London events in June

Nicholas Hytner’s joyously OTT genderfluid A Midsummer Night’s Dream returns to the Bridge Theatre in 2025 with a cast that includes JJ Feild as Oberon/Theseus, Susannah Fielding as Titania/Hippolyta, Emmanuel Akwafo as Bottom and David Moorst returning to the role of Puck/Philostrate.

June midday slump? Not on our watch. Paper Moon London is bringing proper Italian glamour to the heart of Westminster – and with over 25% off a three-course lunch and prosecco, it’s hard to say no. Tucked inside the iconic Old War Office (yes, that OWO), this sleek Milanese restaurant is perfect for catch-ups, client lunches or a solo pasta moment. Expect a curated menu of standout starters, bold mains and a sweet finale, served with a bubbly side of prosecco. Bellissimo.

Save and buy a voucher through Time Out Offers now.

Sophie Podolski’s work will be presented solo for the first time in the UK at this exhibition, with the display spanning the poet, writer and artist’s drawings, etchings, archival materials and texts. Although she died tragically at 21, Podolski made a huge impact on literature and culture and celebrated radical creativity and personal freedom through her work.

A reworked version of Jamie Lloyd’s Evita will transfer to the London Palladium in summer 2025, with massive US star Rachel Zegler making her West End debut as Eve Perón. We loved producition show when it last showed in London in 2019 – it’s Andrew Lloyd Webber’s best musical and his finest collaboration with his most famous lyricist Tim Rice, while Lloyd’s direction takes the cake. Get ready to cry for Argentina. 

Step into the stories shaping our world at the World Press Photo Exhibition 2025! This renowned exhibition showcases award-winning photojournalism from across the globe, capturing urgent, intimate and unforgettable moments from the past year. From the frontlines of conflict to the quiet strength of everyday life, these images demand to be seen.

Get your tickets for just £11.50 to see the World Press Photo Exhibition 2025, only with Time Out Offers.

It’s been an exciting fixture in London’s musical calendar since 2013, and it’s back with a line-up of some of the biggest stars on the planet. Taking place across weekends in June and July, Hyde Park will host an upmarket festival vibe complete with food, drink and a posh VIP area. The first weekend sees Gen Z pop hero Olivia Rodrigo headline alongside The Last Dinner Party and Girl In Red, followed by two dates from US country singer-songwriter Zach Bryan, supported by Dermot Jennedy, Mt. Joy and Gabrielle Aplin.

As soon as June hits, London is packed with parades, parties and protests for Pride Month to mark the anniversary of the 1969 Stonewall riots. The London Pride parade is traditionally the focus of festivities,with over a million people take to the streets of London for the celebration each summer, but there are plenty of other LGBTQ+ events taking place both before and after it. Click through for our roundup of the best events happening across the season. 

After getting her breakthrough as part of the renowned artist group BANK, Milly Thompson went on to carve out a place for herself in the art world as a painter, sculptor, video artist and writer in her own right. A selection of her work from 2010 onwards will be on display here, showing her trademark blend of irony and sincerity as the pieces tackle the hegemonic force of luxury consumer culture on women, the libidinal power of the middle-aged female body, and more.

No one out there looks like Yoshitomo Nara. The Japanese artist has created an aesthetic that is entirely his own over the course of his four-decade career, a lifetime filled with big-eyed, cartoony punk rock figures and weird, haunting but adorable animals. Now he’s getting his dues with a major exhibition at the Hayward Gallery. His first show at a public institution in the UK, it will apparently feature not only drawing and painting but installation work too. A mixture of childlike innocence and aggressive rebellion, Nara’s work is mysterious, unsettling, adorable, political and totally unique – it will be a genuine highlight of the summer.

This June, Tate Britain will stage Edward Burra’s first retrospective in over a decade, and the first in London in 40 years. The 20th Century painter is best known for his vivid and surreal scenes of cafés, clubs and cabarets, capturing life in the Roaring Twenties. In more than 80 paintings, the exhibition will look back at Burra’s life, including his time spent in the cultural scenes of Paris and Harlem, and his personal experience of conflicts in Europe. A ticket to Edward Burra will also allow entry to Ithell Colquhoun, also at Tate Britain, as the exhibitions are running in tandem. 

The RA’s annual showcase of all the artists you need to know about right now will return this June. Now in it’s 257th year, the world’s oldest open submission exhibition (which means anyone can enter their work to be considered for inclusion) is curated by a different member of the Royal Academy each year. The artist tasked with the big job in 2025 is British-Iranian architect Farshid Moussavi. The great thing about the Summer Exhibition is that it’s open to all, and the selectors pick from thousands of entries. That means that your mate’s mum’s weird little whittled sculptures of George Michael might be shown alongside something by Antony Gormley. 

Somehow, inexplicably, ‘The Anatomy of Painting’ will be the first major museum exhibition in London dedicated to the work of Jenny Saville. I say inexplicably, because since the 1990s – when she was part of Saatchi’s infamous, groundbreaking ‘Sensation’ exhibition – Saville has been one of the most important, influential and distinctive painters in the country. She is the natural successor and heir to Bacon and Freud, a vicious, extreme, passionate painter of flesh, whose work tears bodies apart and rebuilds them in shocking, beautiful ways.

Think clowning is a dying art that’s limited to circus big tops? The London Clown Festival will make you think again. The event returns for another year in its biggest incarnation yet, with an eclectic line-up of British and European clown work that will run at first Soho Theatre and then on to Jacksons Lane for the last few shows. As you might imagine, it’s a thoroughly contemporary affair that won’t simply consist of people dressed like Ronald McDonald squirting flowers at each other: shows vary from Sasha Krohn’s elegant The Weight of the Shadow – a piece that examines the turmoil of a psychiatric patient over a single day – to monstrous bouffon Red Bastard, in his first London dates in eight years.

For full listings, go to the official Clown Festival website. 

As well as putting on mega stars – with this year’s lineup including Sabrina Carpenter, Olivia Rodrigo and Zach Bryan – every year BST Hyde Park also hosts Open House, an eight-day-long event that’s mostly free to attend. On this year’s Open House lineup is House Gospel Choir, Dub Pistols, Trojan Sound System, South London Samba and many more. Plus, if you feel like getting raucous there’s a Bongo’s Bingo party. There are plenty of kid-friendly events, such as West End Kids and Brainiac Remixed. And other than the music, BST is hosting eight open-air cinema nights, showing flicks including The Goonies, Wicked singalong, The Fall Guy and Dune Part 2. 

Young painter Rachel Jones has become one of the most powerful voices in contemporary abstraction, using her hyper-colourful visual language – filled with references to mouths and teeth – to explore ideas of identity. We’ve reviewed her many times, and even had her as one of ‘Future of London Art’ stars back in 2023. And now, she’s going to be the first ever contemporary artist to have a solo show in Dulwich Picture Gallery’s main exhibition space.

Sarah Kane’s final play 4.48 Psychosis is one of the most famous productions in Royal Court Theatre history, not least for the circumstances under which it was originally staged: just 18 months after her death, the bleak piece – which is in many ways closer to a poem than a play, with no discernible characters – was memorably described by the Guardian’s Michael Billington as ‘a 75-minute suicide note’. 

This revival comes precisely 25 years on, in the Court’s tiny Upstairs theatre where the play originated, and sees director James Macdonald reunite with his original creative team and the original cast – particularly notable because one of them was RSC co-artistic director Daniel Evans.

Despite how faithful it is to the past in many ways, the plan is not to simply restage a quarter century old production, but reinvent the play anew and perhaps banish the spectre of Kane’s death from proceedings. The play is, after all, endlessly malleable and open to interpretation.

Inevitably this will sell out incredibly quickly as the decision to stage upstairs means supply will inevitably outstrip demand. As an RSC co-production – perhaps the cost of securing Evans’s services – it will go on to the more spacious Other Space in Stratford, with a final performance taking place, rather extraordinarily, at 4.48 in the morning.

Roll up ageing ravers, curious young clubbers and anyone who just fancies hitting a dance floor and still being home in time for Emmerdale. This hour-long virtual reality experience promises to transport you back to the height of the Acid House era during 1989’s Summer of Love. Having premiered at the London Film Festival back in 2022, the hour-long experience takes over the The Pit at the Barbican for ten weeks this summer. The handiwork of filmmaker Darren Emerson and is soundtracked by some of the era’s biggest bangers, from Joey Beltram’s ‘Energy Flash’ to Orbital’s ‘Chime’. Sadly, there’s no discount for anyone old enough to remember Shoom. 

Put a bit of jazz pizazz into your Friday nights with this concert series, held in a new Battersea venue. World Heart Beat Gardens is an intimate 200-seater concert hall that's been built for optimal acoustics (and nope, it's not outdoors as the name might suggest). It's perfect for filling your ears with the sounds of some jazz greats, from 1920s classics from the Julian Joseph trio to new compositions by Henry Spencer to soulful sounds from Grammy Award-winning tenor sax giant Jean Toussaint.

In 2024 we had the Black Sabbath Ballet. This year, The Who is stepping into the world of pointe shoes, pirouettes and very tight leggings. We know it doesn’t sound very rock and roll, but trust us, this isn’t your typical ballet.  With the blessing of Pete Townshend, Sadler’s Wells has reworked the cult 1979 film Quadrophenia into a brand-new dance production. Set to an orchestral arrangement of the record, the show will be by directed by theatre director Rob Ashford and choreographed by Paul Roberts, who is well known for his collaborations with pop artists, from the Spice Girls to Prince. Rising star dancer Paris Fitzpatrick will play Jimmy. There will be Harrington jackets, bad hair cuts, and plenty of attitude.