August events in London

For a lot of Londoners, Notting Hill Carnival on the August Bank Holiday Weekend flashes by in a blaze of feathers, Red Stripe and tinnitus. To those who make it happen, it’s a year-round operation to create one of the biggest and oldest street parties in the world. More than two million people usually flock to the streets of W11 for Carnival weekend. It’s free to join the family day on the Sunday, as well as the Monday street party which is for the hard partiers. It’s a celebration of freedom and Caribbean culture, with an iconic parade showcasing the best of mas, soca, calypso, steel bands and soundsystems. What are you waiting for? 

All Points East returns to Vicky Park for its seventh edition in 2025. Since debuting in 2018, the festival has garnered a reputation for building some of the most exciting line-ups in the UK. Its headliners are often indie or dance-focused big-hitters, while its undercards are packed with cult heroes and rising stars you can say you saw first. If your music preferences lie in the Venn diagram of indie and electronic then this is the festival for you, with the likes of Barry Can't Swim, Confidence Man, Shygirl, RAYE , the Maccabees, Bombay Bicycle Club, The Cribs, and Nilüfer Yanya on the bill this year. 

After two sell-out years, Battersea Park in Concert is back this August bank holiday weekend, and you can nab tickets for just £25 (usually £50). On Saturday 23 August, it’s Symphonic Disco featuring dancefloor classics of ABBA, Dua Lipa, Chic and more, reimagined by the Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra. Then on Monday 25 August, music legend Jools Holland takes to the stage with his Rhythm & Blues Orchestra and a stellar line-up of guests including Chris Difford, Yolanda Brown and Louise Marshall.

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Beer gardens are one of the best things about London. There’s no finer way to spend a sunny (or even not-so-sunny) afternoon in the capital, than supping on a couple of cold boys under the city’s azure-ish sky. If you’re looking to sink some pints in the breezy great outdoors, we’ve got you covered with our tried-and-tested list of the city’s best beer gardens.

Anyone who's keen to replicate Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet's iconic rendition of a doomed romance in the 1997 movie Titanic will fall head over heels for this new immersive show. It's a new offering from the makers of the surprisingly good virtual reality spectacular Tutankhamun: The Immersive Exhibition, which uses all kinds of cinematic wizardry to bring its world to life. This time, we're promised immersive 360° projections, a moving VR tribute to the ship’s brave orchestra, and a 5D Augmented Reality Metaverse walk through the Titanic’s decks. A perfect settling to canoodle with your loved one of choose. Or just get nerdy about the Titanic's story, with plenty of intricate detail about its plunge from art deco design classic to barnacled wreck at the bottom of the ocean. The exhibit is child friendly and includes a children’s activity centre, although you’ll know best if your little ones are actually into the Titanic as a concept – James Cameron’s magnum opus tends not to be massive with primary school kids.

‘The sleep of reason produces monsters’. It’s a perpetually instructive aphorism that artists have repeatedly returned to, and one that Turner Prize-winning artist Tai Shani’s new commission for Somerset House takes as its starting point.

In the grand Edmond J. Safra Fountain Court, in an illuminated casket-like glass box, gently breathing with closed eyes. We’re told that this ethereal, childlike giant has slept through ‘warnings of present and imminent catastrophes, political and social disaster and environmental collapse.’ Watching its stomach peacefully rising and falling, it’s easy to believe that ignorance is bliss.

The courtyard installation is complimented by The Dream Radio, an accompanying online broadcast featuring newly commissioned work by a diverse array of artists, writers, musicians and thinkers, plus a busy events programme, including philosophy seminars for children and panel discussions on environmental and economic future models. Public sculpture often enriches the urban landscape, but rarely does it amount to the kind of engaging flashpoint that The Spell or The Dream will be.

Seasoned London festival-goers have been singing the praises of this 10,000-capacity Southwark Park festival since it debuted in 2023, thanks to its boutique size, community vibe and collaborative line-ups created with help from some of the city’s best culture venues. Rally is back for its third edition. Headlining in 2025 are electronic DJ and producer Floating Points and Brit Award-winning rapper CASISDEAD, with south London-born experimental outfit Speaker’s Corner Quartet, DJ Ben UFO, Black Midi frontman Geordie Greep and indie rockers Porridge Radio also on the bill. 

August (and early September) will be your last chance to watch Hollywood star Rachel Zegler in a reworked version of Jamie Lloyd’s Evita at the London Palladium. We’ve given the show four stars, and Zegler has been wowing fans every night by literally singing to the public for free on a balcony outside the theatre. Get ready to cry for Argentina.

Southbank Centre comes alive as the temperatures soar, and this summer that's more true than ever. This year's big festival is themed around dancefloors of every kind, and the magic that happens when people of every age and every culture get moving. Dance Your Way Home is curated in collaboration with Emma Warren, who wrote a book of the same name - in celebration of the type of ordinary, messy dancing we do in kitchens and bars, not the rarified kind that happens on the stages of the Royal Opera House.

That means the line-up is full of opportunities to get involved, many of them free. Enjoy a micro disco anytime at Annie Frost Nicholson's installation Discoteca, which creates a bright pink dancefloor for one. Dealing with loss? Shake it out to a line-up of female DJs at Grief Rave (Aug 3). Learn African-derived social dances at A Dance Floor Journey (Aug 1). Or take a dance journey through the decades with History of Hip Hop (Aug 25), with a host who'll link together sounds from soul to funk to grime.

Feeling shy? There are also plenty of dance performances you can simply watch: like Icelandic artist Ásrún Magnúsdóttir's Listening Party (Aug 2-3), which explores how teenagers use movement to connect, or Alex Baczyński-Jenkins's Untitled (Holding Horizon) (Jul 31-31) which explores queer embodiment and desire. Or browse an exhibition by poet Iris Colomb, in response to the festival's themes. Browse the festival's full line-up for more inspo, and you're bound to find something that'll make your feet tap and your heart leap.

Escape reality through maximum immersion and experience 42 masterpieces from 29 of the world’s most iconic artists, each reimagined beyond belief, through cutting-edge technology. Situated in Marble Arch, Frameless plays host to four unique galleries with hypnotic visuals and a dazzling score. Enjoy 90 minutes of surreal artwork from Bosch, Dalí and more for just £24!

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In the Hayward Gallery’s HENI Project Space, two Iranian-Canadian artists are having fun with language. Sculpture, video and found objects all find their place in this playful exhibition that juxtaposes words and images to show us the precarity of truth and meaning in today’s world. From a hyper-realistic sculpture to a repurposed electric motorway sign, Ghazaleh Avarzamani and Ali Ahadi find many ways to combine the quotidian with the uncanny.

Brigadoon, the 1947 musical from My Fair Lady writers Lerner & Loewe has faded out of fashion, presumably because its premise of a couple of American tourists stumbling across a magical Scottish village that only appears every couple of hundred years is actually pretty patronising. But, top Scottish playwright Rona Munro has been brought in to update the book of the first major UK revival since 1988. It will see Drew McOnie direct his inaugural production as Open Air Theatre artistic director. The exact nature of the update is TBC, but it appears that lost-in-the-Highlands American protagonists Tommy and Jeff have been changed from game hunting tourists to crashed WW2 fighter pilots.

Having outgrown its first home in Hackney Wick, London’s queer nightlife festival Body Movements levelled up last summer, making a dazzling debut in Southwark Park with five stages showcasing the great and good of the LGBTQ+ party scene in the capital and beyond. It was easily the best edition yet of the groundbreaking festival, so we’re thrilled that the great and good of the London queer scene will once again come together in the same location for its 2025 edition. A host of new and returning queer nightlife collectives feature, from London stalwarts like Adonis, Pxssy Palace and Little Gay Brother to international crews including Berlin’s Power Dance Club and Brooklyn’s Function. The likes of I.Jordan, HAAi and Mura Masa will be DJing, while there’ll also be live sets from US rapper Cakes da Killer, experimental Parisian artist Coucou Chloe and anonymous London pop maverick Lynks.

Make what you will of this, but for the biggest name Shakespeare play in the Globe’s summer 2025 season, director Robin Belfield has opted to go for the play’s rarely deployed full name. We don’t really have any as to what’s likely from this production beyond that, though the accompanying publicity image suggests an upbeat and vibrant take on the story of shipwreck and mistaken identity that is all the more glorious for its malleability – a rare play that can be as happy or sad as you like.

What if you could feel sound before you ever heard it? Feel the Sound is the Barbican’s bold new exhibition that reimagines how we experience music and noise. From basslines rumbling through underground car parks to moments of total silence that still manage to move you, this isn’t your typical gallery trip. It’s immersive, playful and packed with sensory surprises and somewhere along the way, you might just discover your inner symphony.

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Less than a year after making his Doctor Who-era stage return in the NT’s sublime The Importance of Being Earnest, Ncuti Gatwa is back at it again. And if Earnest was a big ensemble piece in which he was a very enjoyable cog, US playwright Liz Duffy Adams’s Born with Teeth is a two-hander that is presumably pretty much wall-to-wall Gatwa. He’ll star as the legendary playwright Christopher Marlowe opposite Edward Bluemel as William Shakespeare; the year is 1591 and in a paranoid Elizabethan England the two are collaborating on Henry VI together with a mix of flirtation and suspcion.

Nothing says summer quite like the towering stalks and glowing yellow petals of the noble sunflower. Get neck-deep in heliotropic heaven at these golden fields full of custard-yellow blooms, which are at their peak from August to September.

Tightened post-pandemic budgets have put the Greenwich Fair – the colourful family friendly festival within the Greenwich + Docklands International Festival – into hiatus the last couple of summers. The good news, though, is that the riotous and completely free two-day showcase of theatre, dance and games is back for 2025, albeit only as a result of a specifically targetted crowdfunder effort. Back to its old two-day length (it had slimmed down to just one before ist hiatus) Greenwich Fair will this year take place in Greenwich Park and features a host of live acts, running the gamut from heartwarming intergenerational dance show Go, Grandad, Go! to full on aerial highwire work from French compang Cie des Chaussons Rouges and their show Epiphytes (pictured).

Waterloo’s Lower Marsh buzzes with fun-loving energy on a rainy winter’s night, so it doesn’t need​ an excuse to put on a street party on a sunny summer evening. Still, Lower Marsh Lates is providing one with a run of outdoor screenings right in the thick of it all – and perfectly positioned for some of the best street food (and cocktail) options in town. Closing the cinema’s summer season will be ‘Grease’ on August 28, which kicks off at 6.30pm with live music starting an hour earlier.

Another year, another spectacular line-up of classical music. This year, the orchestral extravaganza will feature 86 concerts across eight weeks, with over 3,000 artists taking to the stage, with the majority of the action taking place inside the grand surroundings of London’s Royal Albert Hall. 

Sakari Oramo will conduct the First Night of the Proms, with tenor Caspar Singh, baritone Gerald Finley, violinist Lisa Batiashvili – including the world premiere of The Elements by Master of the King’s Music Errollyn Wallen. The Last Night of the Proms will be conducted by Elim Chan and features trumpeter Alison Balsom and soprano Louise Alder, with two world premieres, by Camille Pépin and Rachel Portman. 

And there’s plenty more in between. See international orchestras, including the Vienna Philharmonic, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. Look out for major soloists, such as pianists Yunchan Lim and Sir András Schiff, violinists Hilary Hahn and Janine Jansen, and soprano Golda Schultz.

Plus, there’ll be plenty of special events, including: Sir Simon Rattle conducting the Chineke! Orchestra for the first time, in their tenth-anniversary year; the first overnight Prom since 1983, featuring pianist and YouTube sensation Hayato Sumino; The Traitors Prom hosted by Claudia Winkleman hosts and exploring themes of treachery and betrayal in classical music; a new CBeebies Prom titled A Magical Bedtime Story; non-classical artists will present their music in new orchestral settings including St. Vincent and Samara Joy; Trevor Nelson presents the Soul Revolution Prom and Anoushka Shankar performs a the world premiere of her new album.

Ticket prices start at £10 (with half-price tickets for under-18s ), and Promming day standing tickets are £8. Booking ahead is recommended. All performances will be available to watch on BBC iPlayer, too. 

Duncan Macmillan’s Every Brilliant Thing has been slowly inching towards the West End for over a decade now. Although it won instant Fringe acclaim, the show – about an unnamed narrator whose life’s work is a list of all the good things in the world – has always seemed too intimate to scale up, so has instead spread around, adapted for a vast array of countries, cultures and languages, from Arabic to Mandarin and all points in between. 

@sohoplace is where it finally makes its West End debut, and the relatively intimate, in-the-round venue feels like the perfect spot for maintaining the all-important closeness between performer and an audience often called upon to help out.

The show has experienced various UK permutations over the years – Macmillan himself directed last year’s tenth anniversary revival, and this will be a co-direct between Macmillan and the more seasoned director Jeremy Herrin. But the big selling point is the casting. The show’s co-creator and regular British star Jonny Donahoe will again perform; but so will three other actors: Ambika Mod, Sue Perkins, and the one and only Lenny Henry will split the run. The actors will perform in rep, with Henry and Donahoe performing throughout August (Henry will understandably tackle the lion’s share) and a more even split between Mod and Perkins in September. All information on who is performing can be found when you book. 

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The last Lyttelton theatre show to be programmed by Rufus Norris prior to his departure looks like a good one: following the Jodie Comer-fuelled West End smash Prima Facie, writer Susie Miller and director Justin Martin join forces with a new star for for follow-up Inter Alia. Rosamund Pike has had a good few years with screen hits Saltburn and The Wheel of Time, and now she makes her National Theatre debut to star as Jessica Parks, a maverick high court judge who precariously balances her work and her home life. We don’t know a lot more about the Miriam Buether-designed show just yet, but the fact Pike will be joined by actors Jamie Glover and Jasper Talbot points to the fact that this won’t be a monologue in the vein of Miller’s last.

Sure, London has got plenty of lidos, the Hamsptead ponds and the River Lea (AKA costa del Hackney), but sometimes a small body of water just doesn’t cut it. Sometimes, what you need is to feel buffeted by the strong coastal wind, smell the sea salt and hear the squawking of seagulls. So isn’t it great that London is surrounded by quaint and picturesque seaside towns, and many can be reached within an hour or two. From the up-and-coming St Leonards, to old faithful’s like Brighton and Margate, escape the heat at one of these gorgeous beach-side spots. 

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London’s spectacular free outdoor Greenwich + Docklands International Festival is back for 2025, taking place over three consecutive weekends starting with the August bank holiday. Celebrating its 30th edition in 2025, the festival will kick off with Above And Beyond, a breathtaking acrobatic feat that will see eight parkour performers from French company Lézards Bleus traversing landmark buildings around Woolwich accompanied by music from the Greenwich-based Citizens of the World Choir. As always, everything at GDIF is free to attend, and you don’t even need to book in advance. Simply turn up and enjoy! 

There are few more striking spots to catch a movie than the iconic surrounds of the Barbican Sculpture Court. As usual, the City of London’s temple of the arts has an inventively curated line-up in store for the final week of August. Cineastes can revel in the cult sci-fi extravaganza that is David Lynch’s 1984 ‘Dune’, while music lovers have an outdoor screening of Björk’s mesmerising new concert movie ‘Cornucopia’. Standard tickets are £18 (£12 for under-25s and £10 for under-18s) and there’s street food to feast on while you sit back, relax and enjoy the show. 

Regardless of what’s on, the Tate’s Turbine Hall is always a great shout for taking youngsters to during the school holidays – all that glorious concrete space!! But that goes double for 2025 as the hall will play host to an installation by the artist Monster Chetwynd that’s speciaifally aimed at kids. A fantasy world based upon Ingmar Bergman’s 1975 film adaptation of The Magic Flute, visitors will be invited to interact with the work and create scenes based upon the comic opera. For further Tate-based kidspiration, Louise Bourgeoise’s iconic giant spider sculpture Maman will be on display until the end of August – that’s practically a day out already.

When scientists get involved in the food we eat, it's often viewed as something to steer well clear of, with scary headlines about 'Frankenfoods' surrounding genetically modified ingredients or e-numbers in our sweets. But what if science is the only way of putting food on our plates in decades to come? This new free exhibition at the Science Museum looks at fascinating projects like Norway's ice-cold seed vault and the first beef steak to be grown outside a cow, as well as looking at community-led sustainability projects. And it invites you to get involved, with a multiplayer game where you can cook up your own future for food. Delicious!

In a way, the whole point of the world’s most successful video game is drudgery: Minecraft casts you as a self-employed resource gatherer who lives off the land and must harvest wood, soil, coal etc. in order to create a shack in which to hide from the various monsters that come out at night. Setting up shop at Surrey Quays’ Corner Corner, this 45-minute-long officially licensed immersive attraction successfully whips its audience into an ecstatic frenzy of resource-gathering, and is frenetic enough and with just enough variation to remain entertaining . The staff are game and helpful, and the environments are not only interactive but Instagrammable as you like. If you have kids, they’ll love it. 

The award-winning Bad Boy Pizza Society (BBPS) has already dished out slices at residencies across London, from Belleville Brewery and Next Door Records to Seven Dials Market and Vinegar Yard. Now, BBPS has finally got the keys to its very first permanent bricks and mortar pizzeria, which opens in Bethnal Green this August. It’ll be a slice shop by day and a casual sit-down pizzeria by night, serving up its beloved New York style pizza alongside small plates and sides like ‘chicken vodka parms’, ‘giant caesar sharers’ and ‘fluffy Sicilian squares’. Yum. 

Edinburgh isn't the only place with a bursting, brilliant fringe, and indeed as the Scottish capital’s iconic annual event becomes ever more expensive, the once scrappy outsider Camden Fringe looks ever more like a serious alternative for the London-based. Returning for its nineteeth edition, it’s smaller than Edinburgh by a long shot, but still boasts hundreds of events all over Camden, taking in everything from the expected stand-up sets and experimental theatre to kids’ shows, dance, and even magic. Runs tend to be for a night or two rather than the entire month, and prices are bargain basement by London standards: many shows are less than a tenner, none are much more than that. Check out their website for all the details on the programme, as there’s far too much to gather here.

Location in the walled gardens of Hertfordshire’s The Grove hotel, Everyman’s pop-up is a special occasion option – because you’ll need to splash out for a room for the night or dinner in one of the hotel restaurants to experience it. Still, if you're up for a luxe take on the al fresco cinema thing, then give it a whirl: a crowdpleasing line-up of movies spans Dirty Dancing, Pitch Perfect, When Harry Met Sally, and quite a few kids faves including Minions and Paddington in Peru. The beanbags and headphones are all top of the range. 

Snoop Dogg, Jay-Z and Missy Elliott; boomboxes, turntables and iced-out chains: this exhibition provides an intimate look at the history of one of the last century’s biggest cultural phenomena: hip hop. Through the lens of three photographers, Jamel Shabazz, Joseph Rodriguez, and Gregory Bojorquez, it traverses East Coast, West Coast and beyond to show us the canonical moments, everyday scenes, beefs and friendships that shaped the movement we know today.

If a trip to Hampton Court has been on your to-do list, why not time your visit to coincide with this foodie extravaganza? Over the August Bank Holiday weekend entrance tickets to Henry VIII’s former gaff give you access to more than 150 speciality food stalls, so you can feast like like a Tudor king in the palace's gorgeous green spaces. There's also pop-up bars, kids’ activities, and an array of local musicians taking to the bandstand to soundtrack your culinary adventure. 

Too many book festivals don’t have enough festival. It isn’t that there’s too much emphasis on books (how could there be?) but that there just aren’t sufficient opportunities to have fun with your fellow bookworms. But not Queen’s Park Book Fest, which is less meeting of the literary elite, more village fete. Held, as always, in the public park, it’ll combine literary celebs with stand-up comedy, local history and lectures on pressing issues of the day. And crucially, each day is capped off by a party into the night. Not like a rave but, you know, just a jolly good time.

This year, highlights include BBC Breakfast presenter Naga Munchetty talking about her new book on women's health, Alan Hollingshurst discussing his latest portrait of modern England, and a rare public appearance from novelist Hanif Kureishi after he became paralysed. Plus, to sweeten the deal there are foodie events including a panel discussion from chefs Thomasina Miers, Ben Lippett, and Yotam Ottolenghi. Delicious!

‘Weather schmeather’ say the people behind Rooftop Film Club. After opening in spring, Stratford and Peckham’s rooftop cinema institutions are still going strong this August – and they’re employing a secret weapon against a bit of chilly night air: snuggle power. Two-person ‘fireside loveseats’ come with a personal wood-fired heater and hot beverage (regular, snuggle-free seating is available). On the programme for August are recent hits like Wicked and Sinners and Moana 2, as well as evergreen classics (Devil Wears Prada, Notting Hill, 10 Things I Hate About You, Pretty Woman, Pulp Fiction, Do The Right Thing and more). Tickets come in at £18 for adults and £8 for children.

Looking for ways to keep the kids entertained during the summer holidays? Here’s something for you. Every summer theatres across the West End participate in London Kids Week. Run by the Society of London Theatre, it’s an initiative that offers under-18s free tickets during the school hols when accompanied by a paying adult. In addition, up to two further children’s tickets can be booked at half price by the same adult. It’s always a good showing and runs the gamut from full on kids’ theatre like The Smeds and the Smoos and The Tiger Who Came to Tea – clearly aimed at younger audiences – to much more adult fare like Stranger Things: The First Shadow and the Rachel Zegler-starring Evita.  

Prolific and mercurial, playwright Mike Bartlett had a semi-dud earlier this year with his bland West End throuple comedy Unicorn. But the thing about Mike Bartlett plays is that there’s always another one along soon. It’s intriguing, howveer, to note that Juniper Blood shares not only a director – James Macdonald – with Unicorn, but both seem to be comedy dramas about couples exploring new ways of living. Here the action centres on Lip and Ruth, who’ve quit the city in favour of a quiet life on a farm – but the big city has a way of catching up with them. Will it prove to be Bartlett’s version of The Good Life? That wouldn’t be such a bad thing, surely. Terique Jarrett, Hattie Morahan, Nadia Parkes, Jonathan Slinger and Sam Troughton star.

Jean-Francois Millet was an artist of the people. Born to a farming family, he spent his life painting rural workers and the conditions of their labour. This exhibition, marking the 150th anniversary of his death, presents an impressive array of his work, which went on to inspire Vincent van Gogh among other artists. Heads down and backs bent, there is a melancholic, weathered beauty to Millet’s characters.

Things are getting tropical in Croydon. The rooftop of Centrale’s multi-storey car park has been filled with sand, beach huts and a water splash zone to create London’s latest family-friendly summer hangout. There’s more than sunbathing on offer though. Sand-side events include beach bingo, dance workshops, mini-Go-Karts and table tennis, and there’s also slap-up street food and cocktails from Thirst Trap mobile bar. 

The Arcola Theatre's alt-opera festival Grimeborn returns for its eighteenth year in 2025 and it’s as eclectic as ever, from a stripped back reworking of Wagner’s magnum opus Tristan und Isolde (Aug 13-16) to the first ever full staging of John Joubert’s final opera Jane Eyre (Aug 6-9)  and the return of last year’s bit of fun Sense & Senibility, The Musical (Aug 19-23) which is, you know, a bit more musical-y, and also last year’s Lucia di Lammermoor, which is, you know, bleak. See Arcola website for all shows and timings.