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? 

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.

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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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.

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.

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. 

Why take a chance on a new hair salon this month when you can get guaranteed star treatment for a fraction of the average price (with an award-winning brand, no less)? Andrew Jose sits on the coveted Charlotte Street where you can get the do you deserve, and at a veryexclusive price. Save £116 on a luxurious pamper sesh, including a wash, cut, luxury REVLON EKS conditioning treatment and famous blow-dry that will last from dawn until dusk.

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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. 

RECOMMENDED: The best beaches near London

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. 

‘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.