Things to do in London this week

Halloween is here! And with October 31 falling on a Saturday this year, we’re in for a ghoulishly good time without the haunting prospect of work the next day, so it’s no surprise that Halloween parties seem more plentiful and extravagant than ever this year. But there’s plenty more spooky fun to be had around London if you don’t fancy a night of the raving dead. Instead, you could let your synthetic wig down at a scary movie screening, join a lantern-lit ghost tour, learn about London’s graveyards, carve a pumpkin or check out a spooky old museum after-hours. So when you’re after something strange in your neighbourhood, who ya gonna call? Time Out London, that’s who! Here’s our list of the best Halloween events London has to offer in 2026. 

This year’s London Literature Festival continues with pop star and Service95 Book Club founder Dua Lipa in the hot seat, curating all the events. This week, her line-up includes a discussion about sound and rhythm in writing with Kae Tempest (Oct 30), a talk on censorship and the politics behind it with award-winning journalist and author Oliver Bullough (Oct 31), a conversation about how to write male tenderness (Oct 31), and much more, including workshops, panels and performances. 

Bar Blondie, a demure bistro in posh northwest London neighbourhood Queens Park, is wilfully attractive. It’s the latest arrival on the extremely cute Lonsdale Road, a semi-pedestrianised stretch of converted Victorian stables. The inspiration? For some reason, it’s spaghetti westerns, meaning Ennio Morricone’s rousing Ecstasy of Gold plays on a loop in the loos, there’s a solid pasta menu, and the bistro’s name itself, a tribute to ‘Blondie’, Clint Eastwood’s antihero in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. Head Chef Alastair Walling learned his trade at some of London’s best and it shows. The veal tartare nicoise tastes exactly like a Big Mac, in the best possible way. There’s a dish of torched mackerel too, and big, buttery sheets of handmade fazzoletti are dressed generously with crab, chilli and lemon.  

Master mentalist Derren Brown is back on the West End, this time with a disorienting show that sets out to challenge the illusion of free will and our ownership of the future. Pretty classic Brown stuff, right? But, the thing you can always expect from Brown is the unexpected. His stunts, however routine they might be, still manage to confound. The first half of Only Human cycles through a circus of tricks, it’s disorienting but still buoyant, thanks to Brown’s excellent comedic timing and disarming warmth. The second half takes a drastic turn; a sense of alarm no doubt helped by masterful stage effects, lighting and sound design, but largely down to Brown taking some of his more extreme psychological manipulation to the stage. Without giving too much away, trigger warnings were issued, and every mouth was agape. As with any Derren Brown show, you’ll leave deeply impressed by the man’s showmanship and aptitude for human manipulation.

Head to the Chinatown restaurant and get unending plates of dim sum for just £24.95, with prosecco too. It’s a little more expensive on Fridays and Saturdays (£29.50 and £31.90) but it remains an absolute steal. Little wonder it’s so continuously popular. 

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If you like your arthouse cinema thematically rich yet concise, Pawel Pawlikowski (Ida) has made another of his 80-minute opuses for you. Like a conjurer with a bottomless top hat, the Polish filmmaker packs more into this short-yet-stately monochrome historical drama than others manage in twice the time. When Fatherland reaches its beautiful, pin-drop final scene, your mind will be spinning with ideas of home, grief, art, war guilt, memory, ideological conflict, and family bonds and traumas. Fatherland is an elegant, engrossing film; chilly at times, but also poignant as repressed feelings finally bubble to the surface. This is another expansive, enriching work from a modern master. 

Agatha Christie is widely regarded as the greatest ever crime novelist, and the Queen of Crime will be under investigation herself during the British Library’s 2026 season. Coinciding with the centenary of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, one of the prolific writer’s most important and influential novels, the autumn exhibition will delve into the origins of iconic characters Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot, while also exploring the the eclectic range of interests that inspired the English author’s works, from archaeology to pharmacology, and illustrating the profound impact her ouevre continues to have on the whodunnit genre. 

Give yourself some proper indulgence at the five-star Courthouse Hotel, with one hour of spa access and your pick of luxe treatment packages (one 50-minute session with two treatments, four-mini treatments, or a 75-minute session with three treatments). You’ll also get complimentary bubbly, and a £10 voucher for any subsequent visits. 

Get up to 74% off with Time Out Offers. Click here for more info.

London’s newest – and cultiest – picturehouse, Clerkenwell’s Nickel Cinema is celebrating its first ever Halloween in style this October. A thoroughly DIY affair, the grindhouse cinema specialises is the perfect place to catch some niche horror picks. You won’t find Hocus Pocus and Ghostbusters on the programme here; instead, expect slashers, sexploitation films, Italian murder mystery, German industrial cinema and B movies galore, all leading up to an all-day marathon on October 31. Beginning at 2pm on Halloween, the two-day Nickel Cinema Psychotronic Halloween Movie Mash will feature eight horror movies from around the world (which will all remain a secret until showtime) and an exclusive poster sale. Costumes are very much encouraged!

In Danny Lee Wynter’s new play, based on his own experiences, we’re in a big, busy family home in Ilford – both in 1995 and in 1980. In the 90s, Ted (an impressive stage debut from Leo Whitfield Harris) is an awkward, mixed-race teen trying to work out his place in the world. Wynter’s dialogue feels like it could be lifted straight from a sitcom; we get all the colour and expletives you’d expect from a close-knit family, fractured by clashing personalities and worldviews. Drawing the lines between the people we were in the past and the people we become, Wynter has written something wise, witty and packed with big feelings. 

Fancy three courses for £29.50 on the swanky rooftop terrace at this award-winning restaurant? We can help you out there. It’s a special spot, helped in no small part by the first-rate views of St Paul’s Cathedral. The food’s decent, too.

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This atmosphere-heavy, nostalgia-suffused second show from Singapore-raised comic Hao deliberately intercuts the mythic and the mundane – the arty stuff and the gags – as it details his longing for home as his moves to unfamiliar London. It’s certainlty quite a different style of comedy but it is funny as well as the more out there stuff, and it bagged Hao an unexpected but not unwelcome place of the Edinburgh Comedy Award shortlist this Fringe.

South London’s World Heart Beat Music Gardens is cementing its credentials as a hidden gem venue in the capital, with its inaugural Silk Road Music Festival. Across three months, the programme will span genres across continents, cultures and centuries with sets from internationally acclaimed artists all celebrating the rich artistic traditions that flourished along the historic Silk Road. This week, listen to pianist Siqian Li and Guzheng player Kang Yang, who will explore Chinese classical traditions through music. 

Leicester Square is well used to becoming a glimmering Christmas hub each winter. Every year, stalls serving steaming mulled wine and warm mince pies, and huts decked out with traditional Christmas gifts pop up next to the spiegeltent, where entertainment is provided courtesy of alternative circus and cabaret show La Clique. But now, for the first time, there’ll be an open-air ice rink slap bang in the middle of it all. The new rink will encircle the square’s Shakespeare statue and suurounded by the familiar Christmas market stalls. It’ll be London’s only ice rink offering skate sessions every 15 minutes, available for both bookings and walk-ins. 

Ghosts: The Possession of Button House, which rejoins the BBC show’s daffy, bickering band of spectres (played by theatre collective Them There/Horrible Histories gang plus the brilliant Lolly Adefope), who are eternally stranded in a semi-rural mansion. Thankfully, it faithfully imbibes the original series’ cocktail of cosy-comedy charm, cheeky edginess, political/social commentary, winking risqué-ness and light-touch sentimentality. It maintains a steady flow of pleasantly gentle chuckles, right up to the moment when you realise you’re shedding a tear or two because, damn their eyes, you really do love these silly characters. It’s a delightful, Ealing-esque caper with added body-swap shenanigans. 

This cult Irish immersive horror show involves passing through two dimly lit, twisty-turny mazes in which a seemingly endless stream of abominations leap out at you from any given corner. The mazes don’t so much have plots as themes. In Sundown Manor you’re invited to dinner with a coven of witches. It’s all very well done, as you push through decrepit halls and rotting sides of meat (NB fake) while being constantly menaced from the shadows. In Avery Hill Asylum you’re edging through a chaotic madhouse where the patients have been experimented upon by Dr Thorne. The Nightmare Realm isn’t exactly subtle, but it’s very well done and you are simply not going to beat it for sheer volume of scares.

From the set recreation photo opps outside the venue to the stunt casting of a former teen heartthrob (McFly’s Harry Judd) and original supporting cast member (KayCee Stroh) in the adult roles, High School Musical (the musical) is being aimed squarely at millennials. But as cheesy exercises in nostalgia bait go, the Manchester Hope Mill production of High School Musical is about as impressive as they come. It’s a mammoth undertaking, with an astonishing ensemble, slick choreography by Aaron Renfree, and impressive leads. You can’t watch and not be wowed. Even the most casual viewers will find something to love in this visually enthralling production.

Two couples of wildly contrasting means connect awkwardly in Lee Chang-dong’s perceptive and empathetic new drama. The Korean filmmaker delivers an absorbing parable about the ruin wreaked by late capitalism. It’s a four (and a bit)-hander that blossoms over its 164-minute runtime into a gesture of defiance for uncertain times. It makes for a slower burn, less tumultuous companion piece to Park Chan-wook’s No Other Choice and Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite. Together, they form a bleak triptych of modern fables that show society stratifying in increasingly insurmountable ways.

Poly Styrene, Chrissy Hynde, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Debbie Harry; as part of the city-wide Up Yours! Festival, the Museum of Youth Culture will celebrate the women behind the punk movement with a landmark exhibition. God Save The Queens celebrates the legacy of Poly Styrene, the visionary frontwoman of X-Ray Spex. It will bring together rare and previously unseen artwork, photography, fashion and personal archival material, with highlights including the Poly Styrene Archive, original artworks by radical feminist photographer Linder, previously unseen artwork from X-Ray Spex saxophonist Lora Logic, and archival fashion pieces from the iconic pink-haired designer Dame Zandra Rhodes. 

Dulwich Picture Gallery’s new exhibition will give visitors a chance to see the complete series of one of the most celebrated image cycles in art history, giving us the chance to see Mount Fuji as Hokusai saw it nearly two centuries ago. Hokusai: Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji brings one of the world’s most iconic print series to London. Created between 1830 and 1833, the exhibition presents, for the first time in the UK, the complete set of Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji by Katsushika Hokusai, Japan’s most celebrated printmaker.