London events in October 2026

London’s art lovers go mad for a bit of French Impressionism, so it’s a little surprising that the capital hasn’t hosted an exhibition on one of its leading figures, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, since the National Gallery’s 2007 show on his landscapes nearly 20 years ago. It’s excellent news, then, that the Trafalgar Square institution will once again be hosting a major exhibition dedicated to the master painter next autumn. Created in partnership with Paris’s Musée d’Orsay, Paris, and Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, Renoir and Love will focus on the most significant and prolific years of the artist’s career, from the mid-1860s to the mid-1880s. Opening in October 2026, it will feature several of Renoir’s most iconic works, including  the 1876 painting Bal au Moulin de la Galette, exhibited for the first time ever in the UK. 

Each year, London Literature Festival aims to bring together readers of all ages to ‘celebrate the power of the written and spoken word’, with a big name celebrity curator leading the charge. And excitingly, the 2026 edition will have popstar and Service95 Book Club founder Dua Lipa in the hot seat. Dua Lipa has proven that she's a massive advocate for books from around the world with her monthly fiction podcast, where she interviews a different author each month, and she's also spoken up for marginalised readers facing incarceration or book bans. So she'll curate a fest with a global feel, with plenty to pull in her young fanbase. 

Sunday lunch. There’s nothing quite like it. An elemental meal, one that Londoners take incredibly seriously. Debates about what constitutes the ‘perfect’ Sunday roast have been known to last for hours. There is no shortage of top roasts in London.

We’ve rounded up the city’s best Sunday meals from a host of pubs, restaurants and breweries all around town. What makes a good roast? For us, it’s simple; a welcoming room is a good start, maybe in a pub with an open fire. Then it comes to the plate – we need perfect roast potatoes, well-cooked lamb, beef or pork and a decent plant-based option too. A Sunday roast is more than just lunch - it’s self-care. 

From snug neighbourhood staples to more bijou gastropubs, and even a heavy metal boozer in Camden, we’ve got something for every taste (if that taste is for comforting mounds of roast meat/plant based goodness, lashings of gravy and carbs for days). A lot of these places get quite busy, so you’re always advised to book ahead to avoid disappointment. 

The American painter Robert Ryman (1930-2019) was a master of minimalism, even though he was reluctant to apply the term to his own work. For decades, he painted his signature white-on-white paintings, urging the viewer to look closely at his brushstrokes in all their tactile glory, and to enjoy the subtlety and nuance of the varied effects he achieved. His work isn’t often shown in the UK, and this Barbican exhibition will be his first major airing here for over 30 years. There’ll be 60 paintings on display spanning his sixty year career, in a contemplative tribute to this influential artist. 

The first major West End revival of Edward Albee’s classic play in a decade has a cast to die for, as Billy Crudup and Gillian Anderson play the iconically awful George and Martha, an acidic middle aged couple who invite George’s young colleague Nick and his wife Honey over for a bizarre evening of weird and problematic game playing. And @sohoplace is a wonderfully intimate venue to watch the horrors unfold. The catch is that the show is heavily sold out, though at time of writing there were a decent number of more expensive tickets available across the run. The great Marianne Elliott will direct a cast that’s rounded out by Josh Dylan as Nick, and Phoebe Horn as Honey.

Is that the saccharine scent of pumpkin spice in the air? Surprised to see lots of orange orbs taking over your local supermarket? It can only mean one thing: autumn is upon us in all its crispy-leafed, russet splendour. 

From glowing sunsets, to bracing walks and cosy pubs, there are lots of things that make up the ultimate autumnal day trip and London has them in spadefuls. Whether it’s nestling up in an old-school whisky tavern with a wee dram, collecting up armfuls of pumpkins from the city’s premier markets or exploring Gothic cemeteries. 

When the camera was first invented, it was a wonder of science, able to capture images with an accuracy that had never been seen before. But soon, instead of being seen as a rival to painters and sculptors, photographers began to join them as artists, interested in all the creative possibilities of this new method of image making. Tate Modern’s new group exhibition explores how art photography emerged as a discipline between the 1880s and 1960s, taking an international approach that spans places from Shanghai to Sydney, New York to Cape Town, and Brazil to Singapore.

London Month Of The Dead’s annual programme returns this spooky season to get you in the mood for Halloween with a programme of more than 60 fascinatingly macabre events investigating our city’s relationship with death. 

Alongside the usual line-up of ghostly tours, highlights of this year’s programme include a bat skeleton mounting workshop, a magic shadow show in West Norwood Cemetery, a five hour immersive forensics workshop, a screening of eerie classic The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari with live piano accompaniment by Stephen Horne, and creepy Halloween festival A Danse Macabre. It doesn’t get more gothic than that! Check out the full programme here. 

It's a whopping 15 years since Keira Knightley acted on stage, and she's chosen a pretty exciting comeback show. Brit auteur Rob Icke is adapting the Oscar-winning 2006 German film about a playwright and his mistress (Knightley) being surveilled by Stasi agents in ’80s East Germany. It’s the first time Icke – who has adapted many a classic play – has done the same for a film, but the claustrophobic source material built around a small number of characters feels perfect for adaptation, and Icke is an expert with human emotions. The impressively starry cast will also include Bridgerton man Luke Thompson as playwright Georg Dreyman, and Stephen Dillane as Hauptmann Gerd Wiesler, the agent somewhat reluctantly spying on him. 

Korean pop culture has won our hearts over the last decade or so, but how much do you know about the country’s history? The British Museum’s new exhibition dedicated to the east Asian country includes sculpture, painting and decorative arts spanning over two millennia from around 300 BC to the present day. The show is a deep dive into Korean creativity, and according to the museum, ‘presents the most comprehensive chronological survey of Korean visual and material culture seen in Europe for over 40 years’.

Look out for national treasures including ancient gold body ornaments and Buddhist icons, as well as 12th- and 13th-century celadon-glazed stoneware, evocative ink landscapes and contemporary works responding to the turbulence of the 20th century. It’s a collection that’s never been seen in the UK before.

Sure, they're cheaper in the supermarket. But if you want to truly embrace the joys of pumpkin season, get down to an actual field and pick one straight out of the mud (wellies advised). Here are some of the best spots to snag a squash, ready for carving, soup-making, or simply marvelling at in all its amber glory. 

The Cherry Orchard is, of course, one of Chekhov’s great plays, and follows an ailing aristocratic family as they contemplate the end of their beloved country estate and the sale of its beloved orchard. It was last seen in London a couple of years back in an absolutely bonkers production at the Donmar. Expect something less eccentric but powerfully poignant from the great director Ian Rickson, who turned in a fine Uncle Vanya on the cusp of the pandemic. This production will reunite him with Kristin Scott Thomas, who almost 20 years ago starred in his Royal Court production of The Seagull. She’ll play big hearted but finanically irresponsible aristocract Lyubov Ranevskaya.

As usual, beloved central London repertory cinema The Prince Charles will be showing more frightening films than Dracula has had bloody dinners during a wildly eclectic, month-long season of spooky cinema featuring more than 80 titles. Highlights include live-scored screenings of the original 1922 Nosferatu and The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (Oct 4), an all-night marathon of the first six Halloween films on All Hallow’s Eve itself (Oct 31) and, of course, its famous Sing-A-Long-A Rocky Horror Picture Show (Oct 30 and 31). 

There’ll also be re-runs of recent horror hits Weapons (Oct 15), Backrooms (Oct 22) and Sinners (Oct 29), or if you’re keen to swerve the obvious picks for something a little more niche, take your pick from the likes of ’70s blacksploitation hit Blacula (Oct 6 and 29), 1940s horror comedy Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (Oct 19) or B-movie classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Oct 12). Check out the full programme here.

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Bloomsbury has got a formidable reputation for artsy goings on, with bohemian artists and writers having made it their stamping ground for decades. But this neighbourhood’s relationship with creativity isn’t just in the past – it’s right here in the present too, as is more than evident with the Bloomsbury Festival, a haven of music, theatre, talks, walks and much more. The festival celebrates its 20th anniversary in 2026, with a month-long edition featuring 150+ events at more than 40 venues around WC1, under the theme of ‘Create and Celebrate’. 

It’s a hugely eclectic programme that will make you see this historic neighbourhood in a whole new light. Check out the full details here. 

Best known for his eye-popping, fantastical fashion photography for titles including British Vogue, i-D, W, Vanity Fair and Another Man, British photographer Tim Walker has spent the past five years photographing the nation’s LGBTQ+ trailblazers in preparation for this major exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. His first show in London since the V&A’s acclaimed exhibition in 2019, it will be accompanied by a book featuring contributions from Travis Alabanza, Russell T Davies, Shon Faye, Lisa Power and Joelle Taylor.