August 2026
August at a glance: 2 exhibitions opening, 15 closing, and 65 more on view across the city.

Saatchi Gallery · Free
The 167th edition of the world's longest-running photography exhibition, showing 113 prints by 48 photographers on themes of environment, identity, conflict and memory.

Tower of London · Free
A family experience bringing extraordinary creatures to life through puppetry, music and dance across the Tower.

Hayward Gallery · Free
The Indian artist's first UK solo show: a film and fire-and-ash paintings on stubble-burning and the link between climate change and agricultural crisis.

Saatchi Gallery
The annual RHS exhibition returns for a sixth year, presenting botanical art and photography from around the world, from wildflowers to fungi, across three galleries.

National Maritime Museum
Over 100 of the world's best space photographs - galaxies, auroras, the Moon and more - shown on glowing lightboxes, from the 17th annual competition.

Tower of London · Free
Queen Anne Boleyn returns to the Tower this summer with two costumed courtiers, meeting visitors on the South Lawn as preparations for her coronation get underway.

Design Museum
The first retrospective of filmmaker Wes Anderson, with over 700 storyboards, sketches, puppets, costumes and props spanning three decades of his films.

Royal Academy of Arts
The 258th annual open-submission show fills the Main Galleries with works in every medium by famous names and unknowns alike, coordinated by Ryan Gander.

Serpentine Gallery · Free
In his first Serpentine exhibition, David Hockney invites viewers to slow down and notice the extraordinary in the everyday, including the 90-metre frieze A Year in Normandy.

Tate Britain
British-Jamaican painter Hurvin Anderson's first major solo show: over 80 colour-drenched landscapes and interiors exploring memory, place and belonging.

Tate Modern · Free
An Infinities Commission installation in the East Tank: handmade sculptures of wood, wire and cardboard, with film and mbira-based sound design, exploring Zimbabwean mythology and ancestral resilience.

National Gallery
The first major UK monographic exhibition devoted to Francisco de Zurbarán, master of the Spanish Golden Age, with visions from Baroque Seville.

Royal Academy of Arts · Free
A free exhibition of work by young artists aged 5 to 19 from across the UK, selected from open submissions and shown in the Weston Studio.

Whitechapel Gallery · Free
A participatory exhibition exploring the history of rope making in East London, with hands-on activities in rope making, spinning and knot tying.

National Gallery · Free
Children's artworks from across the UK inspired by Canaletto's 'A Regatta on the Grand Canal'. Free to all visitors.

Tate Modern
A major survey of four decades of Tracey Emin's work across painting, video, textiles, neons, sculpture and installation, with works never shown before.

Courtauld Gallery
Masterpieces from Birmingham's Barber Institute, including works by Hals, Rubens, Turner, Rossetti and Degas, on extended loan during its refurbishment.

Science Museum · Free
Explore how science could transform the way we grow, cook and eat, from a 3,500-year-old loaf to lab-grown meat, across 100+ objects in this family-friendly exhibition.

RAF Museum · Free
Fifty key works by 20th-century British and European artists, marking the museum's 50th anniversary and exploring flight, conflict and RAF operations through art.

Barbican Centre
Over 300 works tracing Pan-Africanism's influence on art and culture from the 1920s to today, featuring artists including Chris Ofili, Marlene Dumas and Claudette Johnson.

Barbican Centre
Speculative architect Liam Young's immersive exhibition of films, soundscapes, costumes and installations imagining hopeful future worlds shaped by technology and climate.

National Portrait Gallery
Celebrating the Hollywood icon's 100th birthday through portraits by the greatest photographers and artists of the 20th and 21st centuries.
Whitechapel Gallery · Free
An eight-week, free summer festival across East London with exhibitions, installations, performances, workshops and residencies celebrating the region's creative communities.

Serpentine Gallery · Free
Cecily Brown presents new paintings inspired by Serpentine's location in Kensington Gardens, a site of personal significance to the artist.

Courtauld Gallery
The first exhibition exploring Barbara Hepworth's pioneering use of colour, uniting around 20 sculptures and 30 drawings spanning her career.

Whitechapel Gallery · Free
Argentinian artist Gabriel Chaile's site-specific installation of adobe sculptures holds objects sourced from the East End, evoking an archaeological dig into local memory and identity.

Whitechapel Gallery · Free
Named after the Bangla word for storm, this seven-artist show explores upheaval and renewal through the lens of Begum Rokeya's feminist sci-fi vision.

Whitechapel Gallery · Free
An interactive installation centred on the Xeedho, a climate-threatened Somali wedding basket, exploring knots as bonds and how memory passes among nomadic women.

Whitechapel Gallery · Free
Twelve local, national and international artists respond to East London's historic and cultural identity across painting, sculpture, photography, film and installation, organised around migration, city life, and food and heritage.

Whitechapel Gallery · Free
A daily screening of films spanning five decades by artist John Smith, whose genre-defying work challenges the line between documentary, fiction and abstraction, drawing on East London locations and personal experience.

Whitechapel Gallery · Free
Hour-long film blocks showcasing East London communities, drawn from Four Corners, the London Community Video Archive and OITIJ-JO Collective, spanning radical histories, community arts legacies and contemporary womxnhood.

Whitechapel Gallery · Free
A free communal space with three interactive displays: the Migration Museum's story-sharing installation, a Material Crimes podcast listening station, and a special edition of Whitechapel Radio Station.

Saatchi Gallery
A major exhibition exploring how the sun and moon have inspired creativity and belief across cultures and history, with artworks, monumental sculptures and immersive installations.

Jewish Museum London
Photographic portraits and personal stories celebrating LGBTQ+ Jewish life, developed by Jewish Museum London and shown at Manchester Jewish Museum.

Courtauld Gallery
Prints by Lucian Freud, Frank Auerbach and Paula Rego from Studio Prints, the legendary London printmaking workshop founded in 1968 by Dorothea Wight.

The Photographers' Gallery · Free
Luminous handcrafted photogravure prints on washi paper exploring memory, grief and the photographer's relationship with her sister through snowy rural Japan.

Design Museum · Free
Free display of new work by the 2025/26 Design Researchers in Residence, responding to the theme of 'mineral'.

British Museum · Free
Around 120 rare drawings from the 15th and 16th century Low Countries, including Bruegel and van der Weyden, tracing how drawing became an art in its own right.

Design Museum · Free
Free display of four UK research projects showing how design-led innovation tackles housing, healthcare and resources for a sustainable green transition.

National Gallery · Free
The first ever UK exhibition of paintings by Austrian 19th-century artist Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller, focusing on his landscapes. Free to all visitors.

Sir John Soane's Museum · Free
A retrospective of the surreal, playful work of 2025 Soane Medal winner Madelon Vriesendorp, with over 50 pieces including her psychoanalytic boardgame, the Mind Game.

Tate Britain
The first major European retrospective in 30 years of the rule-breaking American painter, with celebrated and rarely seen works from his teens to his late self-portraits.

Victoria and Albert Museum · Free
A free display celebrating the innovative techniques and bold visions of 25 women printmakers working from 1900 to the present day.

The Photographers' Gallery
Landmark survey of 27 groundbreaking Japanese women photographers from the 1950s to today, with over 200 photographs, videos, installations and rare photobooks.

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'.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.
Victoria and Albert Museum
Exhibition featuring music history at V&A East Storehouse

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.

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
An immersive sound exhibition spanning 125 years of Black music-making in Britain, with over 120 tracks tracing 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 Modern
Newly remastered films, early paintings and late sculptures by the Cuban-American artist, including her Silueta series, many never seen in the UK.

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.

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.

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.

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.

1 Oct · Barbican Centre · Free

1 Oct · British Museum

2 Oct · Courtauld Gallery
2 Oct · Courtauld Gallery

2 Oct · Royal Academy of Arts

2 Oct · Design Museum

3 Oct · National Gallery

7 Oct · Whitechapel Gallery

7 Oct · Whitechapel Gallery

8 Oct · Tate Britain

8 Oct · National Portrait Gallery

8 Oct · Barbican Centre

13 Oct · Tate Modern · Free

14 Oct · Sir John Soane's Museum · Free

14 Oct · Courtauld Gallery

14 Oct · Tate Modern

15 Oct · National Gallery · Free

20 Oct · Dulwich Picture Gallery

23 Oct · Science Museum · Free

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 returns with the best contemporary portrait photography from emerging talents and established names.

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.

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.

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.

Tate Modern
Tate's first exhibition devoted exclusively to Claude Monet, bringing together paintings from lenders worldwide to explore his engagement with time, from instantaneous Impressionist moments to the Water Lilies series.

National Gallery · Free
The first exhibition devoted to Catharina van Hemessen, the Renaissance artist who painted herself into history. Free to all visitors.

Science Museum
Blast off into the Solar System in this interactive family show, packed with surprising space science, hands-on experiments and characters from the Horrible Science TV series.

National Gallery
Around 50 German Expressionist paintings from collections worldwide, revealing an alternative story of modern art, 1900–1918.

Tate Britain
The artist's first major survey: four decades of installation, photography, collage, film and sculpture exploring collective memory, collaboration and authorship.

Tate Britain
Marking the 300th anniversary of his birth, 120 paintings and drawings contrast Gainsborough's polished society portraits with the creative chaos of his studio.

Tate Britain
A retrospective celebrating the British artist's 90th birthday with over 200 works spanning seven decades, tracing how love, friendship and human connection have shaped his art.

Tate Britain
Tate's first Tudor art presentation in 30 years, featuring around 150 paintings, miniatures, sculptures and decorative arts by masters including Holbein, Hilliard and Oliver.
A short note now and then when something new opens worth your time.