London events in May

Blake has been trying to get a gallery dedicated to illustration off the ground for a long time, and his dream to create a space where the ‘extraordinary wealth of illustration can be exhibited, discussed and celebrated’ is finally becoming a reality this month.

An 18th century Clerkenwell building previously used for waterworks will house the new centre, which will be made up of three different galleries, a library and learning spaces, And, of course, most important of all – there will be a gift shop and a café. Be sure to check out its inaugural exhibition, MURUGIAH: Ever Feel Like…, a solo show for one of illustration’s most exciting rising stars.

There are only so many theatres in London big enough to stage a proper full on Broadway musical spectacular, and with MJ the Musical off, the door is open for Beetlejuice the Musical to enter.

The name ought to make it pretty clear what we’re talking about here: Beetlejuice is of course Tim Burton’s cult classic 1988 film about a young couple with a very nice house who die in a car crash and are horrifed to observe – from a very surreal, bureacracy-bound afterlife – that some ghastly new people have moved into their old gaff.

The stage version is directed by Alex Timbers, best known to London audiences for his heroically OTT smash Moulin Rogue! The Musical – you can expect similar amounts of excess here.

All of London’s hottest and hippest people will head to Peckham Rye Park for one of London’s best electronic music bonanzas in May. GALA will return after its hugely successful 10th anniversary event in 2025. The theme for 2026 has been revealed as The Floor Is Ours, which is a call for community and creative ownership, and wants to take a stand against the growing commercial tide in dance culture.

Friday’s bassier line-up features Benji B, Or:La and Charlie xcx’s hubby George Daniel. Peach will debut her new Dreamland project on the Saturday with a takeover of the Pleasuredome. She’ll be joined on the line-up by Call Super, Prosumer, Job Jobse and Steffi x Virginia. And Sunday will go hard on the disco and house, with a rare b2b2b from Hunee, Palms Trax and Antal, plus Chaos in the CBD and Moxie, who will bring her On Loop party to the festival. 

Every spring, west London hosts the Glastonbury of the gardening calendar. Across five days, hundreds of world-class growers and garden designers descend on Chelsea’s Royal Hospital Grounds to take part in the floral extravaganza that is the RHS Chelsea Flower Show.

More than 400 exhibits will show off the green-fingered talent of the world’s finest landscapers and horticulturalists, and shine a spotlight on charities such as Parkinson’s UK, the Trussell Trust and Asthma + Lung UK. Then, of course, there’s the much anticipated (and rather frantic) plant sell-off on the final day of the event when exhibitors put their display plants up for bargain prices. 

A decade ago, the principal cast members of 2006’s beloved fashionista comedy expressed no desire in doing a sequel, but apparently something changed, as everyone is coming back for round 2 – including Anne Hathaway as upwardly mobile journalist Andy Sachs and Meryl Streep as her nemesis-mentor, Miranda Priestly. Twenty years on, both are still in the magazine business, but fighting over the scraps of what’s left of the print media world. Lady Gaga and Sydney Sweeney are also onboard in undisclosed roles.

In cinemas May 1

Field Day tried to get back to its roots in 2025 when it up sticks from its more corporate-feeling Victoria Park set up and went to Brockwell Park. It will return to south London in May, so get it locked in the diary. On the line-up for 2026 is a dependable selection of DJs and producers, with the biggest names including Andy C, Floating Points, Honey Dijon and Joy Orbison. They’ll be joined by Anish Kumar, Interplanetary Criminal, KI/KI, sim0ne, Eliza Rose, Horse Meat Disco and others for a day of non-stop dancing. 

If you’ll always carry a torch for your teenage celeb crush, then this one’s for you. From the internet’s impact on beauty trends to all things cute and cuddly, Somerset House has a history of delving into contemporary pop cultural trends with its exhibition programming, and it continues in a similar vein with its spring 2026 exhibition. In Holy Pop! Somerset House will explore the power of fandom and the world of modern shrines. Through art, memorabilia, letters, photographs, and interactive installations, the pay what you can exhibition will uncover the rituals of idolisation, showing how fandom shapes identity, values, and community. 

Much-hyped young playwright Ava Pickett’s superb debut play 1536 follows three young women who meet at the outskirts of an Essex village to discuss love, life and Anne Boleyn’s execution. brilliant, bold debut play featuring some bleakly astute observations on the power dynamics between men and women that go considerably beyond the Early Modern Period, it was a hit for the Almeida, it transfers to the West End’s Ambassadors Theatre this month. 

Henry Moore’s bulbous and undulating sculptures were designed to be seen outside and surrounded by nature. So we’re happy to say that Kew is displaying a huge collection of his works as they were intended at this mega exhibition. The world’s biggest ever exhibition of Moore will open at the botanical gardens, with 30 sculptures on show in the open air and more than 90 works including carvings and drawings displayed in the Shirley Sherwood Gallery. Several of his famous and iconic reclining figures will be on view, as well as more abstract and amorphous pieces like the massive bronze marvel ‘Large Two Forms’. 

London’s biggest pop festival returns, and this is going to be a biggie. Like every year, next summer Mighty Hoopla is presenting all of London’s gays and theys with a mighty line-up of nostalgic pop acts, disco-leaning dance music and megastars. The 2026 edition will be headlined by the one and only Lily Allen, who will be performing her searing and brutal new album West End Girl on Saturday, May 30. Allen will be joined by Jessie J, JLS, Horse Meat Disco and Agnes. On Sunday, the Scissor Sisters will bring their legendary show to the Brockwell Park stage. They’re joined on the billing by Perrie, Five, Alexandra Burke and Cascada. 

The first major European exhibition of James McNeil Whistler’s work in 30 years arrives at Tate Britain in 2026. Known as a truly global aritst, The Victorian oil painter re-wrote many of the rules of art, and was an early adopter of ’art for art’s sake’. The retrospective brings together the artist’s world-famous paintings such as ‘Whistler’s Mother’ (Mr Bean fans will recognise this one, IYKYK) alongside rarely, or never seen, works. It includes exquisite portraits, drawings, prints, and designs, from as early as his teens in St Petersburg to the enigmatic late self-portraits. 

Just shy of a decade after it was first announced as part of the £1.1 billion development of Stratford’s East Bank cultural quarter, the long-awaited V&A East will be open to the public from late April. The 7,000-square-metre museum will bring together exhibits that speak to both east London’s creative heritage and the voices that are shaping contemporary culture across the globe today.

Haven’t had a chance to check it out yet? Head down to visit its Why We Make Galleries, a permanent display arranged into ten key themes addressing the most pressing issues in contemporary society. You can also grab tickets to the museum’s inaugural temporary exhibition The Music is Black: A British Story, which explores how Black British music has shaped culture in Britain and beyond.

The world’s biggest independent one-day celebration of Caribbean and African culture takes place right here in London, with City Splash’s annual get together taking over Brockwell Park. From Beres Hammond (his first UK show in eight years) to So Solid Crew, expect acts across the spectrum of reggae, dancehall, afrobeats, amapiano and more to grace the fest’s sevem stages, alongside more than 60 black-owned food traders.

You have to assume that this Gary Oldman designed, directed and (of course) starring production of Samuel Beckett’s high concept elegy for youthful ambition Krapp’s Last Tape would have run at Theatre Royal York earlier in 2025 regeardless of the Royal Court’s 2026 seventieth anniversary season. 

But here it is, gaining a new London life at the Court. And it’s a doubly appropriate piece of programming for the seventieth birthday season. Beckett’s play about an old man listening back with mounting horror to the megalomaniacal tapes he recorded on his birthday in his younger years had its debut at the Court in 1958, and was revived again for its fiftieth birthday with no less than Harold Pinter in the title role. 

Since launching in 2019, Cross the Tracks has firmly made its name for itself as London’s go-to festival for funk, jazz, RnB and hip hop heads. Its groove-heavy curation leads to a laid-back and open-arms atmosphere, which means you’ll find all sorts of people of having a boogie at the one-dayer. Little Simz is leading the line up for 2026, joined by the likes of Joy Crookes, KOKOROKO, Obongjayar, DON WEST and WAR. 

Featuring works painted over five summers between 1885-90, the linear curation of this show tracks you through each stop Georges Seurat made along the French coast. Staring at these pieces from the other side of the gallery, they become windows through which you can feel the sea breeze. With 23 paintings and three sketches across two rooms, this is a very digestible exhibition that won’t leave you feeling gallery fatigue. And the £18 ticket which also lets you into the permanent collection costs about the same as a train out of London. So if you fancy a day trip without the journey, then keep this show in mind.

Brixton’s annual disco festival will make you feel like you’re dancing in hot pants even if you’re actually wearing dad jeans. Returning for its eighth year in 2026, it takes place across a host of SW9’s best venues, including Brixton Jamm, Phonox, Electric Brixton and the Black Cultural Archives. Line-up stalwarts returning in May include Norman Jay MBE, the Handson Family and Faith residents Terry Farley, Stuart Patterson and Dave Jarvis. Also featured are veteran house DJ Derrick Carter, Homoelectric founder Luke Una, NYC-based vinyl queen Natasha Diggs and Glitterbox resident Melvo Baptiste. And as well as plenty of music to get you up and dancing, there’ll be plenty of delicious food to try at Brixton Village’s late opening. Category is: an amazing night out!

In a season of London exhibition openings dominated by major retrospectives of trailblazing female artists, the Barbican’s Beatriz González show is an extremely worthwhile addition. Known to many in her home country of Colombia as ‘La Maestra’, González is considered to be one of the most influential artists to come out of Latin America, and this vast collection of over 150 works spanning her six-decade-long career leaves you with no questions as to how she garnered such a reputation.

Kip Williams is not a massive name in British theatre (yet), but the Aussie writer-director is starting to make some serious waves over her. His dizzyingly high tech, Sarah Snook-starring one woman Dorian Gray was a big West End hit last year, this autumn he directs a version of Jean Genet’s The Maids at the Donmar. In her first full London stage role since her career making turn in The Color Purple over a decade ago, Cynthia Erivo takes on 23 different roles in a tech enhanced solo romp through Dracula that plays clever visual homage to the early years of horror cinema.

After a year out, Dialled In is returning to the capital city for its fifth birthday celebrations. Once again, the all-dayer will bring established and emerging artists from all over diasporic and South Asian countries and cities to east London. Unlike past editions, this year’s event will take over multiple venues throughout Dalson, from Café OTO to The Divine to Rio Cinema. It’ll see former member of The xx, Baria, make her first return to the London festival circuit in fifteen years, a rare London live set from rising star Gayathri Krishnan and the London debut of Lifafa, frontman of Peter Cat Recording Co. That’s alongside appearances from the likes of Sarathy Korwar, Mya Mehm, Anish Kumar and Raf Reza. This year will also see the festival expand into the realms of food, film, dance and comedy. 

One of the leading painters of 17th-century Spain, the first ever exhibition dedicated to Zurbarán is coming to the National Gallery. If you’re looking for a bit of solemn reflection, this exhibition could be the place for it – celebrated for their naturalism and emotional depth, Zurbarán’s paintings include stunning life-size depictions of saints, soaring altarpieces and contemplative still lifes. 

Fashion brands at the pinnacle of hype culture – think A Bathing Ape, Kenzo and Human Made – will get a look in at the Design Museum in an exhibition dedicated to Japanese designer and OG hypebeast NIGO. Through more than 700 objects, with 600 from NIGO’s personal archive, the exhibition will follow the designer’s career from Harajuku to Paris and will include rarely before seen BAPE fashion and a recreation of NIGO’s teenage bedroom. Brands to feature will include Nike, Pepsi, Louis Vuitton, Snoopy, Uniqlo, Nintendo, Sesame Street and Disney. 

The National Portrait Gallery is as much a monument to national identity as it is an art gallery. It’s an education in our collective understanding of British life, culture and history. But who isn’t here? Who doesn’t get to shape the version of the nation’s identity on display to the thousands of tourists, school groups and art lovers who parade through these grand rooms every day? That question is central to the work of American photographer Catherine Opie, whose exhibition, To Be Seen, is currently installed on the second floor of the gallery. Not only does Opie's work serve to challenge visitors’ ideas about who belongs on the walls of this historic institution, but it also brilliantly elucidates the artist’s Baroque and Renaissance references. 

The first major London revival for the stage version of Ken Kesey’s countercultural classic in over 20 years comes this spring, as Clint Dyer directs Aaron Pierre and Giles Terera as two inmates of a hellish psychiatric ward. Published in 1962, Kesey’s darkly comic satire on psychiatry and institutionalisation was quickly adapted into a 1963 play that starred Kirk Douglas as Randall P McMurphy, a rebellious prisoner who makes the mistake of faking insanity, believing he’ll have an easier time of it in a mental hospital (Jack Nicholson famously starred in the 1975 film as Douglas was too old old for the role by the time it finally got made).

Pierre – best known for his role in Netflix hit Rebel Ridge – will star as McMurphy, with Olivier winner Giles Terera as his fellow inmade Dale Harding. The rest of the casting is TBC, though it’s interesting Dyer has cast two Black actors as inmates and that he’s said he wants to pick up on the novel’s ‘conversation on colonialism and identity’. There are certainly plenty of juicy roles up for grabs, notably the vile Nurse Ratched.

Three emerging US artists – Jenna Bliss, Buck Ellison and Jasmine Gregory – explore ideas of class, inheritance and assumed values, framed by their experiences of coming of age in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. Through different mediums – moving image, photography and painting and assemblage – each artist examines what it means to enter adulthood in an era of financial collapse, incorporating themes of wealth inequity, art as an asset class, and what commodity culture looks like today.