Black History Month Events in London 2025

Comedian Lenny Henry, actor and musician Jordan Stephens, MP Dawn Butler, Strictly dancer Oti Mabuse, TV presenter June Sarpong and Olympian Dame Denise Lewis are some of the big names on the line-up for this book festival aiming to banish barriers to entry into the publishing industry. Taking over the Barbican for its fifth edition, it features a jam-packed programme of talks, panel discussions and workshops that will help aspiring authors to navigate everything from securing an agent to writing engaging dialogue, plus film screenings, readings from bestselling authors, a kids’ zone with storytelling and music sessions, and a marketplace where you can stock up on new reads by Black authors from across the globe and in just about every genre imaginable. 

If you’re a classical music fan, Classically Black at Kings Place should be on your radar. Brought to you by Black Lives in Music, an organisation set up to address racial inequality in the music industry, the full day event will celebrate the contributions of Black classical musicians past and present. The groundbreaking event will include talks, discussions, an emerging talent showcases, and performances by Simmy Singh, Sabi Ensemble, The Jollof House Party Opera, and Paulette Bayley. The day will also include panel discussion, 'Sisters Are Doing It For Themselves', interrogating the experiences of Black women in classical music today.

Walking tours are an exciting way to see a city. No matter how well you think you know London a tour will always offer up a way to see the city through fresh eyes. Black History Walks offer a series of specialised walking tours all year round but October is the perfect time to discover Black British History. Walks on offer in October include ‘Fighting the Slave Master: Past and Present’ (October 4), ‘Afro Futurism, Spirituality and the Black Image’ (October 9) and ‘Secrets of Soho’ (October 11), plus a Black History Bus Tour (October 5) and a Black History Steam Train Tour (October 18). After all that, you might look at the city you love to hate to love a little differently.

The work of director Tom Morris has been little seen in London since he co-directed War Horse and then went off to run the Bristol Old Vic, but now he’s back with a bang, as this production marks the start of a five year partnership with Chris Harper Productions to direct Shakespeare plays for the West End. This revival of Shakespeare’s great tragedy of race and jealousy won’t get a fraction of the attention that the 2025 Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal production received, but there’s every hope it’ll be the better Othello. 

Of course you need names for West End Shakespeare, and Morris’s cast is headed by Black British star David Harewood. This is his second time doing it: as a young man he was famously the first Black actor to play the role at the National Theatre, in 1997, and he’s indicated he’s looking forward to returning to the part without all the cultural baggage and weight of expectations.

He’ll be joined by Toby Jones as Iago, while Desdemona will be played by US actor Caitlin FitzGerald, probably best known here for her role as Kendall’s troubled girlfriend Tabitha in Succession, and there will be music by indie legend and enthusiastic theatre score writer PJ Harvey. 

Get a dose of hip hop history at Somerset House this autumn, where the first major solo exhibition from British photographer Jennie Baptiste will be displayed. Having photographed everyone from NAS, to Jay Z, Estelle and Biggie Smalls, Baptiste’s work spanning the last three decades has been at the forefront of R&B, hip hop, fashion and youth culture, as she documented the influence of Black British communities on culture and art from the 1990s to today. 

Kerry James Marshall is an artist with a singular vision. He has become arguably the most important living American painter over the past few decades, with an ultra-distinctive body of work that celebrates the Black figure in an otherwise very ‘Western’ painting tradition. This big, ambitious show will be a joyful celebration of his lush, colourful approach to painting.

Hammersmith arts centre Riverside Studios is going all out for Black History Month this year, with a line-up that spans films, community creative workshops, and spotlight evenings. The programme includes Charles Burnett’s unsettling 1977 debut Killer of Sheep (October 26-30), a landmark of independent Black cinema that follows a slaughterhouse worker as he battles exhaustion and finds fleeting moments of joy. Boris Lojkine’s recent film Souleymane’s Story (October 25-28) follows a Guinean asylum seeker as he rides his bike through the streets of Paris, delivering food and awaiting an official decision.

There's also a scratch night (October 6; November 3) for emerging theatremakers and writers, as well as a work-in-progress showing of immersive experience Doubles (October 11), which follows two Grenadians navigating the British class system. The program is rounded out with djembe drumming workshops for both kids and adults (October 11-12).

In celebration of Black History Month, central London event space The Outernet has teamed up with Black British platform Seasoned for an exhibition about what it means to be Black and British. Screened across the venue’s wraparound LED screens, it features responses to research done by the Runnymede Trust which found that nearly two thirds of Black Britons feel that racism in the UK has worsened in the last five years. Passersby are free to stop in at the open-air venue to check out the display, which runs for the majority of Black History Month and promises to be ‘a vibrant portrait of the diversity, creativity and resilience of Black Britain today’. Visitors are also encouraged to donate to the Runnymede Trust, a charity which works tirelessly to challenge structural racism in the UK. 

Video games are the medium for Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley. The young artist uses them to ‘imaginatively archive and empower Black Trans stories’ - this isn’t just point-and-shoot, slack-jawed gaming for the sake of it, this is one of contemporary society’s most important cultural forms being used to give voice to marginalised identities.