When Banksy filled this tunnel with stencil artists in May 2008, he set them one condition: don’t paint over anyone else’s work. Eighteen years on, the tunnel’s official rules say the exact opposite.
Here is the line, from the landlord’s own rules page: “The art in the tunnel is by its nature live and evolving. Your work may be painted over or modified, just as you may paint over or modify existing works by other artists.”
That single reversal is what makes Leake Street worth understanding rather than just photographing. It is not a gallery and it is not a preservation project. It is 300 metres of Victorian brick under Waterloo station where anyone can walk in with a can and paint, on the condition that what they make will probably be gone within a week.
Which means no two visits are the same, and that the thing you photographed last year is definitely underneath something else now.
The rules, which are stricter than you’d think
The tunnel is managed as Leake Street Arches, and it publishes a full set of rules. Most guides skip them. Several of them will catch you out:
- Painting is actively encouraged – no permit, no booking, no fee. Turn up and paint.
- Only paint may go on the walls. Paste-ups, stickers, fixings and attachments are all against the rules. This one surprises people, because the tunnel is full of them.
- No political messaging, and nothing discriminatory – the rules name sexism, misogyny, racism, homophobia and transphobia. Both will be removed.
- No advertising or branding unless it’s been authorised.
- Any organised activity needs permission in advance. That explicitly includes filming and photography, whether commercial or not. Not-for-profit events are typically approved in a day or two, but you do have to ask.
- Graffiti workshops run by anyone other than the official Artist in Residence programme are not permitted.
- No drinking, no amplified music unless it’s part of an authorised event, and noise down after 10pm.
- No cycling, skating or rollerblading through the tunnel, and no tripods, ladders or lighting rigs without permission.
One more thing worth knowing: by painting here, you accept that images of your work can be used by the landlord and its tenants without payment. That’s in the rules too.
How it started: the Cans Festival, May 2008
Leake Street was the approach road for Eurostar trains when they still ran from Waterloo International. When Eurostar moved to St Pancras in 2007 the tunnel was left as a damp, unloved cut-through that nobody had a use for.
Over the weekend of 3–5 May 2008, Banksy took it over for the Cans Festival, inviting stencil artists from around the world to paint the walls. Thirty-odd artists worked through the weekend while thousands of people queued to walk down the tunnel and watch. It ran again over the August bank holiday the same year.
In November 2008 the road passed from Eurostar to Network Rail and through traffic was restricted to pedestrians. The painting simply never stopped, and what began as tolerance became a sanctioned legal wall – the longest in London. The tunnel today sits on the Network Rail-controlled Waterloo estate and is managed under the Leake Street Arches name.
If you want more context on how London’s street art scene developed, our best street art in London guide is the place to start, and the free self-guided Shoreditch tour is the best walk-and-look version.
Painting it yourself
You genuinely can. There is nobody to ask, nothing to pay and no vetting. Some practical notes from people who do:
- Bring your own paint. Nothing is sold in the tunnel. The nearest specialist suppliers are a tube ride away; most people arrive with a bag of cans.
- Wear a mask. It’s an enclosed tunnel with limited airflow and a lot of aerosol in it. On a busy Saturday the haze is real.
- Pick a wall nobody is working on and don’t paint over something that’s obviously still being made. The rules permit going over finished work; the etiquette is to leave someone’s live piece alone.
- Expect it to be gone. Photograph it before you leave.
- Take your empties with you. The rules ask for it, and the tunnel’s reputation depends on it.
- If you want to be taught, the official Artist in Residence programme runs workshops – currently with All-seeing RA, Beatfox, Peter Proppa and Atila – bookable through Eventbrite. Anything else advertised as a Leake Street workshop isn’t authorised.
What’s in the arches
The tunnel has eight railway arches running off it, and four are currently occupied. They are a genuinely good reason to build an evening around a visit.
Mamuśka!
9 Addington Street, SE1 7RY · Sun–Tue noon–10pm, Wed–Sat noon–11pm
Polish, independent and much-loved, in a big canteen-style room with an “Old Arch” dining hall at the back that you can hire. Pierogi, żurek, bigos and a long vodka list at prices that have somehow stayed reasonable.
The most reliable meal on this street by a distance.
Passyunk Avenue
22 Leake Street, SE1 7NN · to 12.30am Sun–Thu, 1.30am Fri–Sat
A Philadelphia dive bar done properly: cheesesteaks, a wall of American beer, neon, and a room that gets loud. The kitchen runs to 10pm midweek and 11pm at weekends, which makes it one of the better late options around Waterloo.
Draughts
Leake Street · draughtslondon.com
Board game café in a railway arch, with several hundred games, staff who will teach you one, and a bar. It takes 150 to 220 people, so it works for a group in a way most board game venues don’t.
26 Leake Street
26 Leake Street, SE1 7NN
Three interconnected arches run as an events and music space by Broadwick, the team behind Printworks and Drumsheds. Mike D of the Beastie Boys played his first European solo headline shows here in June 2026, which gives you the scale of what it can hold.
Nothing is on permanently – check what’s listed before you go.
What happened to VAULT Festival
Worth clearing up, because guides get this wrong in both directions. VAULT Festival is gone. In February 2023 the landlord told the festival it would have to leave the vaults from 2024; a #SaveVAULT campaign and a new venue announcement followed, but the festival never came back. Its own website now says simply that the final festival took place in 2023. Over eleven years it ran nine festivals, staged around 3,000 new shows and put 12,000 artists in front of roughly half a million people.
The Vaults, the venue, is still very much open. Different thing, same tunnel. It programmes immersive theatre and alternative arts year-round – currently Club Nvrlnd from November 2026 into January 2027 – with its main entrance on Leake Street and the theatre entrance round on Launcelot Street. Its sister pub, Vaulty Towers, is at 34 Lower Marsh.
And the people who ran VAULT Festival haven’t gone anywhere. VAULT Creative Arts opened the Lower Marsh Arts Club – LowMAC – at 134 Lower Marsh in early September 2026, in the space that was The Glitch. Three shows a night across theatre, comedy and cabaret, plus a bar and café, and an £8,000 guarantee scheme for early-career artists announced this month. It’s two minutes from the tunnel and it is the closest thing to VAULT’s successor.
How to find Leake Street
- Address: Leake Street, London SE1 7NN. Free, and there is no ticket or entrance.
- From Waterloo station: take Exit 6 onto York Road, or follow the signs for Leake Street. Five minutes.
- From the South Bank: head towards Westminster Bridge Road – the entrance is beside Park Plaza County Hall.
- Other stations: Waterloo East and Lambeth North are both about five minutes.
- Buses: 12, 53, 148, 159, 341 and 453 all stop within a couple of minutes.
- Bikes: there are racks inside the arches. There’s no parking.
- How long: an hour is plenty for the tunnel itself; two if you stop to watch people work. Add a meal in the arches and you have an evening.
- Nearby: the London Eye is five minutes, the Southbank Centre ten, and our South Bank bars guide and the free BFI Mediatheque are both within walking distance.
It is one of the better entries on our list of free things to do in London, and one of the few photogenic spots in London that is genuinely different every time you turn up.
The London x London Take: Go on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon, when there are people actually painting rather than finished walls. Watching someone work a piece for two hours is the whole point of the place – the tunnel makes far more sense as a workshop than as a picture. Then go early on a weekday morning if you want photographs without anyone in them.
Read next
- The best street art in London
- A free self-guided Shoreditch street art tour
- The Camden street art guide
- Penge is London’s coolest new street art hotspot
- The Brixton area guide
- The Croydon area guide
- Things to do in Walthamstow
- Things to do in Shoreditch
- Things to do in Camden
- The best things to do in London
