The best things to do in London in April 2025

London has an amazing energy on bank holidays and Easter weekend is particularly blessed, because it’s a rare double bank holiday, meaning we get four whole days of work-free fun from Good Friday on April 18 to Easter Monday on April 21. The capital has plenty to keep you occupied over your extra-long weekend. From egg hunts to bumper club nights, check out our top picks for Easter weekend 2025 below. 

He may have been the greatest composer of musicals in history, but Stephen Sondheim’s final musical was, appropriately enough, too arty for Broadway: the posthumously produced Here We Are debuted in NYC to warm if not uncritical notices. Now the new Sondheim is arriving in London – and it’s a coup for Rufus Norris to score it as the centrepiece of his final season running the NT. Directed by Joe Mantello in what has been billed as a new production, different from his original NYC one, it has a formidable cast headed by Tracie Bennett, Rory Kinnear and Denis O’Hare. The plot follows Leo and Marianne Brink, who think they’ve discovered the perfect new brunch spot – but things start to get very weird.

‘It’s complicated’, says unflappable young Kiwi housekeeper Hallie (Tessa Bonham Jones) when her boss Roald Dahl (John Lithgow) aggressively presses her for her opinions on Israel. And it really is. Transferring to the Harold Pinter after an initial run at the Royal Court in September, the topicality of Mark Rosenblatt’s thoughtful debut play about Roald Dahl’s antisemitism is startling. At the heart of Nicholas Hytner’s naturalistic, real-time production is American actor John Lithgow. His Dahl is magnetic: frail and malignant, cruel and kind, righteous and monstrous. It’s a magnificent performance.

Running a marathon is a truly gruelling feat requiring countless hours of training, so the 50,000 brave souls who are taking part London Marathon on Sunday April 27 very much deserve our support. Check out our route guide to find the best spectating spots and track down nearby pubs and bars for when all that whooping and clapping leaves you feeling nearly as thirsty as the runners. Remember: your presence at this monumental sporting occasion makes it absolutely fine to drink lager or rosé in the street at 10am on a Sunday.  

This is your last chance to catch one of London’s most stunning exhibitions is this Bank Holiday Monday. The Sony World Photography Awards 2025 brings together over 300 breathtaking images from across the globe – think Bolivian cholas on golf courses, modern cowboys, cosplayers in their living rooms and some seriously fierce hummingbirds. Tickets are just £15, and with exclusive dining perks nearby, it’s the perfect way to spend the long weekend.

Get your tickets for £15, down from £17.50, only with Time Out Offers.

Head to St Nicholas Church in Deptford, and you’ll see a pair of huge stone skulls above crossed bones on its gateposts. It’s thought these ghoulish sculptures were the inspiration behind the famous Jolly Roger pirate flag. So, it’s fitting that just up the road in Greenwich, the National Maritime Museum is putting on a huge exhibition unearthing the truth behind the infamous swashbuckling sailors. Pirates will trace the changing depictions of pirates through the ages and reveal what the brutal reality of pirate life was like behind the mythologised, fictionalised accounts we’ve all grown up with. Explore piracy in popular culture – from comical characters like Captain Pugwash and Captain Hook to anti-heroes like Long John Silver and Captain Jack Sparrow, the global history of piracy and issues of modern piracy facing seafarers today. 

Outdoor spaces are big business come summer, and this seasonal pop-up between Waterloo and Westminster bridges is one of the biggest and best in London, boasting lovely views over the river Thames and an eclectic programme of drag shows, DJs, live performances and themed club nights. Between the Bridges returns for the season from April 17, with a packed schedule of entertainment. To celebrate its reopening, it’s also giving away 500 free drinks on the opening night – so look sharp. 

Over 17 years on from his last UK stage outing, Ewan McGregor returns to the stage in 2025 and is reunited with Michael Grandage, the director of Guys & Dolls and Othello, the two Donmar Warehouse shows the Scots actor did at the height of his Star Wars fame. My Master Builder is a new play, or rather a new spin on an old play, being up and coming US playwright Lila Raicek’s reworking of Henrik Ibsen’s The Master Builder. Like many of Ibsen’s works, the 1892 drama could reasonably be described as ‘proto-feminist’ without quite being ‘feminist’. You might further guess that Raicek may have jettisoned some of the dreamlike symbolism that mark Ibsen’s original – all will be revealed... 

Tom Hanks narrates an epic experience that offers a unique new perspective on humankind’s past and future voyages to the moon. See this exciting Apollo Remastered collaboration with Tom Hanks, Christopher Riley and 59 Productions with an insight into the impending return of crewed surface missions by going behind the scenes of the Artemis programme, including interviews between Hanks and Artemis astronauts. With a musical score by Anne Nikitin, Lightroom’s powerful projection and audio technology will transport you to another world.

Get £19 tickets to 'The Moonwalkers: A Journey with Tom Hanks' at Lightroom, only with Time Out Offers.

All that glitters isn’t gold – sometimes it’s silver, amethyst, ruby, sapphire or emerald. All the colours of the jewel rainbow will be on display at the V&A as part of its huge Cartier exhibition opening in spring 2025. The UK’s first major display dedicated to the Maison in nearly 30 years will boast more than 350 tiaras, watches, clocks, brooches and other precious objects – some of which have been worn by Queen Elizabeth II and pop princess Rihanna – and trace Cartier’s evolution since the turn of the 20th century. A limited initial ticket sale has already sold out, but keep your eyes peeled for more tickets going on sale. Members can still gain access to the exhibition, so if you’re desperate to gawp at the glamour, consider signing up.

A brand new arts festival takes over the Southbank Centre this month, bringing together world-class orchestras and some of the most ambitious and exciting artists, performers and creatives currently working in their fields. Some of the highlights of the series include the Chineke! Orchestra and George The Poet joining forces for a night of music, spoken word and poetry tackling subjects of resilience, change and identity; the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and Punch Records uniting grime, hip-hop, rap and orchestral music; and Huang Ruo’s ‘City Of Floating Sounds’, which turns the audience into part of a moving orchestra across London.

You might think The Postal Museum’s focus is centred just on UK affairs, but its new exhibition will turn its gaze to the lives of enslaved people in the Caribbean – and how their enslavers used the postal service to manage plantations from afar. ‘Voices Of Resistance’ tells the stories of those exploited and persecuted on the island of St. Thomas, where enslaved people – predominantly women – were forced to carry heavy baskets filled with coal to fuel ships belonging to the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company. By exploring their lives and legacies, it exposes how the 19th-century British postal services profited from and enabled transatlantic trafficking of enslaved Africans.

F Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novella about the dark side of the American Dream has been endlessly adapted – there are two big US musical adaptations, with Florence Welch’s Gatsby: An American Myth circling Broadway and Jason Howland, Nathan Tysen and Kait Kerrigan’s The Great Gatsby already there. And now it’s coming here: barely a year after it opened on the Great White Way, The Great Gatsby will transfer to London, playing the limited summer season at the huge London Coliseum. Reviews from Broadway suggest a stylish but not exactly profound take on the classic story that follows narrator Nick Carraway’s entanglement with enigmatic millionaire Jay Gatsby. Marc Bruni directs the transferring production.

Tate Britain hosts the first major UK exhibition of video and animation artist Ed Adkins, a career-spanning show featuring paintings, writing, embroideries and drawings, alongside the acclaimed artist’s moving image works. It’s a vast survey charting Atkins’ artistic development, blending emotion and personal reflection with existential inquiry. His work grapples with the nature of love and death, exploring the anxieties, absurdities, and vulnerabilities of life in an age where technology both preserves and distorts who we are. The result is something urgent and deeply human. 

Spring in London is always a knockout. As we emerge from an extra-severe period of hibernation, the urge to get to the park and gawp at loads of pretty flowers becomes pretty intense and there are tons of amazing green spaces to enjoy the season’s pops of colour. From London's bright pink cherry blossoms to seas of lavender that swell in summer, take a look at our list of the best places to see flowers in London.

Virtuoso ventriloquist comic Conti mounts a weeklong West End engagement with her latest show in which she puts her trademark mouth mast on hapless audience members for what is described as ‘an unparalleled, unscripted new show that delves deep into who we are, hijacking faces to spark a bold, hysterical reality warp’. Indeed!

The capital’s special colourful spectacle that signals warmer days are on the way is here. Cherry blossom season in Japan is a major event, with vistors from around the world flocking over to get a glimpse of the petals in full bloom. If you can’t make it over for this year’s sakura season London has plenty of bloomin’ marvellous places to see the flowers.