London Sculpture Week returns for its fifth edition from 19 to 27 September, tying together the Fourth Plinth, Frieze Sculpture, East Bank, Sculpture in the City and The Line into one citywide programme of free and ticketed events.
Rather than a single exhibition, London Sculpture Week works more like an umbrella over five separate outdoor art programmes that are already part of the city’s fabric, from Trafalgar Square to the Olympic Park to the City of London’s public squares. For 2026, that means a week of talks, tours and access to the artists and curators behind the work, on top of the sculptures themselves, most of which are free to see any time.
Five programmes, one week
The Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square gets its 16th commission this year, Lady in Blue by New York-based artist Tschabalala Self, on display from 10 September 2026 through to summer 2028. Frieze Sculpture returns for its 14th edition, running 16 September to 1 November across the English Gardens of Regent’s Park, curated this year by Fatoş Üstek around the theme of hybridity, with eleven international artists including Catriona Robertson, Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran, Conrad Shawcross and Douglas White.
East Bank, the culture and education quarter at Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, has organised a walking tour taking in works commissioned for the London 2012 Games alongside recent additions, including Larry Achiampong and David Blandy’s Trēow of Time and Thomas J Price’s A Place Beyond, a 5.5-metre bronze figure outside V&A East.
In the City of London, Sculpture in the City marks its 14th edition with A Taste of Sculpture in the City, an event pairing canapés with the works on display, led by artistic director Stella Ioannou alongside Bompas & Parr co-founder Sam Bompas. This year’s edition includes pieces by Ai Weiwei, Julian Opie, Maya Rose Edwards and Oliver Bragg, sited among the Square Mile’s office blocks and churchyards.
The Line, the free public art trail following East London’s waterways and the Greenwich Meridian from Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park to the O2, adds a wellbeing walk and a film screening with artist Zineb Sedira for the week. Sedira’s Dreams Are a Language Made of Images, an illuminated text piece installed at 3 Mills Studios, was the first public artwork in the UK by the artist, and sits alongside works by Rasheed Araeen, Helen Cammock, Anthony Gormley, Carsten Höller, Yinka Ilori and Eva Rothschild along the 7.5km route.
A symposium on what public art is actually for
The week’s set-piece is a symposium at the Warburg Institute on Friday 25 September, Reframing Monumentality, bringing together leading voices in public art to revisit its social role, a genuinely useful counterpoint to a week that’s otherwise about looking rather than discussing. Frieze Sculpture also has its own tasting angle beyond the City’s canapé event, with Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran’s work among the pieces on show in Regent’s Park.
The London x London Take: the real value of London Sculpture Week isn’t that it adds anything new, most of this is already free and on permanent or semi-permanent display, it’s that it gives you a reason to see five separate programmes as one coherent story rather than five things you’d stumble across separately over a year. If you can only do one thing, we’d make it the Warburg symposium on 25 September for the conversation you don’t normally get access to, then use the rest of the week as an excuse to finally do The Line properly, most people who live here have never walked the whole 7.5km route.
Need to know
- When: Friday 19 to Sunday 27 September 2026
- Where: Citywide, including Trafalgar Square, Regent’s Park, Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, the City of London and East London’s waterways
- Price: Free and ticketed events; most of the sculpture itself is free to see year-round
- More info: londonsculptureweek.org
