Coming up in London

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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'.

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.

Whitechapel Gallery

The first significant UK exhibition of the Egyptian modernist, tracing how she fused painting with lifelong activism for social and political justice.

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.

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.

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.

National Portrait Gallery

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

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.

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.

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.

Tate Modern

Over 50 artists trace pictorialism, the first international art photography movement, from the 1880s to the 1960s across the globe.

National Gallery · Free

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

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.

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.

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.

Tower of London

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.

British Museum · Free

Marking the 250th anniversary of Constable's birth, this display in Room 90a presents drawings, sketches and mezzotints from his late career, drawn largely from an 1888 donation by his daughter Isabel — showing his lifelong engagement with the landscapes of rural England.

Courtauld Gallery

Paul Laib's evocative early-1930s photographs of Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson's shared Hampstead studio at 7 The Mall.

Dulwich Picture Gallery

Urban America through 34 photographers, from Stieglitz and Lange to Arbus and Winogrand, charting the rise of street photography from 1907 to 2012.

Design Museum

The first UK retrospective of Japanese creative director NIGO, with over 700 objects spanning fashion, ceramics and vintage Americana from his 30-year career.

National Portrait Gallery · Free

Free annual exhibition celebrating the very best in contemporary portraiture painting, with works selected from this year's open competition.

Jewish Museum London · Free

A display at Bradford Reform Synagogue celebrating Yiddish Theatre in London's East End through two of its stars, Clara Meisels and Anna Tzelniker.

RAF Museum · Free

Veteran artist David Tovey and LGBT+ military communities create a steel prison-cell installation and soundscape confronting the Armed Forces 'gay ban'.

V&A East Museum · Free

Documents 80 businesses relocated from the Lea Valley to make way for the 2012 Olympic Games. Photographers Marion Davies and Debra Rapp systematically recorded these spaces between 2005-2007, preserving a record of East London's industrial heritage before its erasure.

V&A East Museum · Free

Laura Wilson's commissioned sculptures honour East London's workers and makers through a poem inscribed into three pieces, activated with the call "Heads!" and raised/lowered by a fly system echoing dock and theatre shift patterns.

V&A East Museum · Free

A sound-system-shaped sculpture of photographs taken across east London, Plymouth and Peterborough, tracing Black British music as connective tissue through which communities gather, remember and move together.

V&A East Museum · Free

A commissioned work developed through conversations between artist Tania Bruguera and east London youth, presented as a stained-glass statement of shared principles about what it means for a museum to serve its community.

V&A East Museum · Free

A co-curated display exploring photographer Tom Hunter's 40+ year relationship with east London through selections from the V&A's collections and his personal archive, examining the area as a place of radical thinking and resilience.

Hayward Gallery · Free

A multimedia exhibition from the Taiwanese artist, blending humour and societal critique to explore urban life, AI, gaming culture and the tension between manual labour and automation.

Hayward Gallery

One of the most influential artists of our time returns to the Hayward, filling the entire building with awe-inspiring sculptures, paintings and immersive installations.

Jewish Museum London · Free

Room One of the museum's new Two Rooms space at JW3: a collection display tracing Jewish life in Britain from the 1656 readmission to today, framed by the Tree of Life.

Jewish Museum London · Free

Room Two of the Two Rooms space at JW3 tells the story of the German-Jewish family behind J. Lyons, from Corner Houses and Wimpy to the pioneering LEO computer.

V&A East Museum · Free

The first edition of V&A East's twice-yearly New Work programme, inviting artists to make site-specific works responding to the making of east London.

Serpentine Gallery · Free

A 10-metre kinetic sculpture of 4,000 suspended yellow PVC tubes in Kensington Gardens, inviting visitors to walk through and activate the work with their movement.

Dulwich Picture Gallery · Free

A display exploring theatre portraits in the Gallery's Collection — costume, performance, and queerness and gender identity on and off stage — pairing historic works with contemporary artists.

Royal Academy of Arts

The first major survey in over 50 years of the Victorian painter, who created intricate fairy worlds, including The Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke, from within an asylum.

Serpentine Gallery · Free

'a serpentine', the 2026 Serpentine Pavilion by Mexico City studio LANZA atelier, is a brick structure based on the English serpentine (crinkle-crankle) wall.

Wallace Collection · Free

A free display on how Hertford House became a stage for Anglo-Soviet cultural diplomacy in wartime Britain, hosting major 1942 exhibitions to aid Russia.

Horniman Museum · Free

Artwork by Year 9 students from Conisborough College, made with a Goldsmiths graduate, celebrating the museum's 125th anniversary and the Gardens' biodiversity.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.