Free things to do in London this weekend

Join the biggest Chinese New Year celebrations outside Asia at this massive street party. Hundreds of thousands of revellers will flock to the West End for festivities that kick off with a colourful lion and dragon-filled parade that progresses down Charing Cross Road, Shaftesbury Avenue and through Chinatown. Then, head to Trafalgar Square for free stage shows including martial arts displays, traditional dances, and Chinese pop performances. There's also a family zone in Leicester Square for activities including arts, crafts and dressing up. The festivities culminate with fireworks and techno lion dances as darkness falls.

Did you know London’s original Chinatown wasn’t located in its current spot next to Soho, but was actually a bit further east in Limehouse? Celebrate the Lunar New Year a stone’s throw from Chinatown's roots at the London Museum Docklands, who’ll be running a free festival on the February that’s suitable for all the family. You’ll be able to immerse yourself in Chinese folktales, try your hand at crafts and workshops, and sit back and marvel at the dragon dance. While the event is free entry, booking is required for some workshops.

This year’s New Contemporaries exhibition, a showcase of 26 of the UK’s finest emerging artists, opened at the South London Gallery at the end of January. The show includes themes of - and you may want to take a breath here - dystopian futures, the climate crisis, industrialisation, gentrification, displacement, critical approaches to systems of power, digital technologies, mourning, remembrance, and loss. Among others! Highlights include a striking photographic work by Timon Benson depicting a group of young people congregating in an intimate, cramped party setting, a series of brutalist sculptures by William Braitwaithe, and a number of satisfying works on canvas by a collection of plainly virtuosic painters. The absolute stars of the show, however, are located across the street in the gallery’s Fire Station building. On the first floor are two remarkable films. The first, by Chinese artist River Yuhao Cao, explores mourning in regional Chinese folk traditions. It’s a quiet, beautifully shot meditation that centres on a moving stage vehicle, which parks up in the middle of a forest at night. The curtains are drawn to reveal a lone dancer who performs for an audience of just one, presumably grieving, man who sits on the ground, transfixed by her movements. This moving film has a graceful, hypnotic quality to it, and it makes great use of minimal lighting to pierce through the dark, twilight hours during which it was shot. What this exhibition lacks in cohesion, it makes...

Greenwich Peninsula will be transformed into a festival of Lunar New Year activity on February 21, ushering in the year of the horse with a host of performances, workshops and tasty treats. Head down to witness the dragon and lion dances, which blend stunning costumes, rhythmic drumming and impressive acrobatics, or try your hand at woodblock printing, Chinese knot-making and Mahjong. DJs from Loose.fm, while alternative Asian culture collective Eastern Margins returns with a market of arts and crafts, community traders and East and Southeast Asian street food ranging from congee to youtiao. A host of the area’s bars and restaurants will be putting on one-day-only offers to celebrate the occasion, and you can also check out a special exhibition celebrating the ancient crafts and textiles China’s Henan province, running until mid-March at Firepit Art Gallery & Studio.

A new free photography exhibition illustrates the beauty and fragility of the Pantanal – the world’s largest wetland that sprawls across Brazil, Bolivia and Paraguay. Over 60 images, captured by two of Brazil’s leading documentary photographers, will be displayed. Visitors will discover the Pantanal’s wonderful biodiversity – which includes jaguars, howler monkeys, caiman and marsh deer – alongside the ravages of wildfires and deforestation. 

National Maritime Museum is going all out for the Year of the Horse, celebrating British East Asian heritage with a day packed full of workshops, performances and activities. See traditional Lion Dances, learn to fan fance, watch a zodiac puppet performance, and try your hand at Chinese crafts including calligraphy and lantern making. There are also talks that relate the festivities to objects in the museum's collection, including a chance to meet a historic Chinese sailor who served on legendary nearby tea clipper, the Cutty Sark. 

Once again you can expect to see remarkable feats of astrophotography at the Astronomy Photographer of the Year exhibition. It’s a chance to see magical views of both our own night sky and of galaxies far, far away. The winning spacey visions come from dozens of professional and amateur snappers in various categories including ‘Planets, Comets and Asteroids’, ‘Stars and Nebulae’, ‘Galaxies’ and ‘Young Astronomy Photographer of the Year’ for under-16s. Soar down to Greenwich to see the winners from 2025's competition on display. 

The Barbican is celebrating 20 years of comissioning artists for The Curve in 2026. Chicago-based artist Julia Phillips will be the first to exhibit in the free space this year, with her first UK solo exhibition Inside, Before They Speak. Showing new sculptures that combine glazed ceramics sculpted on her body with metal hardware, Phillips explores ideas about the body, conception, technology and human connection. 

Want to gawp at some of the masterpieces in the National Gallery but can’t face schlepping to central London? Croydon will be taken over with life-sized reproductions of some of the gallery’s biggest bangers in this free outdoor art exhibition. From Van Gogh, to Monet and Turner, CR0’s town centre will be awash with artwork. Locations to spot the paintings include the Queen’s Gardens, Croydon Minster, Whitgift Shopping Centre and Park Hill Park. Pieces will also be installed in Coulsdon, New Addington, Purley, Thornton Heath and Upper Norwood.