London events in June

Her unibrowed face has been plastered over everything from tattoos to fridge magnets. Now, London's getting a rare chance to get to know the towering artistic talent behind the kitschy merch, with the first major Frida Kahlo exhibition in eight years. The Tate Modern's massive summer exhibition will feature over 130 of her works alongside documents, photographs and memorabilia taken from Kahlo’s archives. It'll explore how she created the images that captured so many people's imaginations, as well as looking at the fans that spread her image all over the world.

Austin’s music, film and media festival SXSW is legendary for attracting massive stars: the likes of Billie Eilish, Dua Lipa and Chappell Roan have all given early performances at the Texas event, while Steven Spielberg, Barack Obama and Malala Yousafzai have all appeared at the conference arm of the festival. After the success of last year's inaugural UK edition, SXSW London is back again for the second year running, and will once again take over various venues around Shoreditch in June. If 2025 is anything to go by expect the line-up to be absolutely massive, with talks and panels, big keynotes, film screenings, and a music festival.

Taking place in the middle of the iconic London institution’s 75th birthday celebrations, we expect this summer’s edition of the Southbank Centre’s summer festival, Meltdown, to elicit one of the most exciteable reactions to date, seeing as it’s being masterminded by none other than former One Direction member, multiple BRIT and Grammy Award-winner and all-round pop superstar Harry Styles.

Marilyn Monroe would have been 100 this year. So National Portrait Gallery is throwing an arty party in her honour, gathering together hundreds of images of the Hollywood legend. This exhibition will showcase works by some of the twentieth century’s greatest artists and photographers, including Andy Warhol, Cecil Beaton, Marlene Dumas, Milton Greene and Eve Arnold. And you'll also get to peek at scripts, books, and even clothes owned by the legend herself.

A stated part of Indhu Rubasingham’s plan as the new artistic director of the National Theatre is to shake up the smaller Dorfman a little, and here’s the first fruit of that policy, as Matthew Warchus directs Stephen Beresford’s adaptation of their own acclaimed 2014 film. Based on a true story and real characters, Pride tells the story of the solidarity the British LGBT community offered the striking miners in the ’80s, with the story revolving around yoiung gay activist Mark Ashton, who brokered the unlikely alliance. The film is a modern queer classic and it’s exciting that this musical comes from the team who made it, including Warchus, a very seasoned director of musicals. A fine ensemble cast includes Samuel Barnett and Chris Jenkins. 

BST will be back again next summer, bringing some of the world’s biggest pop stars to Hyde Park for its 13th edition. Already announced as headliners for 2026 are Lewis Capaldi, Pitbull and Garth Brooks, with more to be confirmed. 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.

And there are also a number of free community events taking place throughout the weeks as part of the BST Open House series. These usually include things like Wimbledon screenings, an outdoor cinema, outdoor theatre shows, DJ sets and gigs.

The Open Air Theatre started out life as a Shakespeare only venue. These days you're more likely to find musicals on its tree-framed stage, but all that's changing with a summery staging of the Bard’s ultimate crowd-pleaser, as directed by Atri Banerjee. We’ve no massive steer for how this one will play out, but it’s described as ‘blissful’, indicating it’s probably not going to do anything too outre, and it’ll have an original folk-infused score from Maimuna Memon.

A few years back, wildly popular French playwright Florian Zeller (‘The Father’, ‘The Mother’) had his plays plastered all over the West End. If you missed his work the first time round, here's your chance to find out what all the fuss was about. This zippy, witty farce explores the ever-shifting layers of infidelity as experienced by two middle-aged Parisian couples, with lots of laughs with painful truths behind them.

You might have heard of the Great Exhibition, an extravaganza of world riches and inventions that drew six million visitors to Hyde Park in 1851. Prince Albert used those funds to help develop the V&A, the Natural History Museum, the Royal Albert Hall – pretty much every grand institution on Exhibition Road in Kensington – creating his ‘Albertopolis’.

The 21st century's answer to the Great Exhibition will return for another edition this summer, with many of London’s most esteemed museums coming together to mark the 175th anniversary of the original Great Exhibition. For one weekend in June Exhibition Road in South Ken will be closed to cars and come alive with fun interactive experiments, mind-bending technology, music, dance, art, live science shows and parades.

The Natural History Museum, Science Museum, V&A, Royal Albert Hall, Royal Parks and Imperial College London are all taking part. And the best part? It’s all free to attend!

From swanky skyscrapers to casual warehouse hangouts and hidden pub terraces, London has a real crush on a rooftop bar. Here's our pick of the best places to enjoy a natural high along with your bevvies, from Soho to Peckham to Shoreditch. 

After making its spectacular debut last summer, Lido festival is heading back to Victoria Park for two June weekends in 2026. Headlining this year are Irish country-pop legend CMAT, downtempo electronica duo Maribou State and noughties indie outfit Bombay Bicycle Club, with some eclectic supporting acts including Father John Misty, Sharon Von Etten & the Attachment Theory, Beverly Glenn-Copeland, Kelis, Metronomy, Alice Phoebe Lou and more.

In our age of mind-boggling CGI and AI-optimised everything, it’s easy to forget how much pleasure can be had from the simple optical tricks of mirrors and lights. But not for Julio Le Parc. A key figure of the Kinetic and Op Art movements of the 1960s, the pioneering Argentinian artist has been making illuminated, kinetic and participatory works for seven decades, and is still making art at the ripe old age of 97. This major retrospective celebrates his visionary seven-decade career, spanning from from his arrival in Paris in the late 1950s to his resurgence in the 2010s, with over 60 colourful, immersive (and extremely Instagrammable) works.

In a grimly timely stage adaptation of a major Iranian work, Nadia Latif directs Carmen Nasr’s adaoptation of Babak Anvari’s Bafta-winning horror film. Under the Shadow is set in ’80s Tehran, at the height of the Iran-Iraq War, and follows a mother and her daughter who are haunted by a mysterious entity after they refuse to evacuate the city, with Leila Farzad starring in the lead role of mother Shideh. Stage horror has been having a terrific run of late; this is a powerful and unsettling cult classic that deserves more attention.

This glossy Frank Sinatra bio-musical may have had its original try-out run in Birmingham last year, but Sinatra the Musical follows the increasingly common path of a big new American show working its kinks through in the more forgiving UK before chancing Broadway.

A much bigger deal than those Ratpack concert musical things that have done the rounds before, it’s a big glossy affair. Directed and choregraphed by Broadway big name Kathleen Marshall, and with a book by Broadway big name Joe DiPietro, this is a production stacked with talent, and sounds like it’s going to tell a 'proper’ story, honing in on a piviotal concert on New Year’s Eve 1942 as a 27-year-old Frank tries to turn around a career – and personal life – that seems to be on the rocks. Brit actor Joel Harper-Jackson will play Frank.

Alexandra Palace will erupt in mayhem in June as dozens of DIY taboggans dart down the hill for the downright absurd Red Bull Soapbox Race. The annual race challenges adrenaline junkies to create the whackiest vehicle they can, then ride it down the track powered only by gravity. Along the way, they’ll encounter obstacles like The Water Roller, The Wedge, The Bone Rattler and The Kicker – it’s very rare that cars make it to the bottom of the course unscathed. Best stick to watching safely from the sidelines!

If you thought Jamie Lloyd’s hipster, prosthetics-free production of Edmund Rostand’s classic play had killed off the classic big-nosed take on Cyrano de Bergerac, you’d be very wrong. Nonetheless, to suggest this RSC production from director Simon Evans just an old school trad take would be off the mark. Co-adapted with writer and poet Debris Stevenson, it won glowing reviews in Stratford-upon-Avon for its bitter intensity and moreover for superb lead performances from Adrian Lester as the dazzlingly witty but physically ugly soldier Cyrano, and the wonderful Susannah Fielding as his love Roxane, unaware that the poetic letters purportedly sent to her by her hunky suitor Christian are in fact written by Cyrano.

Understand the history of HIV and the major global health challenge it still poses in the world today through stories of protest and care, photography, film and archival material in this new Wellcome Collection display. Across two rooms, Tenderness & Rage will explore the UK’s 1980-90s AIDS epidemic, contemporary experiences of HIV in the Global South and reveal how activist groups and volunteer-led organisations have supported and campaigned for those living with HIV. It will also spotlight the much-overlooked experience of women living with HIV in the UK and globally.

Usually, Sadlers Wells is all about seeing wordclass dancers leap, pirouette and sweat their way through live performances. But this year the Islington venue is changing pace with its inaugural dance film festival, Dance Digital. Held in the Lilian Baylis studio, the three day event will be packed with film screenings, talks, VR/XR installations, networking sessions and mentoring opportunities. 

This literary festival focuses on one of our era’s most exciting genres: crime. Now firmly part of London’s literary calendar, each year it hosts a top-notch line-up of crime and thriller authors in a rich programme of talks, panels and interviews. Over 100 authors and experts will feature over the three-day programme of panels, Q&As, book launches and industry networking events, culminating in the Fingerprint Awards, an annual reader-voted awards ceremony celebrating the very best new writing in the genre. Details of the 2026 line-up are yet to be announced, but we’ll be conducting a thorough investigation in due course.