November 2026
November at a glance: 14 exhibitions opening, 14 closing, and 53 more on view across the city.

Dulwich Picture Gallery
The first UK museum show by author-illustrator Charlie Mackesy: never-before-seen early sketches and original works from The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse.

National Portrait Gallery
The Gallery's flagship photography prize — now sponsored by Winston Taylor and renamed the Winston Taylor Photo Portrait Prize 2026 — returns with the best contemporary portrait photography from emerging talents and established names.

Museum of Youth Culture · Free
Unseen and newly digitised youth culture photographs from the archive of Clare Muller, shown in the museum's Café Gallery.

Design Museum
Major exhibition celebrating contemporary Black designers reshaping British design across furniture, architecture, fashion and installation.

Victoria and Albert Museum
A major UK-first exhibition exploring 1,600 years of art and design from one of the world's greatest cities, across the Byzantine and Ottoman empires.

Saatchi Gallery
Six decades of street culture's influence on art, photography, fashion, music and activism: over 100 creators across ten-plus rooms, from graffiti and hip-hop to 2Tone.

Tate Britain
The 50-year creative partnership of Bloomsbury artists Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant, with over 300 works and a recreation of their studio at Charleston in Sussex.

Whitechapel Gallery · Free
Work from the four shortlisted artists for the Film London Jarman Award, which recognises and supports UK artists working with moving image. The winner is announced 24 November 2026.

Wallace Collection · Free
A free display showing how Cosimo I de' Medici, first Grand Duke of Tuscany, used art to build his authority and secure his dynasty, from a monumental wine cooler bearing his emblem to a ceremonial sword linking him to Hercules.

Royal Academy of Arts
Explores Guggenheim's short-lived Guggenheim Jeune gallery (1938-39) and how it introduced avant-garde art to London.

National Gallery
For the first time in history, all of Jan van Eyck's surviving painted portraits brought together in one exhibition.

Hayward Gallery · Free
The Armenian-Lithuanian artist's first UK solo show, reconstructing a fragment of an unfinished radio anechoic chamber from an Armenian radio telescope alongside sculptures and a new sound piece exploring myth and cosmic phenomena.

Hayward Gallery
A major solo show by the American photographer and activist, spanning five decades of intimate work on relationships, addiction and queer subcultures, alongside four recent films including the public debut of a new work.

Tower of London · Free
Victorian Christmas traditions at the Tower, from Christmas cards to gift giving. Included in palace admission (Members go free).

Tower of London · Free
October half-term event: step into a world of chilling tales and dare to face the spirits that roam the Tower. Included in palace admission.

Museum of Youth Culture · Free
Jeanie Jean's diary of DIY gigs and the scenes around them, the second Not Dead show, in the Upstairs Gallery.

Imperial War Museum · Free
As bombs fell on 1940s London, artists responded. Over 45 paintings and drawings, with photographs, film and oral histories, capture a city both familiar and strange.
Museum of Youth Culture · Free
Real confessions of what people lied to their parents about as teenagers, with space to add your own, in the Youth Club Gallery.

Tate Britain · Free
British-Bengali artist Mohammed Z Rahman presents a two-act display exploring home, love and connection through paintings inspired by personal stories and memories, shown alongside works from the Tate collection.
Whitechapel Gallery
A special exhibition and sale marking the gallery's 125th anniversary, featuring 24 international artists working primarily in painting, with proceeds supporting the gallery and artists.

Royal Academy of Arts · Free
A free exhibition by current RA Schools students Anna Metzger, Sam Tromp and Joel Wycherley, exploring fractured narratives across bodily and architectural scales.

The Photographers' Gallery · Free
Group exhibition in the Print Sales Gallery exploring trees, memory and culture through photography and mixed media across global landscapes.

Victoria and Albert Museum
A behind-the-scenes look at Aardman's stop-motion animation, revisiting Wallace & Gromit, Shaun the Sheep and Morph. At Young V&A.

Victoria and Albert Museum
The UK's first exhibition on Elsa Schiaparelli, tracing the surrealist designer's influence from the 1920s to today and the house's revival under Daniel Roseberry.

Museum of Youth Culture · Free
The Up Yours! Collective's show on 50 years of women in punk, dedicated to Poly Styrene, with unseen archive material, photography, fashion and new artworks.

Wallace Collection
A major retrospective of over 50 of Sir Winston Churchill's paintings, from wartime scenes and Mediterranean landscapes to intimate views of his home at Chartwell.

Wellcome Collection · Free
Over 150 artworks and objects explore how experiences of ageing across all life stages are shaped by environment, culture and society, and what greater longevity means.

British Museum · Free
Marking 250 years since the Declaration of Independence, this Room 3 display uncovers the Indigenous and global histories behind the founding of the United States through treaties, diplomatic gifts and resistance.

Natural History Museum
Dive back in time to meet the fiercest marine reptiles ever to swim the oceans, from giant ichthyosaurs to plesiosaurs, in this immersive deep-sea exhibition.

Tate Modern
Over 30 iconic works by Frida Kahlo alongside contemporary pieces, exploring her rise into a global cultural and commercial phenomenon.

Natural History Museum · Free
A free display on the life of Sir Richard Owen, the Victorian zoologist and palaeontologist whose vision led to the creation of the Natural History Museum, featuring previously unseen artworks, personal publications, and archival photographs.
Courtauld Gallery
A focused display of works on paper — ink, charcoal, gouache — showing how drawing is central to Toor's practice: border checkpoints, still-life compositions, and reinterpretations of historical paintings. Shown in the Drawings Gallery alongside the main solo show.

Courtauld Gallery
The New York painter's first European solo museum show, around 20 paintings exploring queer and immigrant life, with a companion drawings display.

V&A East Museum
125 years of Black music-making in Britain. An immersive audio experience spanning four continents, telling a story of excellence, struggle, resilience and joy.

Serpentine Gallery · Free
Justin Caguiat's first major UK exhibition brings together painting, sculpture, printmaking, sound and film in a site-responsive installation, including thermochromic paintings that shift with heat and light and bronze bells that ring in continually changing sequences.

Victoria and Albert Museum
A landmark V&A collaboration with Brisbane's QAGOMA, showcasing over 40 contemporary artists and First Nations perspectives from across Asia, Australia and the Pacific.

Victoria and Albert Museum
An immersive sound exhibition spanning 125 years of Black music-making in Britain, with over 120 tracks tracing excellence, struggle, resilience and joy.
Design Museum
Behind the scenes of LAIKA's stop-motion film Wildwood, with original props, sketches, puppets and miniature sets, in the Helene and Johannes Huth Gallery.

Whitechapel Gallery · Free
Film programme for the gallery's 125th anniversary with works by Ayo Akingbade, Holly Graham, Maz Murray and Gaby Sahhar, shown in Gallery 5.

Victoria and Albert Museum · Free
A free trail of eight Freddie Mercury stage looks across the V&A's galleries, from the Bohemian Rhapsody catsuit to his Knebworth crown and cloak.

Sir John Soane's Museum · Free
Michael Landy's meticulous watercolour and pen drawings imagining iconic buildings, including Soane's own museum, as overgrown future ruins.

Tate Britain · Free
British-French-Algerian artist Zineb Sedira creates a major site-specific installation for the Duveen Galleries, exploring memory, migration and displacement through photography, performance, video and installation.

Tate Modern
Newly remastered films, early paintings and late sculptures by the Cuban-American artist, including her Silueta series, many never seen in the UK.

Dulwich Picture Gallery
Hokusai's complete Thirty-six Views of Mt. Fuji, shown in the UK for the first time courtesy of the Iuchi Collection, including the iconic Great Wave.

Courtauld Gallery
The overlooked contributions of Winifred Gill (1891–1981), central figure at Roger Fry's Omega Workshops — toy designs, still life painting, and prints tracing her work as an arts and crafts educator.

Barbican Centre · Free
Japanese artist Yuko Mohri transforms The Curve with a site-responsive commission exploring states of flux and acts of repair via light, sound and kinetic sculpture featuring Barbican objects.

Royal Academy of Arts · Free
Diploma Works and treasures from the RA Collection spanning over 300 years, shown free in the historic John Madejski Fine Rooms while the main Collections Gallery is expanded. Closed on select dates (21 Jul, 11 Aug, 4 Sep, 2 Oct, 6 Nov, 4 Dec 2026).

London Museum · Free
A rotating display in the Reflections Room featuring British Romani artists Corrina Eastwood, Delaine Le Bas and Dan Turner, celebrating the livelihoods, creativity and craft of Romani communities alongside a historical timeline from 500 CE to 2022.

Royal Academy of Arts
Monet, Matisse, Dufy and others capture the light and colour of the Cote d'Azur in this survey of the French Riviera's pull on modern painters.

Serpentine Gallery · Free
A major solo exhibition of new and existing films by New Delhi-based artist Amar Kanwar, transforming Serpentine North into a meditative visual and sonic environment exploring displacement, nationalism and memory.

National Gallery
The most significant UK exhibition of Pierre-Auguste Renoir in 20 years, tracing love and affection in his art, including 'Dance at the Moulin de la Galette'.

British Museum
Two thousand years of Korean creativity in sculpture, painting and decorative arts, from around 300 BC to today, the most comprehensive survey seen in Europe in 40 years.

Royal Academy of Arts · Free
A major new courtyard sculpture by New York-based artist Nicole Eisenman, installed in front of Burlington House.

National Portrait Gallery
Photographer Tim Walker celebrates the UK's LGBTQ+ trailblazers in a fantastical exploration of queer identity, community and love.

National Gallery · Free
Yinka Shonibare's contemporary response shown alongside Thomas Gainsborough's 'Mr and Mrs Andrews'. Free to all visitors.

Wellcome Collection · Free
Multidisciplinary artworks by Rudy Loewe reimagine mental healthcare, centring the lived experience of Black people whose UK care is shaped by racist discrimination.

Wellcome Collection · Free
The first museum show of Audrey Amiss (1933-2013): drawings, paintings and other works through which she spoke out against harmful treatment within the mental health system.
Whitechapel Gallery · Free
A free participatory installation in Gallery 4, running alongside Cecilia Vicuña: Living Threads. Visitors contribute to a collective quipu — the Andean knotted-cord form central to Vicuña's practice.

Whitechapel Gallery
The first major UK survey of the Chilean artist, poet and activist, spanning six decades of work that dissolves boundaries between art, poetry, performance and ritual. Includes a companion participatory installation, Foraging Quipu.

Tate Britain
Curated by Edward Enninful, a major show on how 1990s British art, fashion and photography fused into one cultural force, with Hirst, Lucas, McQueen, Westwood and Teller.

The Photographers' Gallery
Through photographs and archives, celebrates the creativity and curiosity of children as photographers.

Tate Modern
Around 200 prints by more than 80 artists trace pictorialism, the first international art photography movement, across the globe.

The Photographers' Gallery
Major exhibition celebrating 50 years since William Eggleston's Guide (1976), the book that helped establish colour photography as fine art.

Horniman Museum · Free
Award-winning British wildlife photography spanning animal behaviour, botanical subjects, urban wildlife and marine life, with captions giving context for each image.

The Photographers' Gallery
Sanlé Sory's rarely seen colour photographs shown together for the first time, capturing youth culture and fashion in Burkina Faso.

Imperial War Museum · Free
The UK's first exhibition on how war has shaped children's lives from 1914 to today, told through personal objects, immersive set pieces and much-loved children's books.

Barbican Centre
Major retrospective of over 60 works by American painter Robert Ryman, whose largely white, square canvases invite a closer look at materials and surface.

Tate Modern · Free
A collection display bringing together works by artists including Abbas Akhavan, Abel Rodríguez and Zheng Bo, exploring the connection between environmental and social justice.

British Museum · Free
The first display devoted to Italian Renaissance woodcuts, from early devotional prints to chiaroscuro designs by Titian and Parmigianino, in Rooms 90 and 90a.

Imperial War Museum
A selection of Dame Vera Lynn's personal objects, including letters, correspondence and uniform items from her recently acquired Second World War archive, on display for 12 months near the entrance to the Second World War Galleries.

Design Museum
The first UK retrospective of artist-designer Es Devlin's 30-year practice in sculpture, performance, language and light, with maquettes and new commissions.

Tate Modern · Free
The 11th annual Hyundai Commission fills the Turbine Hall with a site-specific installation by artist and composer Tarek Atoui, blending music, technology, sculpture and performance into multisensory environments.

Science Museum · Free
Marking 250 years since US independence, this exhibition reveals the science behind the nation's founding through maps, paintings and instruments from the 1760s to 1790s.

Wallace Collection · Free
Acclaimed artist Rachel Kneebone presents nine white porcelain sculptures throughout the Wallace Collection's galleries, including two newly created works, in dialogue with the museum's historic decorative arts.

London Transport Museum
Over 100 original London Transport posters mark the centenary of art deco, with work by design greats like McKnight Kauffer and Jean Dupas, plus Charles Holden's Tube architecture.

Tate Modern
An immersive retrospective of seven decades of kinetic and interactive works, with light sculptures and geometric paintings that turn viewers into participants.

Victoria and Albert Museum · Free
A free display drawn from the V&A's US photography collection, revealing the breadth of the country's photographic traditions from early prints to contemporary work.

Wellcome Collection · Free
A display exploring HIV and AIDS through stories of protest and care, from the UK's 1980s-90s epidemic to global activism today, via photography, film and archives.

The Photographers' Gallery · Free
A free outdoor exhibition of Mika Ninagawa's vibrant, dream-like photographs of blooming flowers and goldfish that dissolve the boundary between real and imagined.

British Museum
The 70-metre tapestry depicting the 1066 Norman invasion, shown in the UK for the first time in almost 1,000 years.

Natural History Museum
Back for another year with 100 new images: the world's best nature photography, from polar landscapes to tropical rainforests, displayed in an immersive exhibition of award-winning shots.
A short note now and then when something new opens worth your time.