Things to do in London this week

All Points East returns to Vicky Park for its seventh edition in 2025. Since debuting in 2018, the festival has garnered a reputation for building some of the most exciting line-ups in the UK. This weekend, acts include Orbital, Avalon Emerson, The Blessed Madonna, Confidence Man, Marlon Hoffstadt, RAYE, Tyla, Doechii, Maccabees, CMAT, Bombay Bicycle Club, The Cribs, and Nilüfer Yanya, among others. 

Expectations for Canal are high. That’s what happens when your team already runs one of London’s best restaurants; distinguished sausage slingers of Shoreditch, Bistro Freddie. Does Canal match their majesty? Yes. The glossy riverside retreat sits pretty on a new-build chunk of yet-to-be battered brickwork by the Grand Union Canal. The chef, New York-born Adrian Hernandez Farina, has the kind of CV that most cooks would chop off a finger for. The Mangalitza sausage is juicy and draped with fronds of pickled chilli. Bream crudo with moody cherries is also a winner, and honeydew melon slices taste like taking an entire Sicilian beach into your mouth, minus the sand. 

Seasoned London festival-goers have been singing the praises of this 10,000-capacity Southwark Park festival since it debuted in 2023, thanks to its boutique size, community vibe and collaborative line-ups created with help from some of the city’s best culture venues. So we’re pleased to note that Rally is returning for its third edition in August. Headlining in 2025 are electronic DJ and producer Floating Points and Brit Award-winning rapper CASISDEAD, with south London-born experimental outfit Speaker’s Corner Quartet, DJ Ben UFO, Black Midi frontman Geordie Greep and indie rockers Porridge Radio also on the bill. 

How do you rebuild your sense of self after a traumatic event? There lies the question at the heart of Eva Victor’s charmingly sincere and very funny feature debut – a nuanced, character-driven story that Victor wrote, directed, and takes the star-making lead in. Agnes is an English literature lecturer at a liberal arts college in New England who’s stuck in a rut, and when her best friend Lydie (Naomi Ackie) visits after a long separation, there’s underlying tension. It’s a captivating comedy-drama that avoids the reductive binary of hero or villain. Instead, Victor articulates the flaws of humanity, of people, but also the hope we can find in each other and ourselves.

In UK and Ireland cinemas Fri Aug 22. 

Want a drink? You've come to the right place. This is Time Out’s list of best bars in London, our curated guide to London’s drinking scene, featuring the buzziest bars in the capital right now. These are the 50 places we’d recommend to a friend, because we love drinking in them and have done many, many times over. From classy cocktail counters to delightful dives, London’s got them all.

If you fancy switching things up a bit and find yourself near Borough, why not roll up your sleeves at Comptoir Bakery's London Bridge workshop space? Choose from sessions where you’ll learn to craft buttery croissants and pain au chocolat, the cult-favourite Brionuts, or delicate tartelettes. Expert bakers—trained under culinary legends—will guide you through every step, from mixing the dough to perfecting the fillings. You’ll also nab a slick £20 apron to keep and plenty of fresh pastries to take home. Starting at just £69 per person or £118 for two, with over 30% off, it’s a delicious way to spend a few hours.

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Do you remember when the first Gorillaz album came out? It felt like we were catapulted into a new era of music and visuals. Created by musician Damon Albarn and artist Jamie Hewlett, Gorillaz is the artificial foursome of bassist Murdoc Niccals, singer 2D, drummer Russel Hobbs and guitarist Noodle, and House of Kong is their fabled homeland. This exhibition, of the same name, lifts a veil on how the group first came together to blow up a pre-digital world with the release of ‘Tomorrow Comes Today’ all the way back in 2000. It documents their past misadventures, musical innovation and ground-breaking virtual performances via an all-new immersive experience.

Looking for a wholesome, creative night out that doesn’t involve a hangover (unless you BYOB)? Token Studio in Tower Bridge offers relaxed, hands-on ceramics classes where you can spin, shape and decorate your own pottery piece. Whether you fancy throwing a pot on the wheel (£32) or painting a pre-made mug or plate (£23), it’s the perfect mix of fun, mindful and surprisingly therapeutic. And to top it all off, you can sip while you sculpt as it’s BYOB and super chill.

Buy a Token Studio session from just £23, only through Time Out Offers. 

London’s queer nightlife festival Body Movements is back in Southwark Park with five stages showcasing the great and good of the LGBTQ+ party scene in the capital and beyond. On the absolutely stacked line-up for 2025 are a host of new and returning queer nightlife collectives, from London stalwarts like Adonis, Pxssy Palace and Little Gay Brother to international crews including Berlin’s Power Dance Club and Brooklyn’s Function. The likes of I.Jordan, HAAi and Mura Masa will be DJing, while there’ll also be live sets from US rapper Cakes da Killer, queer pop sensation Romy, viral rapper Ceechyna (you’ll have heard her song Peggy on TikTok for sure), experimental Parisian artist Coucou Chloe and anonymous London pop maverick Lynks. Nobody is doing it like Body Movements, in short!

If a trip to Hampton Court has been on your to-do list, why not time your visit to coincide with this foodie extravaganza? Over the August Bank Holiday weekend entrance tickets to Henry VIII’s former gaff give you access to more than 150 speciality food stalls, so you can feast like like a Tudor king in the palace's gorgeous green spaces. There's also pop-up bars, kids’ activities, and an array of local musicians taking to the bandstand to soundtrack your culinary adventure. 

It’s not been staged in this country for over 30 years, but Lerner & Loewe’s Brigadoon, the story of the two Americans who happen to stumble across a Scottish town that only appears once a century, is here and top Scots playwright Rona Munro has partly rewritten the book, doing stuff like setting the story during WW2 and having the time-displaced villagers speak Scots Gaelic to each other. Munro is a bloody good playwright and gives the absurdly flyweight musical a bit of genuine heft. There’s a sumptuous score, too, and ultimately it’s just very fun that this level of time and care has been pumped into resuscitating what is essentially a curio. 

Hidden somewhere between a theme park, an escape room and a real-life video game, Phantom Peak isn’t just your average day out. This open-world adventure based in Canada Water invites you to explore a fictional steampunk town at your own pace, chatting to quirky characters, uncovering mysteries and slowly piecing together your own story.

With 11 unique trails, a rotating calendar of seasonal storylines, and a cast of live actors guiding your experience, no two visits are ever the same.

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Real-life married couple Dave Franco and Alison Brie, star as long-term, not-yet-married couple Tim and Millie in their new horror film. We find them at a difficult crossroads, with a growing distance between them. Then, on a hiking trip, they stumble into cave and find themselves infected by a strange medical condition. They cannot be physically apart. The metaphor is deployed with delicious and surprising twists. Bone-cracking and fleshy and disgusting in all the most satisfying ways a body horror should be. You feel their sticky, fleshy, monstrous, codependent love.

In UK and Ireland cinemas Aug 15. 

It’s one of those Fringe successes people dream of mimicking. Since debuting in Edinburgh in 2014, Duncan Macmillan Every Brilliant Thing – co-written with its original star Jonny Donahoe – has earned rave reviews and performed all across the globe. Now it’s on the West End. Over the course of its three-month stint, Donahoe, Ambika Mod, Sue Perkins and Minnie Driver will all take the lead role, but we see Lenny Henry. Dressed in a colourful patterned shirt, he sends smiles soaring across the crowd from the outset. The conversation about mental health has moved on since 2014. Nevertheless, the play’s message still lands today. For all its sorrow, the play gleams with hope. It is a truly brilliant thing.

‘The sleep of reason produces monsters’. The Turner Prize-winning artist Tai Shani’s new commission for Somerset House takes the sleep of reason as its starting point. In the grand Edmond J. Safra Fountain Court, she has installed a ten-metre-tall blue figure, who lays supine, gently breathing with closed eyes. We’re told that this ethereal, childlike giant has slept through ‘warnings of present and imminent catastrophes, political and social disaster and environmental collapse.’ Art with a message often risks being didactic, prioritising its statement over its aesthetic experience. Here, though, is a deft balance of content and form: a nuanced message, contained within immediately impressive and accessible art.

Jean-Francois Millet was an artist of the people. Born to a farming family, he spent his life painting rural workers and the conditions of their labour. This exhibition, marking the 150th anniversary of his death, presents an impressive array of his work, which went on to inspire Vincent van Gogh among other artists. Heads down and backs bent, there is a melancholic, weathered beauty to Millet’s characters.

In the Hayward Gallery’s HENI Project Space, two Iranian-Canadian artists are having fun with language. Sculpture, video and found objects all find their place in this playful exhibition that juxtaposes words and images to show us the precarity of truth and meaning in today’s world. From a hyper-realistic sculpture to a repurposed electric motorway sign, Ghazaleh Avarzamani and Ali Ahadi find many ways to combine the quotidian with the uncanny.

Spend a morning immersed in the year’s most powerful photography at the World Press Photo Exhibition 2025, now open at the MPB Gallery in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. Fresh from a record-breaking 2024 tour that drew over 3 million visitors across 66 cities, this world-leading showcase brings together the year’s most striking photojournalism and documentary work. Each image, chosen by an international jury of top industry professionals, captures defining moments from across the globe — from political upheavals and environmental crises to human resilience and joy. With 20% off tickets, this is your chance to see the stories that shaped the world, all in one unforgettable exhibition.

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Another year, another spectacular line-up of classical music. In 2025, the orchestral extravaganza will feature 86 concerts across eight weeks, with over 3,000 artists taking to the stage, with the majority of the action taking place inside the grand surroundings of London’s Royal Albert Hall. This week, look out for an all-night prom running from 11pm to 7am featuring cellist Anastasia Kobekina, pianist Hayato Sumino and Norwegian ensemble Barokksolistene, a The Planets and Star Wars prom with music from John Williams’ Star Wars score and Holst’s The Planets and Edward Gardner conducting the London Philharmonic Orchestra.