12 brilliant ways to celebrate the August bank holiday in London

Summer in London wouldn't be summer in London without Notting Hill Carnival. Taking place on August bank holiday weekend each year since 1966, it’s grown into Europe’s largest street festival, attracting more than two and half million people annually. With parades, masquerade, floats, dancing, steel bands and soundsystems, as well as the outstanding Caribbean food stalls, Carnival is a feast for the senses. 

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. Its headliners are often indie or dance-focused big-hitters, while its undercards are packed with cult heroes and rising stars you can say you saw first. As well as the ticketed weekend events, look out for All Points East In the Neighbourhood, the festival’s free midweek programme of community activities including film screenings, live sports, theatre, family fun and more. 

There are few more striking spots to catch a movie than the iconic surrounds of the Barbican Sculpture Court. As usual, the City of London’s temple of the arts has an inventively curated line-up in store for the final week of August. Cineastes can revel in the cult sci-fi extravaganza that is David Lynch’s 1984 Dune while music lovers have an outdoor screening of Björk’s mesmerising new concert movie Cornucopia. Standard tickets are £18 (£12 for under-25s and £10 for under-18s) and there’s street food to feast on while you sit back, relax and enjoy the show. 

Having outgrown its first home in Hackney Wick, London’s queer nightlife festival Body Movements levelled up last summer, making a dazzling debut in Southwark Park with five stages showcasing the great and good of the LGBTQ+ party scene in the capital and beyond. It was easily the best edition yet of the groundbreaking festival, so we’re thrilled that the great and good of the London queer scene will once again come together in the same location for its 2025 edition, on the Sunday of the August bank holiday weekend.

On the 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, experimental Parisian artist Coucou Chloe and anonymous London pop maverick Lynks.

Early-bird, first and second-release tickets are sold out already, so snap one up if you want to be there this summer!

Fashion icon, model, club promoter, musician; Leigh Bowery was a multi-hyphenate before multi-hyphenate became a thing. But above all else, he was a muse, as the Tate Modern’s extensive new exhibition tracing the Melbourne native’s life and legacy does an excellent job of portraying. 

Starting with his arrival onto London’s New Romantic scene in 1980, we’re whisked through Bowery’s many different eras in loose chronological order, from his early days as a club promoter for the short-lived but influential Taboo, through to his later practice as a performance artist, clothes designer and life model for Lucian Freud. 

There’s a lot going on in this exhibition, and sometimes it’s hard to identify exactly what point, if any, is being made about Bowery’s cultural impact. But maybe that is the point: it’s not quantifiable. It is vast, dynamic; a testament to London’s creative community and a vision of a true artist who was not afraid of pushing the limits.

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. 

Now in its fourth year, South Facing might still be a fledgling festival compared to some of the other events on the calendar, but it continues a long and impressive legacy of live music events at the Crystal Palace Bowl, which has previously hosted the likes of Elton John, Bob Marley, Vera Lynn and Pink Floyd. South Facing brings the same level of thrilling eclecticism with its line-ups for summer 2025. Multi-platinum Dutch dance duo Tinlicker play their biggest London show yet on August 16 while Basement Jaxx will also play two headline shows on August 22 and 23. The series also features takeovers from Flackstock, an intimate day festival celebrating the life of TV presenter Caroline Flack while raising money for mental health charities, and Love Motion festival, whose line-up features Nile Rogers and Chic, Louie Vega and Dimitri From Paris.

London’s spectacular free outdoor Greenwich + Docklands International Festival is back for 2025, taking place over three consecutive weekends starting with the August bank holiday.  Celebrating its 30th edition in 2025, the festival will kick off with Above And Beyond, a breathtaking acrobatic feat that will see eight parkour performers from French company Lézards Bleus traversing landmark buildings around Woolwich accompanied by music from the Greenwich-based Citizens of the World Choir. The beloved Greenwich Fair (Aug 23 and 24) then returns after skipping last summer, bringing family friendly games and street performance to the heart of the borough, including all-female Belgian circus company Cie Des Chaussons Rouges’s high wire show Epiphytes in Greenwich Park. As always, everything at GDIF is free to attend, and you don’t even need to book in advance. 

DJ by night and artist by day, French interdisciplinary talent Christelle Oyiri is set to take over Tate Modern this June as the first recipient of the Infinities Commission, a new annual award celebrating experimental contemporary art. Working across music, film, performance and installation, Oyiri’s practice explores hidden narratives within media, identity, and diasporic culture. She focuses on what ‘lies between the lines’, from lost mythologies to youth subcultures. Presented in Tate’s Tanks, the commission was awarded by a panel including Brian Eno and Anne Imhof, with additional support granted to artists Xenobia Bailey, Rashida Bumbray, and Jean Katambayi Mukendi.

It’s been three years since Secret Cinema had a show on in the capital, but they’ve finally found a new home in Battersea Park, where they’ll be staging Grease: The Immersive Movie Experience this summer. It sounds like the immersive London legends are going for something slightly different, with a two-and-a-half-hour show in which the immortal 1978 film musical will play around you as you move through the show’s environment. Truly it’s hard to get one’s head around it without seeing it, but it basically sounds like the film and the theatre elements will be fully integrated rather than a case of first one, then other. As ever you’re encouraged to dress up as an extra from the film. And if you worry you’re too young to pass as a pupil at Rydell High then don’t worry – that didn’t stop the film’s casting director.

Nicholas Hytner’s exuberant 2019 take on A Midsummer Night’s Dream was simply too much fun to leave to the history books: what a joy it is to have it back.

It’s a show in the same lineage as the Bridge’s recent Guys and Dolls: designed by Bunnie Christie, half the audience sit in the round, while the other half stand on the floor where the fairy-filled action of Shakespeare’s comedy unfurls on mobile platforms that rise and fall around them.

It is joyously queer: pretty much everyone in it gets a crack at snogging everybody else. And Hytner’s key textual intervention is swapping the bulk of fairy monarchs Oberon and Titania’s lines, meaning that it’s JJ Feild’s Oberon – not Susannah Fielding’s Titania – who has it off with Emmanuel Akwafo’s exuberant Bottom.

There’s enough textual rigour for the Bard-heads, but really it’s a production that just pelts you with cool stuff for three hours and wins your heart that way. If you’re not cooing at the virtuoso staging you’ll be gawping at the circus work or goggling at who is kissing who. And if all else fails, it ends with three giant inflatable moons dropped into the auditorium for us to pummel around. You’d have to be dead not to enjoy it.

After a successful first two years, this charming August bank holiday festival is making its return for a third time in 2025, transforming Battersea Park into a serene space to take in some majestic orchestral renditions of your favourite tunes. 

This year’s line-up sees the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra perform two concerts. Symphonic Disco (Saturday August 23) traces the history of disco music, featuring hits from the likes of Abba, Chic, Kool & The Gang, Donna Summer, Sophie Ellis-Bextor and Dua Lipa. The following evening sees the Royal Philharmonic’s 60-piece concert orchestra return for A Night at the Movies (Sunday August 24), where they’ll perform soundtracks from some of the most iconic film franchises in history. And the final evening of the three-day festival sees Jools Holland and his famous Rhythm and Blues Orchestra headline a full day of lazy afternoon jazz, accompanied by longstanding vocalists Louise Marshall and Sumudu Jayatilaka.

As usual, spectators are invited to pack a blanket and some picky bits for a Bank Holiday picnic, with gourmet hampers, street food stalls and bars also available on the site too.

Summer is almost over, but there's still a chance to make the most of London’s thriving and fun outdoor cinema scene. Across the city, you'll find pop-up screenings in scenic spots, showing the latest blockbusters, indie flicks and some beloved classics for good measure. This year, it’s all about enshrining ‘Barbie’ into the outdoor cinema canon alongside the likes of ‘La La Land’, ‘Notting Hill’ and other surefire favourites on London-wide screens. 

There might be a lot to be said for London’s outdoor swimming spots, but sometimes you can’t beat a paddle in the waves, some refreshing sea air, and a hearty portion of fish ‘n’ chips. You’ve probably already been on a jaunt down to Brighton, but the British seaside has plenty of more secluded, photogenic destinations absolutely steeped in charm, too – and many of the UK's best beaches can be found within two hours of the capital. Hop on a train and soak up some sun, stat.