the Iron Curtain, with little expectation that they’d stay together. But they have, rubbing along eccentrically for 25 years. It plays out as a melancholy farce: Lydia has discovered she’s dying, and doesn’t want to tell Sebastian, reasoning he’s too hapless to be able to cope with it. It’s an elegant elegy for Rattigan’s own war-time generation.

Nicholas Hytner’s exuberant 2019 take on A Midsummer Night’s Dream was simply too much fun to leave to the history books: what a joy it is to have it back. It is joyously queer: pretty much everyone in it gets a crack at snogging everybody else. And Hytner’s key textual intervention is swapping the bulk of fairy monarchs Oberon and Titania’s lines, meaning that it’s JJ Feild’s Oberon – not Susannah Fielding’s Titania – who has it off with Emmanuel Akwafo’s exuberant Bottom. The new actors are also bloody great and the show remains a hoot. It’s a production that just pelts you with cool stuff for three hours and wins your heart.

Imagine indulging in all the dumplings, rolls, and buns you can handle, crafted by a Chinatown favourite with over a decade of culinary excellence. Savour Taiwanese pork buns, savoury pork and prawn soup dumplings, and luxurious crab meat xiao long bao. To top it off, enjoy a chilled glass of prosecco to elevate your feast. Cheers to a truly delightful dining experience at Leong’s Legend!

Get to know the surprising queer histories behind some of the art and artefacts in the British Museum’s vast collection on this free tour of the iconic institution. Led by a knowledgeable volunteer, the 70-minute tour takes in a huge variety of objects ranging from the ancient world to the present day, illuminating the fascinating stories behind some of the musum’s most famous artefacts and lesser-known gems, including the Townley Diskobolos, the Gilgamesh Tablet and the Warren Cup. Can’t make it to one of these dates? There’s also a self-guided version of the tour with free audio commentary you can access through your preferred streaming platform. 

Director Jordan Fein’s superb take on 1964’s Fiddler on the Roof – a transfer from Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre – manages to find its own, brilliantly idiosyncratic balance. The tone here is, for the most part, drolly surreal, a dark clown show underpinning everything from the gags to the choreography (by Julia Cheng) to Fein’s penchant for a weird tableau. Key to it all is US actor Dannheisser as Teyve. He beautifully underplays it with a bearish dignity and put-upon stoicism. The air of dark absurdity is aided by a wonderfully evocative set from Tom Scutt. It’s unlikely to be a definitive take, but it is a brilliant one.

Love sushi, dumplings or noodles? Inamo’s got you covered. This high-tech spot in Soho or Covent Garden lets you order from interactive tabletops, play over 20 games while you wait and even doodle on your table. Then it’s all you can eat pan-Asian dishes like Sichuan chicken, red dragon rolls and Korean wings with bottomless drinks. Usually £113.35, now just £33 or £26 if you're in early at the weekend!

Get Inamo’s best ever bottomless food & drink brunch from only £26 with Time Out Offers.

Think clowning is a dying art that’s limited to circus big tops? The London Clown Festival will make you think again. The event returns for another year in its biggest incarnation yet, with an eclectic line-up of British and European clown work that will run at first Soho Theatre and then on to Jacksons Lane for the last few shows. As you might imagine, it’s a thoroughly contemporary affair that won’t simply consist of people dressed like Ronald McDonald squirting flowers at each other: shows vary from Sasha Krohn’s elegant The Weight of the Shadow – a piece that examines the turmoil of a psychiatric patient over a single day – to monstrous bouffon Red Bastard, in his first London dates in eight years.

For full listings, go to the official Clown Festival website. 

Where would London’s music scene be without pirate radio? To celebrate the radical influence of pirate radio that still impacts London’s music scene today, the Barbican is putting on a month-long programme of broadcasts, talks, workshops, club nights and screenings that will explore the history and impact of community radio, and Black British music. Highlights from the programme include musical sessions and parties, a month-long residency by Reprezent Radio, a one-off club night hosted by Rinse FM at the Barbican’s ClubStage, screenings of archive films and panel talks.

Chaotic explosions of wood, scrap metal and cotton cascade through the gallery in the work of Brooklyn-based artist Leonardo Drew. Known for using found natural materials that are oxidised, burned, and left to decay, Drew creates visceral, large-scale installations that reflect on the cyclical nature of existence. His sculptures evoke the scars of America’s industrial past, while also suggesting forces beyond human control. At the South London Gallery in London, Drew will unveil a new site-specific work that engulfs the walls and floor of the main space, with fragmented wood appearing as if battered by extreme weather, natural disasters, or what he calls ‘acts of God.’

For a script penned in 1893, Mrs Warren’s Profession still feels remarkably fresh. The attitude of George Bernard Shaw’s play towards sex work as a functioning product of the capitalist labour market feels bracingly current even today. Yet at first glance, director Dominic Cooke’s production is as traditional as they come, but something darker bubbles beneath the surface. Imelda Staunton plays the titular Mrs Warren who draws the eye from the moment she strides onto stage in her striped frock coat. There is subtle pain in her voice when she talks about the circumstances that led her to her profession. You don’t leave with clear answers about Mrs Warren or even her profession, but you will leave unexpectedly entertained. 

From screeching tube carriages to the lulling podcast we listen to on our commute, noise is constantly shaping our lives, and the Barbican’s Feel the Sound exhibition promises to be a multi-sensory journey into our personal relationship with sound. Eleven commissions and installations will take over the arts centre, all exposing visitors to frequencies, sound, rhythmic patterns and vibrations that define everything around us. Even the Centre’s underground car parks will be part of the action as it’s transformed into a club space. Sing with a digital quantum choir, experience music without sound and look out for experiences celebrating underground club culture. 

Mischief Theatre – they of The Play That Goes Wrong – are now aiming their slick brand of ever-escalating theatrical farce at the spy genre in this West End premiere. When a top-secret file is stolen by a turncoat British agent, a deeply mismatched pair of KGB agents and a CIA operative and his over-enthusiastic mother collide in pursuit of it. General chaos ensues. Writers Henry Shields and Henry Lewis mine plenty of daft comedy from spy staples like bugged radios and improbable gadgets while paying homage to a decade in the UK rocked by the revelations of double agent Soviet Union spy rings. A talented cast know their mission, steering into every eccentricity in the play’s helium-filled parade of stereotypes. For bungling wit matched with peerless physical comedy, you’d be hard pressed to find better in the West End.