Amazing things to do in London in September 2025

David Bowie was quite possibly the most interesting man who ever lived, and boy did he know it. Although conceivably we’d have called this behaviour ‘hoarding’ if he hadn’t become enormously famous and successful, the man kept basically everything associated with his career – from before it was clear he’d have one, right through to his very last weeks.  Bowie had something like 90,000 individual items stashed away in a private archive in the US. And then he donated the whole thing to the V&A, where it’s kept in its own dedicated space inside the museum’s new V&A East Storehouse.  

The David Bowie Centre occupies a corner of the second floor and it does, in fact, include a small exhibition that gathers together some fascinating items. Of course there are clothes – the Earthling frock coat, a skimpy lil’ Ziggy number – but it’s the handwritten stuff that really fascinates, from a terse rejection letter from Apple Records to Post-it notes detailing unrealised projects, like an entire hitherto unknown stage project called The Spectator. 

But treating the Bowie Centre as merely an exhibition space would be missing the point. The real draw is that, via the wonders of the archive’s Order an Object service, you can now ask to look at basically any of the personal belongings of the actual David Bowie from this gigantic archive and they’ll just do it. So get down there and have a good old gawp at his Ziggy Stardust clogs. He left them there for you!

This is a bold opener for Indhu Rubasingham’s first season in charge at the National Theatre: first time playwright (though he’s got decent pedigree as an actor) Nima Taleghani offers up what sounds like a racously modern – and probably quite foul-mouthed – adaptation of Euripides’s shockingly violent Ancient Greek tragedy. Rubasingham herself will direct the show, which has a cast including James McArdle, Clare Perkins and Ukweli Roach.

Fashion lovers will lose their heads over the V&A’s big autumn 2025 exhibition, focusing as it does on the sartorial tastes of one of history’s most notable bonce droppers. Marie Antoinette Style will look at the ill-fated French queen’s enduring impact on fashion, design and culture, as well as ‘the origins and countless revivals of the style shaped by the most fashionable queen in history’. The V&A’s art collection features two portraits of Antoinette by Jean-François Janinet and François Hubert Drouais which we’d imagine will feature in the exhibition, while visitors can also expect to get up close to some serious couture pieces too; Vivienne Westwood, Alexander McQueen, Moschino, Dior and the exhibition’s sponsor Manolo Blahnik have all created past collections inspired by the guillotined French Revolution monarch. Let them eat ’fits!

Step into Elvis Evolution, a brand-new immersive trip through the life, music and legacy of The King. Using digital wizardry, live actors and a killer soundtrack, the show takes you from Elvis’s Tupelo beginnings to his Vegas heyday, all seen through the eyes of his childhood friend Sam Bell.

Suspicious minds can wander through cinematic scenes, sip some cocktails in the themed bar and watch the rags-to-riches story come alive around you. It’s now or never, book today.

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Video games are the medium for Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley. The young artist uses them to ‘imaginatively archive and empower Black Trans stories’ - this isn’t just point-and-shoot, slack-jawed gaming for the sake of it, this is one of contemporary society’s most important cultural forms being used to give voice to marginalised identities. 

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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Anyone who’s ever stepped inside the Royal Albert Hall will understand that it can’t be filled with just any old music – it needs scale and drama. And every year it gets exactly that with the BBC Proms, one of London’s best-loved and most dazzling cultural festivals. This year, highlights include Florence + The Machine – Symphony of Lungs (Sep 11) where Florence Welch and conductor Jules Buckley lead celebrations of her BRIT Award-winning debut album, and of course, the Last Night at the Proms (Sep 14), which is apparently the world’s biggest classical music party. 

We're all ready to jump on a flight and get away to a bustling European city or gorgeous paradise beaches. But hello! Have you seen what the UK has to offer, and only within an hour or two of the big city? We've got a helluva lot to offer right here on our doorsteps and it can be reached so much quicker – and cheaper. Think incredible mixed scenery, gorgeous old villages, and hidden gems just waiting to be discovered. 

From seaside shacks to cosy cottages in forests, there’s no limit to the incredible places on our lovely little island. Whether you want to traipse on terrific beaches, explore lush stretches of the countryside or simply settle in someone else’s city, you’ll be amazed at what we have on British soil. Check out our roundup of the best Airbnbs near the capital and get exploring.

Respectable theatre? Not this month. Plied and Prejudice is Jane Austen gone off the rails — and we mean that in the best possible way. Think corsets, cocktails and chaotic costume changes as five actors tear through 20 roles with a wink, a wobble, and maybe a whisky or two. Expect scandal, silliness, and the wettest t-shirt contest Regency England never asked for. Whether you're Team Darcy or just here for the drama, this one's a riot.

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Charge the steins! You don’t have to travel all the way to Germany for a lederhosen-clad knees-up this Oktoberfest – and you don't even have to wait until October. Munich’s world-famous beer festival is very much on in London and starting this September; with big steins of beer, platters of excessively long wurst and loud oompah bands blowing brass like they don’t give a schnitzel. 

Whether you’re after a traditional take on the event or want to cut loose with some raucous table dancing, authentic Bavarian beers or east London craft IPAs, you can find the perfect Oktoberfest for you right here in London. Give yourself a warm willkommen at one of these London Oktoberfest events.  

Now if you’re after a Saturday with a bit more bite, Big Belly Bar & Comedy Club on the South Bank has you covered. For £29.95, you’ll get 90 minutes of bottomless drinks, wood-fired pizza to line your stomach, and a ticket to the Ding Dong Gong Show – a gloriously chaotic set-up where the crowd decides which comics stay standing and which get booted off stage. Equal parts boozy brunch and raucous comedy, you're guaranteed an afternoon of laughs, carbs and some very questionable judgment calls.

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Yes, it’s a musical adaptation of the 2004 Adam Sandler/Drew romcom, which was a massive hit at the height of Sandlermania, and remains at least fairly well remembered. Its aggressively goofy plot about a louche marine biologist – with a posse of eccentric humans and animals – who falls for a woman who can’t remember the events of the previous day would seem to lend itself to the intrinsic silliness of the genre. Whatever the case, this world premiere run for 50 First Dates at the mid-size The Other Palace looks like it has the potential to be a big deal: American humourists David Rossmer and Steve Rosen have written the songs and script, while the big deal is director Casey Nicholaw, best known for The Book of Mormon, and suggesting this run is a tryout for Broadway.

From Vivienne Westwood’s mud-inspired collection, to Acne Studio’s stained jeans, the autumn exhibition at the Barbican traces fashion’s obsession with all things dirty, grimy and messy. That’s right. Through the collections of more than 60 designers from Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas, Dirty Looks: Desire and Decay in Fashion will take a look at everything from models wrestling in mud at New York fashion week, to Hussein Chalayan’s dresses buried underground, and the newish trend, hailing from Copenhagen, ‘bogcore’. Containing pieces from Paco Rabane, Dilara Findikoglu, Maison Margiela, Issey Miyake and Alexander McQueen, Dirt’s lineup promises to give a comprehensive look at the grubbier side of clothing design, with enough to impress any fashion lover. 

Although she turned in a fine adaptation of Lorca‘s The House of Bernarda Alba for the National Theatre a couple of years ago, it’s been an age since we’ve had a ‘proper’ play from the wonderful Alice Birch, whose Anatomy of a Suicide and Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again. were two of the great British stage works of the ’10s. There’s no secret what she’s been up to since: her screenwriting career has massively taken off, most notably with Lady Macbeth and the screen adaptation of Normal People, although she’s pretty damn busy generally. 

Anyway, long story short, Romans: A Novel is her first ‘original’ play in years, which is cause for celebration in and of itself. Plus it sounds like she’s lost none of her ambition: the somewhat cryptically titled play is a dissection of masculinity from the nineteeth century to the present and the way in which male narratives shape the world as we know. Precisely what it’ll involve is very much TBC, but it will star Andor’s Kyle Soller and will be directed by Sam Pritchard, Birch’s husband. 

Each year, Frieze Sculpture transforms Regent's Park, one of London's prettiest green spaces, into a massive free outdoor gallery. Only this year, things are looking more gloomy than sunny. This year's line up is curated by Fatoş Üstek, on the theme of ‘In the Shadows’, which means they'll be engage with the idea of darkness from many perspectives, whether that's inner darkness or the interplay between light and obscurity. 

London’s cultural institutions are having a love affair with the New Romantics this year. First there was Outlaws, the Fashion and Textile Museum’s exhibition on the subversive fashion trends of 1980s London. Then the Tate Modern announced a major retrospective on pioneering fashion maverick Leigh Bowery. Now it’s the Design Museum’s turn to direct its attention towards the most flamboyant subculture of its era, via this exhibition on the Blitz club, the iconic (and we really don’t use that word lightly) Covent Garden nightclub where New Romanticism was born in 1979. Forty years after it closed, the trailblazing club’s atmosphere will be recreated through a ‘sensory extravaganza’ incorporating music, film, art, graphic design and some very ostentatious outfits. This will include several items that have never been on public display before, while some of the scene’s key figures have been involved in the development of the exhibition. Time to liberally apply the kohl eyeliner, fish out your frilliest shirt and whack on some Spandau Ballet: the 80s are back, baby!

This month is your last chance to take your dino-loving kid to Jurassic World: The Experience. Staged at NEON, a new venue just outside Battersea Power Station, the experience is roughly 45 minutes long and begins with boarding a ‘ferry’ to get to Isla Nublar, home to Jurassic World. Expect gigantic animatronic herbivores, ‘baby dinosaur’ petting, velociraptor feeding and a face-to-face T-rex encounter.  

Peter Doig is one of the greatest living painters, an artist whose approach to hazy, memory-drenched figuration has had an enormous impact on the visual landscape of today. For his show at the Serpentine, he’s going well beyond the canvas, filling the gallery with speaker systems to create a ‘multi-sensory environment’ and explore the impact of music on his work. 

The Bush Theatre under the reign of outgoing artistic director Lynette Linton has rarely been about celebrity names – on the whole she’s tended to deal with them seperately in her busy freelance career. But with her time in west London coming to an end, she can afford to allow herself something a little fancy. Not Your Superwoman is a new play by Emma Dennis-Edwards – created by her and Linton – and it will star Letitia Wright – aka Black Panther herself – as Erica, daughter to Golda Rosheuvel’s Joyce. In the aftermath of the death of Joyce’s mother, the two find themselves paralysed about what to do with their lives next. 

Katie Mitchell’s second play for the David Byrne-era Royal Court threatens makes last year’s non-linear poetry adaptation Bluets look positively commerical. A collaboration between the legendary avant-garde director, playwright Nina Segal and sound artist Melanie Wilson, Cow | Deer – apparently you’re not allowed to say it ‘Cow-slash-deer’ – it’s a wordless work about a dsy in the life of a cow and a deer that aims to further the eco-minded bent of Mitchell’s work by ‘decentring’ humans from a work. Truly, who can say what this will mean or look like, but presumaby it’s about as out-there a thing as you’ll see on a stage this year. Actors will apparently be involved, though it’s unclear precisely what they’ll be doing.

Ibsen’s 1888 play about a woman named Ellida at the heart of a love triangle between her safe husband Edward and a dangerous ex-lover referred to only as The Stranger gets staged relatively frequently: the last major London production was at the Donmar back in 2017. But it rarely gets the full West End celebrity Hedda Gabler/A Doll’s House/The Master Builder treatment – you’re probably lookig at a late-’70s production at the Roundhouse starring Vanessa Redgrave for its last and really only really big outing in this country.

Until now. In a year otherwise dominated by musicals and Shakespeare plays, the Bridge’s big autumn show is a new version of Ibsen’s play but Aussie auteur Simon Stone, that will mark the professional stage debut of Swedish screen star Alicia Vikander as Ellida, joined by big name Brit Andrew Lincoln as Edward (his first show in front of an audience in 16 years, although he did the Old Vic’s A Christmas Carol to a webcam and an empty theatre in 2020).

It’s hard to know exactly what to expect: Stone’s adaptations are modern, radical and often rather blunt – his Yerma for the Young Vic was explosively good; his Phaedra for the National Theatre was a bit silly; much of his prolific output simply hasn’t been seen in this country. Whatever the case, he’s a good get for the Bridge and if this production could probaby go either way, then that’s part of the Stone magic. 

Kerry James Marshall is an artist with a singular vision. He has become arguably the most important living American painter over the past few decades, with an ultra-distinctive body of work that celebrates the Black figure in an otherwise very ‘Western’ painting tradition. This big, ambitious show at the Royal Academy will be a joyful celebration of his lush, colourful approach to painting, and artist’s largest ever exhibition outside of the US. 

A short kids’ adaptation aside, Rufus Norris was the first artistic director of the National Theatre to not programme a production of Shakespeare’s Hamlet at all: it’s been 15 years since Rory Kinnear took on the role for Norris’s predecessor Nicholas Hytner. But new NT boss Indhu Rubasingham isn’t messing around, and her deputy Robert Hastie’s production is her first piece of programming in the Lyttelton. Hiran Abeysekera – best known for his Olivier-winning turn in the Hastie-directed Life of Pi – will take on the mantle of Shakespeare’s Great Dane. We don’t know a huge amount about the production beyond that, though the initial publicity images suggest a certain amount of irreverence, while the 7.15pm start times suggest it’ll be long, but maybe a bit clippier than the average Hamlet.

If you thought the National Gallery answered every question that could possibly be asked about what came after the impressionists in their huge blockbuster ‘After Impressionism’ show in 2023, you thought wrong. Because they’re coming back for another go with ‘Radical Harmony’, which will feature the work of the neo-impressionists, including pointilist masters Georges Seurat and Paul Signac. It’s enough to drive you dotty.

It’s been 16 years since the last major London production of Joe Orton’s breakthrough play Entertaining Mr Sloane, and over a decade since the last major London Orton revival full stop (a 2012 West End production of What the Butler Saw). To a large extent that’s simply a result of the bleak ’60s farceur’s tragically slim body of work, but it’s high time he came around again and new Young Vic artistic director Nadia Fall helms this revival of Mr Sloane as the opening production of her first season at the theatre. What if anything it will tell us about the tenor of her programming at the Vic remains to be seen, but certainly we’ll find out if she can do funny. Tamzin Outhwaite and Daniel Cerqueira lead the cast as a pair of siblings who both fall for their charismatic lodger Mr Sloane, much to the misgivings of their frail father.