Things to do in London this week

The Princess of Wales Conservatory at Kew Gardens is taking a voyage to China this February, courtesy of the latest annual mind-bending orchid display that takes over the iconic glasshouse each year. As ever, the exotic display will celebrate the natural beauty and biodiversity of its subject country: China is home to thousands of varieties of orchid, plus vast amounts of other flora and fauna besides. Look out for sculptures of dragons and Chinese lanterns, as well as intricately woven plant installations. There’ll also be ticketed after-hours events with live Chinese music, food, cocktails and dance performances. 

The far right on the streets, an agenda-filled press and a nation caught in a cost-of-living crisis being encouraged to blame immigrants for its woes. It’s not hard to see why this new musical – set in the lead-up to and aftermath of the real-life 1936 stand against the march of Oswald Mosley’s black-shirt fascists by the residents of Cable Street in London’s East End – resonates so powerfully now. Told in flashback via a present-day tour of Cable Street, it follows the fatefully linked lives of Irish Mairead and Jewish ex-boxer Sammy. Its clear-sighted sense of the high stakes of history is what makes it so deeply moving.

The landmark exhibition at the British Museum will trace the evolution of the Japanese warrior class over the past 1,000 years, exploring how their image came to be what it is today. From the medieval period to the present day, this major exhibit will bring together 280 objects to illustrate how the Samurai came to be known as armour-clad warriors, fighting epic duels, and following a strict code of honour. But it will also explore how ideas of Samurai have been fabricated, idealised and adapted, dispelling the myths and revealing their true history. 

Dover Street Counter sits two doors down from its glossy sibling, The Dover. Just as elegant, but with a naughty glint in its eye, it’s almost enough to make Mayfair cool for the first time since the Beatles played on that roof. Unlike The Dover, Dover Street Counter is an all-day affair with a shorter menu and a more casual set-up, food is important here, but it’s also about vibes, and DSC has a surfeit of them, from the sleek curved glass frontage, that’s all 1930s shopfront by way of a Parisian Fin de Siècle knocking shop. to the ‘90s hip-hop soundtrack. The short, easy menu could be seen as one note, but is made up of things everyone wants; tuna melts, burgers, lobster, salmon steak, pasta, and a raft of juicy sandwiches. All dark wood and low lights, and perfect for gossip and dates, or gossip about dates.

Based loosely on the experiences of arena-filling UK comic John Bishop, a divorcee-to-be who once walked on stage at a stand-up club to swerve paying the cover charge and never looked back, it shifts the story from Liverpool to Manhattan and the New York ’burbs. Will Arnett is Bishop surrogate Alex Novak and the Arrested Development actor is a revelation. Opposite is Laura Dern, who brings her A-game to a very different vision of marital ruin. Props to director and co-writer Bradley Cooper for finding a sense of renewal from this often painful snapshot of marital breakdown, with its forced smiles in front of friends, wrestling over the dogs and the children asking if ‘you’re fighting again’. Rather than a bruising marital wipeout drama, this is a film about how a new purpose and a new tribe can help you re-evaluate what was there all along. 

The ultimate sadgirl ballet is returning to the Royal Opera House in winter 2026. Wayne McGregor’s sweeping and expressive ballet exploring the life and work of Virginia Woolf, accompanied by Max Richter’s haunting original score, has been one of the Royal Ballet’s big hitters over the past decade. First staged in 2015, the dance triptych inspired by extracts from Mrs Dalloway, Orlando and The Waves picked up an Olivier award for best dance production. 

London’s craft beer heads know Blackhorse Lane is probably one of the city’s most exciting booze destinations, home to huge taprooms from the likes of Signature, Exale, Beerblefish, Hackney and Wild Card. Then, of course there’s the capital’s largest beer hall of all, Big Penny Social. And in Feb, it’ll be hosting its biggest beer fest yet. There’ll be over 120 keg beers to sip all from more than 50 of the UK’s best breweries, including 3 Locks, Burning Sky, Double Barrelled, Elusive, Howling Hops and Orbit. DJs and live musicians will be on hand to turn the piss up into a real party (though there’ll be a family friendly session on the Saturday afternoon). Each ticket also includes a handy festival pint glass you can keep for posterity. 

Tim Crouch’s new production of The Tempest might baffle a lot of people, but I doubt any of them will forget it in a hurry. We’re in a junk-cluttered study of some sort, presumably on the nameless island that Crouch’s Prospero and his daughter Miranda (Sophie Steer) were exiled to by his sister Antonia (a gender swap, obvs). Their unearthly servants Caliban and Ariel are there too. They appear to be acting out The Tempest. That is to say, they’re using objects in the study to recreate the usual start of the play. It’s a leftfield but fun read. After a while, Crouch’s Prospero starts summoning audience members (planted actors, not unwitting audience participants, don’t worry) to fill the roles. It’s a cerebral and uncompromising – but pretty funny! – Tempest from a director who has devoted his life to deconstructing the nature of theatre. 

In the Barbican exhibition series ‘Encounters: Giacometti’, living artists will showcase their art in response to the esteemed work of Alberto Giacometti, who passed away in 1966. The upcoming and final sculptor that will be in discussion with Giacometti will be American artist Lynda Benglis. She will present new and old pieces and her personal selection of Giacometti’s sculptures. Known for pouring hot pigmated latex onto the floor and letting it form into a solid structure, Benglis’ work is often colourful, abstract, and holds a mirror to society. 

Luke Norris’s first play in an age quite doesn’t have an M Night Shyamalan-level twist, but it does take a few pretty shocking turns. As Guess How Much I Love You? begins, we meet Him (Robert Aramyo) and Her (Rosie Sheehy), a thirtysomething married couple who have come to hospital for their 20-week scan. There is a nagging worry, however: the two are debating over why the sonographer has been away so long and whether or not she looked worried when she left. It’s a painfully acute portrait of the stress early parenthood can put on a relationship.

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 explore the impact of music on his work. Despite a few technical issues with Doig’s re-creation of a hi-fi listening bar, his majestic paintings speak volumes. House of Music is a wonderful showing from an artist with very little left to prove. 

London’s glorious East Asian market Urban Garden Fair is, of course, going big for Lunar New Year. The huge two-day fete will be an ode to not just Chinese culture but Taiwanese, Japanese, Korean, Hong Kongese and Malaysian culture too. There’ll be more than 100 stalls offering up all sorts of delicious East Asian street food, snacks, dumplings, sweets and teas as well as traders selling handmade trinkets and workshops covering traditional crafts like calligraphy, daruma painting and origami. 

A new free photography exhibition illustrates the beauty and fragility of the Pantanal – the world’s largest wetland that sprawls across Brazil, Bolivia and Paraguay. Over 60 images, captured by two of Brazil’s leading documentary photographers, will be displayed. Visitors will discover the Pantanal’s wonderful biodiversity – which includes jaguars, howler monkeys, caiman and marsh deer – alongside the ravages of wildfires and deforestation. 

Want to gawp at some of the masterpieces in the National Gallery but can’t face schlepping to central London? Croydon will be taken over with life-sized reproductions of some of the gallery’s biggest bangers in this free outdoor art exhibition. From Van Gogh, to Monet and Turner, CR0’s town centre will be awash with artwork. Locations to spot the paintings include the Queen’s Gardens, Croydon Minster, Whitgift Shopping Centre and Park Hill Park. Pieces will also be installed in Coulsdon, New Addington, Purley, Thornton Heath and Upper Norwood.

Find out what the UK’s most promising fine art graduates have been up to in this annual showcase of up-and-coming talent from across the UK, which is now in its 76th year. Featuring 22 exhibitors selected by renowned artists Pio Abad, Louise Giovanelli and Grace Ndiritu, the London leg of the exhibition this year takes place at Camberwell’s South London Gallery

High Noon is an adaptation of the classic allegorical 1952 movie starring Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly. It’s an impressive show in a lot of ways. Thea Sharrock’s direction deftly conjures a dusty desert town using flexible sets, lovely period costumes and some sparse but effective gun slingin’. It’s theatrical, too, in the sense that the cast sing a lot more Bruce Springsteen songs than they did in the film, and an ever-present clock implacably ticks down to the title time. And it’s got two sensational leads.

Brazillian multi-disciplinary artist Laura Lima brings her first London solo exhibition to the ICA. Known for her genre-defying practice that merges sculpture, performance, and living bodies, The Drawing Drawing will display a new interactive sculptural installation that riffs on the traditional life drawing class, with an anarchic take that blurs the line between audience and artwork. 

The Barbican is celebrating 20 years of comissioning artists for The Curve in 2026. Chicago-based artist Julia Phillips will be the first to exhibit in the free space this year, with her first UK solo exhibition Inside, Before They Speak. Showing new sculptures that combine glazed ceramics sculpted on her body with metal hardware, Phillips explores ideas about the body, conception, technology and human connection. 

Photography fans are in for a real treat this month, as Nan Goldin’s seminal series The Ballad of Sexual Dependency goes on display in full for the first time ever in the UK. Staged at the St Davis Street branch of Gagosian, the exhibition marks the 40th anniversary of the publication of Goldin’s formative photobook, featuring 126 photographs shot between 1973 and 1986. An intimate, wistful portrait of Goldin’s downtown NYC community it includes photographes of pop culture icons like Cookie Mueller and Greer Lankton, shot in Goldin’s signature saturated, moody hues. Don’t miss a very rare chance to see it in all its glory.

Condo is the best thing to hit London’s art scene every January: a citywide mega-exhibition where galleries from around the world take over spaces across the capital. The idea’s simple, London galleries invite international ones to share their walls for a month, but the results are anything but. In 2026, 50 galleries show across 23 venues, from Sadie Coles HQ hosting Paris’s Sans Titre to The Sunday Painter welcoming Mumbai’s Jhaveri Contemporary. It’s a brilliant way to sample global contemporary art in one hit, and to enjoy watching London’s art crowd parade their questionable winter fashion between stops.