Looking for the best exhibitions in London right now? We’ve got you covered with this guide to the top exhibitions in the city, from the once-in-a-lifetime to the free and unmissable.
Prepare to become totally cultured. The capital is jam-packed with exciting exhibitions to feast your eyes on, from the first major Frida Kahlo show the UK has seen in over two decades to a piece of history that hasn’t left French soil in nearly a thousand years.
We’ve put them in order by how much time you’ve got left to see them, soonest-closing first. The ongoing and permanent additions go at the end, since there’s no countdown on those. Get your diaries at the ready: these are the exhibitions worth building a trip around, right now and into 2027.
Must-see exhibitions in London right now
1996: 30 Years On
Barbican Music Library
Until 19 September 2026
Free, no booking required, and running for a few weeks yet. There’s a reasonable argument that 1996 was the most concentrated single year of British cultural output in living memory, the Spice Girls’ Wannabe, Oasis at Knebworth, Euro ’96, Trainspotting, the height of Britart. The Barbican Music Library is marking the anniversary with a properly well-chosen set of objects, Mel B’s leopard print catsuit among them. We’ve written more on why it holds up.
Go on a Tuesday or Thursday evening, when the library stays open until 7.30pm.
Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art
The V&A
Until 8 November 2026
The first UK exhibition devoted to the groundbreaking 20th-century couturier Elsa Schiaparelli, surreal and avant-garde in equal measure. Over 400 objects, including around 100 ensembles alongside artworks by Salvador Dalí, Picasso and Man Ray, make a properly convincing case for clothing as art rather than just craft.
Frida: The Making of an Icon
Tate Modern
Until 3 January 2027
The first major Frida Kahlo exhibition the UK has seen in more than 20 years, and it’s not a conventional retrospective. Over 30 of Kahlo’s own works are shown alongside more than 200 pieces by contemporaries and the artists she’s inspired since, from the Surrealists who first defined her international reputation to the Chicana/o movement that reclaimed her as a political symbol in the 1970s, through to contemporary artists still absorbing and transforming her image today.
The question the show is really asking isn’t “who was Frida Kahlo,” it’s “how did she become this.” We’ve written more on why it’s the exhibition of the year.
Salman Toor: Someone Like You
The Courtauld Gallery
2 October 2026 – 10 January 2027
The first solo European exhibition for the New York-based, Pakistani-American painter, around 20 paintings exploring queer and immigrant life, blending European Old Masters, Mughal painting and contemporary culture into something that’s entirely his own.
Ana Mendieta
Tate Modern
14 July 2026 – 17 January 2027
The largest UK exhibition to date on the Cuban-American artist, spanning sculpture, photography and video across a career that fundamentally shaped how artists use the body and landscape together. Runs alongside Frida at the same gallery, a properly strong double booking if you want to make a full afternoon of Tate Modern.
Painting the French Riviera
Royal Academy of Arts
2 October 2026 – 31 January 2027
A survey of how the light and colour of the Côte d’Azur drew and shaped generations of artists, from the Impressionists through to Matisse and beyond, staged in the Main Galleries at Burlington House.
Renoir and Love
The National Gallery
3 October 2026 – 31 January 2027
Renoir’s biggest UK show in decades, tracing love, friendship, flirtation and sociability through his work from the mid-1860s to the mid-1880s. Its anchor piece, Bal au Moulin de la Galette, one of the most reproduced Impressionist paintings in existence, has never once left the Musée d’Orsay for the UK before now. Over 50 paintings on loan from museums including the Musée d’Orsay, Boston’s MFA and LA’s Getty join it.
We’ve written more on the show here. It follows on from a smaller, properly rare pairing the National Gallery ran over the summer, Monet and Renoir’s paintings of the exact same 1869 scene, shown together for the first time in years. We covered that reunion here too, the display itself has now closed, but its subject rolls straight into this bigger fixture.
Inji Efflatoun: The Poetics of Justice
Whitechapel Gallery
7 October 2026 – 14 February 2027
Five decades of work from one of twentieth-century Egypt’s most important artists, tracing the political and artistic threads running through her practice, and the first significant international exhibition of her work. An under-the-radar pick compared to the bigger institutional shows on this list, and worth seeking out for exactly that reason.
The 90s: Art and Fashion
Tate Britain
8 October 2026 – 14 February 2027
Curated by former British Vogue editor Edward Enninful, this is Tate Britain’s big autumn swing at the decade that gave us Britart, Britpop and the birth of nineties fashion as a genuine cultural force. Expect Juergen Teller and Nick Knight photography, Vivienne Westwood and Alexander McQueen, and work from Damien Hirst, Gillian Wearing and Yinka Shonibare alongside it. A properly good pairing with the Barbican’s smaller, free 1996 show, if you want the decade from two very different angles.
Nan Goldin: You Never Did Anything Wrong
The Hayward Gallery
24 November 2026 – 7 March 2027
Nan Goldin’s first major UK exhibition in over two decades, and her first UK institutional show since 2002. Two new films mark a genuine shift in her work, away from the intimate portraits of friends and lovers that made her name and towards animals, land and the natural world, alongside UK premieres of Stendhal Syndrome and Memory Lost, built in specially designed spaces created with architect Hala Wardé.
We’ve covered the full show here. There’s a £7.50 ticket offer for the opening fortnight, part of the Southbank Centre’s 75th anniversary celebrations, so book early if you want it.
Es Devlin: Other Worlds
The Design Museum
2 October 2026 – 4 April 2027
The first UK museum show for the Olivier and Tony Award-winning stage designer behind everything from Olympic opening ceremonies to Super Bowl half-time shows, billed as her first European retrospective. Developed closely with Devlin herself, expect rare maquettes, sketches and new large-scale installations built specifically for the exhibition. A different kind of show for anyone who thinks design exhibitions mean furniture and product design only.
Van Eyck: The Portraits
The National Gallery
21 November 2026 – 11 April 2027
All ten of Jan van Eyck’s surviving portraits, gathered from across Europe in one room for the first time in history, roughly half of everything that survives by his hand. The Arnolfini Portrait, the National Gallery’s own most-visited painting, has left the building only once in over a century, and Vienna is lending both of its van Eyck paintings simultaneously for the first time ever. Built from around fifteen objects rather than a blockbuster room-count, but every one of them is doing real work.
Julio Le Parc
Tate Modern
Until 3 May 2027
A key figure of the Kinetic and Op Art movements of the 1960s, Argentinian artist Julio Le Parc has been making illuminated, kinetic, participatory works for seven decades and, remarkably, is still making them at 97. This major retrospective spans his entire career, from his arrival in Paris in the late 1950s through to his resurgence in the 2010s, and the immersive, colourful rooms are exactly the kind of show that photographs as well as it exhibits.
The Bayeux Tapestry
British Museum
10 September 2026 – 11 July 2027
This is as close as an exhibition gets to properly once-in-a-lifetime. The Bayeux Tapestry hasn’t left French soil since it was made here in England nearly a thousand years ago, and once this loan ends, it won’t be back.
Demand has already been extraordinary, the initial ticket release sold out, with further batches releasing in October and January for the months ahead. We’ve written a full guide to booking and visiting, book early, book for a weekday, and give yourself more time than the 40-minute official runtime suggests you’ll need.
Check for ticket releases here
The Nue Black Aesthetic
The Design Museum
6 November 2026 – 8 August 2027
One of the most extensive exhibitions on contemporary Black design ever staged in the UK, guest curated by author and journalist Charlene Prempeh. Sixteen designers working across fashion, furniture, architecture, product design and sculpture, and over 100 objects, all circling a single question: what does it actually mean to be a Black designer working today?
We’ve covered the show in full here.
V&A East Storehouse and the David Bowie Centre
V&A East, Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park
Ongoing
Not a temporary exhibition so much as an entirely new way of visiting a museum, the V&A’s new East London site opened this year with an “order an object” system that lets visitors request items from its 2.8 million-object collection to view up close, alongside the permanent David Bowie Centre, a rotating series of displays drawn from Bowie’s own extraordinary archive.
Properly worth the trip out to Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park on its own merits, and a good pairing with a wider day exploring the area.
Modern Painting from the Courtauld and Reuben Collections
The Courtauld Gallery
From 18 September 2026, long-term display
The first fruits of a landmark new partnership between the Courtauld and the Reuben Foundation, extending the gallery’s celebrated Impressionist and Post-Impressionist collection into the modern period. Highlights include three wartime Picassos never previously shown in the UK, a near-abstract Cézanne landscape, and Man Ray’s monumental Black Widow (Nativity), out of UK view for more than fifty years.
We’ve covered the full display here.
London Museum: Smithfield
West Smithfield
Opens 28 November 2026
Not a temporary exhibition but arguably the biggest single culture opening of the year: London Museum’s new permanent home in Smithfield’s restored Victorian General Market, a decade and £437 million in the making. The Cheapside Hoard gets its fullest display ever, alongside Charles I’s execution vest, the smashed bass Paul Simonon played on the cover of London Calling, and, yes, a chunk of the Whitechapel Fatberg.
We’ve covered everything inside here. Free entry, and worth building a whole Smithfield day around.
The London x London Take: if you only have time for one, make it the Bayeux Tapestry, exhibitions this properly unrepeatable don’t come along often, and this one won’t be back. Van Eyck: The Portraits at the National Gallery is the other genuine once-in-a-lifetime on this list, built from a handful of objects rather than room after room, and all the stronger for it. If you want something free and immediate instead, 1996: 30 Years On is a proper afternoon’s worth of nostalgia with a closing date fast approaching. And if you’re after a full day of art, Tate Modern currently has three major shows running at once (Frida, Julio Le Parc and Ana Mendieta), the strongest single-venue lineup in London right now. Come September, the Courtauld is doing a genuine one-two with Salman Toor and its new Cézanne-to-Picasso modern painting display. Come late November, Nan Goldin at the Hayward and the reopening of London Museum in Smithfield are both worth building entire days around on their own.
