Things to do

The best experiences London has to offer, from free days out and date ideas to unusual activities and neighbourhood guides for every corner of the city.

A red Routemaster bus parked inside a scrap-built street scene lit in pink and blue, with a destination blind reading Reclamia

Europe’s biggest immersive attraction opens at Westfield in October, with a real Routemaster parked inside it

Epping Forest Walks

Epping Forest walks: 13 trails, from a braille sculpture trail to a 14-mile crossing

Harry Potter Platform 9 3/4

The ultimate self-guided Harry Potter walking tour of London

Cecil Court in Covent Garden, lined with antiquarian bookshop windows

Diagon Alley in London: what’s real, what’s film set, what’s invented

The Barbican Conservatory, looking across the upper level planting

The Barbican Conservatory opens a handful of days a year. From 2030 it will be open daily

28 of the best walks in London, from a nine-mile ridge across the south to a railway line the foxes took back

Dog Cafe

Dog cafés in London: there are fewer than you think, and the best ones want you to bring your own dog

Tower Bridge from the south bank

24 Tower Bridge facts, from the bus that jumped it to the £1 ticket locals rarely claim

Tower of London

21 Tower of London facts, from the ten people executed on Tower Green to the £1 ticket almost nobody claims

Neals yard

Neal’s Yard: the Covent Garden courtyard that gave London Monmouth Coffee and Neal’s Yard Dairy

The City of London skyline at sunset seen from Potters Fields, with crowds on the grass in the foreground

How to read the London skyline: 22 buildings and what they’re actually called

Six hundred deer, a ruined church and a hundred-yard lido: the 24 best parks in London

Diwali - Mayor of London - photo credit © Greater London Authority

Halloween, art fairs and secret gardens: the best things to do in London in October 2026

A woman smiling from the driver's seat of a pink and white classic car surrounded by clothes rails

Things to do in London this weekend: what we’d actually do, 25-27 September 2026

A woman looking through a rail of vintage clothing in the arches at Coal Drops Yard

Things to do in London this week: what we’d actually do, 21-27 September 2026

Carnaby Street

Book the light trails now and wait on the streets: London’s Christmas lights in 2026

A 1938 stock Underground train in red livery on the Piccadilly line, its destination blind reading Piccadilly Line Special Uxbridge, coming off a set of points

Churchill’s bunker, Holden’s brick drums and the branch that died at Aldwych: the Piccadilly line turns 120

Promotional still for Everest: The First Ascent showing a present-day visitor in a VR headset standing on a snow slope roped to a 1950s climber in a yellow down jacket carrying oxygen cylinders

Roped in behind Hillary and Norgay for 35 minutes: a Venice-selected Everest VR opens under Camden High Street

Amanda Barrie riding an orange IRN-BRU branded mobility scooter down a London street with a flag shaped like orange pants on the back, as a woman runs after her

£125 if you can catch a 91-year-old on a mobility scooter: IRN-BRU’s getaway grannies hit London on Friday

Two women in headphones dancing on the lawn at Kew beneath a string of festoon lights

Making friends in London isn’t the hard part. Knowing where to turn up is