Frieze takes over The Regent’s Park and leaves free sculpture behind it for seven weeks, the BFI sells film festival tickets at £6 to anyone under 25, London’s oldest botanic garden opens for nothing for two days, and Diwali fills Trafalgar Square. Here is what is worth booking now.
October is the month London stops pretending it is still summer and gets good at being indoors. It is also the busiest arts month of the year: two art fairs, a film festival, a literature festival curated by a pop star and a month-long festival of the dead. Half term runs from Saturday 24 October to Sunday 1 November, so the last week is the crowded one.
One thing to strike off before you start: London Cocktail Week is not happening this October. It has moved permanently to March, with the next edition in the week of 15 March 2027.
The big October fixtures
Frieze Sculpture, and it is free
English Gardens, The Regent’s Park, NW1
Until Sunday 1 November, park hours, free
Eleven artists, large works scattered through the English Gardens, curated by Fatoş Üstek for the fourth year running. No ticket, no booking, no fair pass needed. It is the best free art in London this month and it means you get Frieze week without paying for Frieze week. Go on a weekday morning when the park is empty and the light is low, and pick up the curator-led tours or night walks if you want more than a wander.
Frieze London and Frieze Masters
The Regent’s Park, NW1. Frieze London off Park Square West; Frieze Masters at Gloucester Green
Wednesday 14 to Sunday 18 October. Public from 1pm Thursday
Fifty curated presentations at Frieze London, with a one-artist stand for the Sudanese modernist Ibrahim El-Salahi as the talking point. Two practical things nobody mentions: tickets are online only, there are no sales at the gate, and there is no re-entry, so do not plan to pop out for lunch. Free shuttle buses run between the two fairs every fifteen minutes or so, which is the easiest £0 you will spend all month.
BFI London Film Festival, 70th edition
BFI Southbank, Royal Festival Hall and six other venues, SE1 and citywide
Wednesday 7 to Sunday 18 October
Two hundred and fifty-one titles from eighty-eight countries. Opens with Simon Stone’s Elsinore, closes with Jesse Eisenberg’s The Debut at the Royal Festival Hall, and the Screen Talks include Andrew Scott, Cynthia Erivo and Eisenberg himself. The number that matters: anyone aged 16 to 25 pays £6 a ticket through the BFI’s 25 & Under scheme, which makes this the cheapest way in London to see next year’s awards films first. A further ticket release lands on 1 October.
1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair
Somerset House, Strand, WC2R 1LA
Thursday 15 to Sunday 18 October. £32, £18 concessions, under-12s free
The fourteenth London edition and, by Somerset House’s own description, its most significant evolution yet, with modernist African artists shown alongside the contemporary work the fair is known for. It is smaller and considerably more pleasant than Frieze, it is in a better building, and £32 gets you all of it. If you are doing one fair this month, we would do this one.
Diwali on the Square
Trafalgar Square, WC2N 5DN
Sunday 25 October, 1pm to 7pm, free
Free, no ticket, and one of the genuinely great London days out. An opening dance sequence with two hundred dancers, Hindu, Sikh and Jain performances through the afternoon, sari tying, yoga, puppet shows and a square’s worth of vegetarian and vegan food stalls. BSL interpretation on the main stage, hearing loops and an accessible viewing area. Pall Mall East is closed all day. Get there before two if you want to be near the front. More in our guide to Diwali in London.
London Month of the Dead
Brompton Cemetery, Kensal Green, Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park and others
Thursday 1 October to Sunday 1 November
Around sixty events across London’s cemeteries, with the proceeds going to Brompton and Kensal Green. The candlelit concerts and the silent horror screenings with live piano are the ones that sell out first and they sell out early. Dated highlights include The Women Beneath the Stones at Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park on 3 October, Death in Georgian London on the 8th, and London Maps of the Dead plus the candlelit Lost Soul Songs on the 25th.
Bloomsbury Festival, now a whole month
Forty-plus venues across Bloomsbury, WC1. HQ at Senate House
Thursday 1 to Saturday 31 October. Most events free
Its twentieth anniversary, and it has gone from a long weekend to the entire month: a hundred and fifty-plus events across music, theatre, science talks, family workshops, guided walks and a medical comedy night. The great majority are free and walk-in, with ticketed shows at roughly £5 to £20. Nothing else in London gives you this much for nothing.
London Literature Festival, curated by Dua Lipa
Southbank Centre, SE1 8XX
Tuesday 20 October to Sunday 1 November
A pop star curating a literature festival is either the best or the worst idea of the year, and either way it is the most talked-about arts booking of the autumn. Lipa is programming through her Service95 Book Club, and she has brought Patti Smith and Zadie Smith with her. Confirmed: Malorie Blackman on twenty-five years of Noughts & Crosses on 28 October, an Out-Spoken poetry night on the 23rd, Censorship Live! with English PEN on the 31st, and Hanif and Carlo Kureishi on 1 November. The Service95 Book Club event on Saturday 24 October is free.
MCM Comic Con London
ExCeL London, Royal Docks, E16 1XL
Friday 23 to Sunday 25 October
Critical Role are the first announced guests. Zones for cosplay, Pop Asia and gaming, with Friday running an After Hours session to 9pm and weekend and VIP tickets getting you in an hour or two before general entry. Worth knowing that Friday is by some distance the calmer day.
Affordable Art Fair, Battersea
Evolution London, Queenstown Road, SW11 4NJ
Wednesday 14 to Sunday 18 October
A hundred-plus galleries and everything priced between £100 and £10,000, which is the point. This autumn brings a commissioned seven-metre installation by Charles Inge, a graduates exhibition and Black History Month programming. The Art After Dark lates on Thursday and Friday, 5pm to 9pm and over-18s, are far better than the daytime. Free shuttle bus from Sloane Square throughout.
Wimbledon BookFest
Wimbledon High School and New Wimbledon Theatre, SW19
Thursday 15 to Sunday 25 October
Ben Okri, Margaret Drabble, Maggie O’Farrell, Elif Shafak, Mary Beard, Matt Haig, Caitlin Moran and Robert Harris across a hundred-plus events. A lot of it is already sold out, so book the moment you decide rather than the week before.
Black History Month
Citywide
Thursday 1 to Saturday 31 October
The dated London programming worth planning around: Black Culture Market in Brixton and the Black Eats Festival in Hackney both run Saturday 3 and Sunday 4 October, Classically Black is at Kings Place on Saturday 10 October, and the Black Business Residency showcase is at Somerset House on 8 October. The Story, Tracey Scott Wilson’s newsroom thriller with Letitia Wright at the National, runs until 24 October. Borough programmes in Lewisham, Lambeth, Hackney and Brent publish separately and late, so check yours in the last week of September.
Oktoberfest, nine ways
Finsbury Park, Clapham Common, Camden, Shoreditch, the South Bank and elsewhere
Throughout October
London Oktoberfest takes Finsbury Park from 1 to 3 October. Oktoberfest on the Common does twelve sessions across three weekends at Clapham. Camden Oktoberfest runs every Saturday of the month at the Electric Ballroom, Between the Bridges does three weekends on the South Bank, and Boxpark does Camden on the 3rd and Shoreditch on the 10th. If you want the beer without the ticket, Albert’s Schloss on Shaftesbury Avenue runs to 25 October with no door charge at all, and the Bermondsey Bierkeller has an oompah band on Thursdays and Saturdays to the 31st. Our full Oktoberfest guide.
Fair Play, the art fair that charges artists nothing
One Marylebone, NW1
Thursday 15 to Sunday 18 October
Sixty-five artists including Curtis Holder and Robert Montgomery, in a fair built on the opposite premise to the big ones: no booth fees, the artists keep more, and the work is hung rather than stacked in cubicles. It runs the same weekend as Frieze, which is either brave or the entire point. The full artist list.
3 Evenings, Somerset House Studios at Wapping Power Station
Wapping Hydraulic Power Station, E1W
Friday 16 to Sunday 18 October
Ten years of Somerset House Studios marked across three nights in a derelict hydraulic power station, with Gazelle Twin among the names. The building is the draw as much as the programme and it is very rarely open. What is on each night.
Black British Book Festival
Southbank Centre, SE1
Sunday 4 October
Sold out five years running, and this year it has Corinne Bailey Rae and Wretch 32 on the bill. If you want a ticket, the pattern is that they go before the full programme is even announced. This year’s line-up.
Talawa at 40, Hackney Empire
Hackney Empire, E8 1EJ
Tuesday 13 October
Talawa spent four decades putting Black actors on Britain’s biggest stages, and it is throwing itself a birthday at the Hackney Empire. One night, and the guest list is the reason to go. More on the anniversary.
London Breeze Film Festival
Venues across London
Wednesday 21 to Sunday 25 October
More than half the programme is by women, and both galas are on sale: a documentary that took twelve years to shoot, and a murder mystery made by an entire village. Smaller and sharper than the BFI behemoth running the fortnight before it. Both galas and the full programme.
Halloween
It falls on a Saturday, which has pushed almost everything into the half-term week of 24 October to 1 November. Book the trails now and the club nights whenever.
Halloween at Kew
Kew Gardens, Richmond, TW9 3AE. Victoria, Elizabeth and Brentford Gates only
Friday 16 October to Sunday 1 November. From £19.50 off-peak, £24 peak
A 1.5km illuminated trail with five new attractions for 2026: Dracula’s Lair, the Cursed Tomb, a Medieval Dungeon, a Forest Ritual and a Monster Disco, plus fire performers, live actors and the returning Headless Horseman. The useful bit is the three scare tiers. Daylight sessions before 6pm are for the youngest, Twilight runs 6pm to 7.30pm, and Moonlight after 7.30pm is the dark one. Pick deliberately, because the difference is real.
Hidden London goes under Clapham South, in the dark
Clapham South deep-level shelter, SW4
Wednesday 21 October to Sunday 1 November, four tours a day, Wednesday to Sunday
Hidden London has run tours into the closed parts of the Underground for ten years and has never done a Halloween one. This is it: eleven storeys down, nearly a mile of corridors, built on recordings of Tube staff describing things they cannot explain. It goes in through an entrance the standard tour does not use. What is actually down there.
The Nightmare Realm, and it is new
Avery Hill Mansion, Bexley Road, Eltham, SE9 2PQ
Friday 9 October to Sunday 1 November
Seventeen years in Ireland and this is its first London outing, with more than seventy live performers across a headline experience called A Nightmare From Overseas plus Sundown Manor, Avery Hill Asylum, Halloween Town and five hidden experiences. The genuinely new Halloween thing in London this year, and it is in Greenwich rather than out in Surrey, which puts it forty minutes from the centre.
Thorpe Park Fright Nights, 25th anniversary
Thorpe Park, Chertsey, KT16 8PN
2 to 4 and 9 to 11 October, then Thursday 15 October to Sunday 1 November. From £39 online
Five mazes, of which Tenement is new for 2026: pitch-black, set in an abandoned tower block, with one shared torch between you. Trailers gets a new screening, and DeadBeat, Stitches and Survival Games return alongside the Rebel Ball, The Crows and Lucifer’s Lair scare zones, with twenty-five-plus rides running after dark. Scare attractions are 13+. Buy online, because the walk-up price is £66 and the maze bundle is £71 online against £98 on the day.
The London Dungeon: Curse of the Mummy
County Hall, Riverside Building, SE1 7PB
Saturday 17 October to Sunday 1 November. From £29 adult, £23.50 child, advance
A brand-new show for 2026, built around the British Museum’s Unlucky Mummy legend, with three theatrical shows set in 1880s London and the Victorian clairvoyant Helena Blavatsky among the characters. The Dungeon is at its best when it commits to a proper narrative rather than jump scares, and a mummy’s curse is exactly the right register.
Halloween at the Tower of London
Tower of London, EC3N 4AB
Saturday 24 October to Sunday 1 November, 10.30am to 4pm. Included with admission
Costumed ghosts wandering the site, a poet, a pirate, a queen, an astronomer and a bear, with spirited gatherings in the Haunted Forge at 11.15am, 12.45pm and 2.45pm. It is designed to delight rather than frighten, so it suits younger children. One rule that catches people out every year: visitors in costume are refused entry at the Tower.
Halloween at Hampton Court Palace
Hampton Court Palace, East Molesey, KT8 9AU
Saturday 24 October to Sunday 1 November. Included with admission
Projections, sound effects and ghostly figures indoors, a pumpkin and scarecrow trail out in the Wilderness, and daily storytelling in William III’s apartments from 11.30am to 3.15pm. Contains darkness, loud noises and jump scares, so judge accordingly. Unlike the Tower, costumes are welcome here, with no realistic weapons, fake blood or masks.
HorrOctober at the Prince Charles Cinema
7 Leicester Place, WC2H 7BY
Thursday 1 to Saturday 31 October. £1 member screenings on selected films
Eighty-plus horror films across the month, including live-scored silent screenings of Nosferatu and The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, 4K restorations of Possession and Mulholland Dr., a London premiere of Nadja in 4K, Mystery Horror slots and an all-night Halloween marathon on the 31st. Rocky Horror sing-alongs on the 30th and 31st. Membership pays for itself in two films and there is nowhere in London we would rather spend a wet October evening.
Dark Arts at the Studio Tour
Warner Bros. Studio Tour, Leavesden, WD25 7LR
Until Sunday 8 November
A hundred floating pumpkins in the Great Hall and Dementor encounters through the sets. Included in tour admission, and the Great Hall dressed for Halloween is the single best-looking thing on the whole tour.
Six ways to spend Halloween night itself
Various
Saturday 31 October
Duran Duran are at The O2. The Candlelight Club throws its Halloween Ball in a South London mansion, 1920s speakeasy with live jazz and cabaret and the address given on booking. The Divine Comedy turns The Mandrake in Fitzrovia into Dante’s Inferno with installations and tableaux vivants. Organoke at St Giles in Camberwell is karaoke accompanied by a pipe organ, which is the most London sentence in this article. Club de Fromage does its cheesy disco at Dingwalls. And the Horniman’s Day of the Dead family festival runs 11am to 4pm for anyone doing the daytime version. More Halloween in London.
Two smaller ones worth the trip
Chelsea Physic Garden SW3, and the Charles Dickens Museum WC1
3 October and 29 October
Hex in the Gardens at the Chelsea Physic Garden on 3 October is an evening of storytelling about persecuted herbalists and cunning folk, in the one garden in London where that lands properly. Dickens’ Haunted House on the 29th is a forty-five-minute ghost story session for ages seven and up, in the house where he wrote A Christmas Carol.
On all month, and mostly free
A free vintage car boot sale at Camden Market, every Saturday
Hawley Wharf, Camden, NW1
Every Saturday from 3 October to 28 November, free
Camden Market has started a free open-air vintage market at Hawley Wharf with Bootyfull Car Boot: vintage clothes, rare vinyl, art and jewellery, no entry fee. Free weekly markets in Camden are not a thing that usually happens, so we expect this to get busy fast. Go in the first hour. What to expect.
Toki-O Nights, two free listening-bar evenings
Mad Cats, Redchurch Street, Shoreditch, E2
Wednesday 7 and Wednesday 21 October, music from 7pm, free, no RSVP
Tokyo kissaten culture in Shoreditch: Technics on the system, Japanese highballs at the bar and an expectation that you sit down and actually listen rather than talk over the record. The first night is Tony Higgins, who co-wrote the book on Japanese jazz. Free, and the opposite instinct to most London nightlife. More on the nights.
Everybody wins a painting at the Secret Artists raffle
Batsford Gallery, Hackney Road, E2
Friday 9 to Sunday 11 October
Work by Mae Martin, Tom Allen, Fern Brady and Alex Horne from the Secret Artists podcast, raffled at £100 a ticket with every ticket winning something. The exhibition itself is worth the walk down Hackney Road whether you gamble or not. How the raffle works.
Free plants from the Barbican Conservatory
Barbican Conservatory, EC2Y
Adoption events through to 2 December, free
More than 2,000 cuttings grown from the Conservatory’s own collection, given away before it closes for a three-year restoration in early 2027. The good specimens go in the first hour and this is the last autumn to take something home from that room. Dates and how it works.
Tours of The Rose, Shakespeare’s first Bankside theatre
The Rose Playhouse, Bankside, SE1
Until Thursday 29 October
The archaeological remains of the theatre where Shakespeare worked, and where Titus Andronicus was first staged, are open for guided tours this autumn. It is under a building on Park Street and almost nobody knows it is there. Booking details.
The Piccadilly line turns 120
London Transport Museum, Covent Garden, WC2
Saturday 24 October to Sunday 1 November, half term
Storytelling, crafts and a SEND early-opening session marking 120 years of the line, taking in Churchill’s bunker under Down Street, Charles Holden’s brick drums and the branch that died at Aldwych. The best half-term booking in central London. What is on across the week.
Roundhouse Rising
Davey Studio, Roundhouse, Camden, NW1
From Friday 16 October
Eighteen gigs, plays, club nights and poetry shows made by artists who came up through the Roundhouse’s own programmes. Little Simz and Kae Tempest both played this room early, which is the entire argument for buying a ticket blind. The eighteen shows.
Skream and Benga take over Drumsheds
Drumsheds, Meridian Water, N18
Saturday 17 October
Twenty-six acts across three rooms, curated by Skream and Benga, for one night. If you have not been to Drumsheds, the scale of the place is the point. The line-up.
The 606 Club turns 50
606 Club, Lots Road, Chelsea, SW10
Throughout October
Fifty years of a jazz club in a Chelsea basement that still does not advertise and still makes you eat if you want a drink. The anniversary programme runs all month. The story and the programme.
Rio Cinema turns 50
Rio Cinema, Kingsland High Street, Dalston, E8
Through to the end of November
Ben Whishaw, Asif Kapadia and a cinema-branded IPA are all involved in the Rio’s fiftieth. Films have screened on that site since 1909, which makes the number modest. What is on.
Blue Note London’s opening season
St Martin’s Lane Hotel basement, WC2
Through to 22 December
The New York institution’s first UK room, with Robert Glasper, Erykah Badu, Jamie Cullum and Nubya Garcia across the autumn. Book the ones you care about now; the room is small. The full season.
Candlelight: Disney love songs at Southwark Cathedral
Southwark Cathedral, SE1
Until Saturday 31 October
Thousands of candles, a live string quartet and a setlist built entirely from Disney soundtracks, in a building that flatters all of it. Deeply uncool and entirely lovely. Dates and tickets.
As You Like It closes the Globe season
Shakespeare’s Globe, Bankside, SE1
Until Sunday 25 October, yard tickets £5
Charlie Josephine co-directing and taking a genuine swing at it, closing the summer season. Five pounds to stand in the yard remains the cheapest good night out in central London. Take a coat. More on the production.
Sunday Papers Live, Clerkenwell
Bourne & Hollingsworth Buildings, EC1
Sunday 25 October, and again in November
Roast lunches, Bloody Marys, a live crossword and a bill of talks, in what the organisers call London’s largest living room for the day. The three dates.
The Bayeux Tapestry, if you can get in
British Museum, Great Russell Street, WC1
Running to July 2027
Every date to the end of December is sold out. The January to March 2027 release goes on sale on 21 October, which is the date to put in your calendar rather than refreshing the page all month. Under-16s go free. What is actually in it.
Outdoors, while it lasts
The deer rut, and the 50-metre rule
Richmond Park TW10 and Bushy Park TW12
All month, free. October is peak
The most dramatic free wildlife spectacle in London: stags bellowing, clashing antlers and herding hinds across both parks, best in the mist before nine. The Royal Parks ask for a minimum of fifty metres at all times, which people routinely ignore and should not. Use a long lens, never feed or approach, and if you walk a dog, avoid both parks entirely during the rut, because deer feel threatened by a dog regardless of how it behaves. If a stag does charge, put a tree or a vehicle between you, let the dog off the lead and back away without shouting. Our Richmond Park guide.
Chelsea Physic Garden open weekend, free
66 Royal Hospital Road, SW3 4HS
Saturday 3 and Sunday 4 October, 10am to 5pm, free, register online
London’s oldest botanic garden, founded in 1673 and normally £15-plus, open for nothing for two days as part of the Chelsea History Festival. No timed entry, walk in whenever. Pond dipping, crafts, storytelling and costumed historical characters talking about medicine and plants, across four and a half thousand species. The garden is at its late-season best right now.
Apple Day at Fulham Palace
Bishop’s Avenue, SW6 6EA. Main gate only, back gates closed
Sunday 4 October, 11am to 4pm, last entry 3pm. £3 adult, £8 family
Orchard tours of heritage apple varieties, a baking competition with junior and adult categories, an apple trail with riddles, archery tag, lawn chess, badge making, face painting and live music. Eight pounds for two adults and two children is the best-value family day in London this month, and it runs whatever the weather.
Harvest Festival at Morden Hall Park, free
Morden Hall Road, SM4 5JD
Saturday 3 October, 11am to 3.30pm, free
Apple pressing demonstrations, the Black Swan Border Morris, Punch and Judy, indoor autumn crafts and the Wimbledon Beekeepers honey competition. They collect non-perishable donations for Merton’s community fridge, so take something with you.
Pumpkin picking, and when each patch opens
Surrey, Sussex, Kent, Hertfordshire and Hounslow
From late September through October. Advance booking essential nearly everywhere
Tulleys near Crawley is the big one and is already open, running to 1 November with a million pumpkins over a hundred acres, plus street food and evening Pumpkin Nights. It sells out weeks ahead. Hobbledown Heath at Hounslow and Epsom is open from 25 September. Crockford Bridge Farm at Weybridge runs 2 to 18 October with pumpkins charged separately. Cammas Hall in Hertfordshire opens 3 to 31 October and has an erupting pumpkin volcano, which is worth the drive on its own. Pumpkin Moon in Kent runs selected dates from the 10th with more than a hundred cultivars.
Henry Moore at Kew
Kew Gardens, TW9 3AE
Until 31 January 2027. Included with admission
Monumental Moore sculptures placed across the gardens with smaller works alongside, and daily guided walks if you want the argument for why they are where they are. Kew in October, with the arboretum turning, is the best possible setting for them.
Autumn colour, without a date to be wrong about
Richmond Park, Kew, Hampstead Heath, Highgate Wood, the Kyoto Garden, Isabella Plantation
Typically late October into early November
Nobody can tell you the exact peak and anyone printing a date is guessing. The reliable answer is that the last week of October into the first week of November usually does it, and that The Regent’s Park doubles up nicely because Frieze Sculpture is still in it. More autumn in London.
New exhibitions
Hyundai Commission: Tarek Atoui, Tate Modern, free
Turbine Hall, Tate Modern, SE1 9TG
From Tuesday 13 October to 11 April 2027, free
The Turbine Hall commission is the biggest free art event in the London calendar, and a sound-based one from Atoui, who builds his own custom instruments, is a real departure from the usual sculptural spectacle. Free, no booking, and it will be the most argued-about room in London by November.
The 90s: Art and Fashion, Tate Britain
Millbank, SW1P 4RG
Thursday 8 October to 14 February 2027. £22, £20 concessions
Guest-curated by Edward Enninful, covering the photography, fashion, art and design of the decade through Juergen Teller, David Sims, Damien Hirst and Sarah Lucas. The nostalgia exhibition of the year for anyone who was in London then, and certain to be the most photographed show of the autumn. Tate flag strong language, drug references and one room containing a graphic representation of violent death.
Light and Magic: The Birth of Art Photography, Tate Modern
Bankside, SE1 9TG
Wednesday 14 October to 21 February 2027. £20, or £5 on Tate Collective for 16 to 25s
Two hundred-plus rare prints from more than eighty artists, treating pictorialism as a global movement rather than a European one, from Seoul to Sydney and Cape Town to Singapore. The £5 Tate Collective price makes this one of the cheapest big shows in town.
Renoir and Love, National Gallery
Trafalgar Square, WC2N 5DN
Saturday 3 October to 31 January 2027. Ticketed
The autumn Impressionist blockbuster, and the first time Bal du moulin de la Galette has ever been shown in the UK. Book a weekday slot, because this will be the busiest ticketed show in London by half term.
Yinka Shonibare and Thomas Gainsborough, National Gallery, free
Trafalgar Square, WC2N 5DN
Thursday 15 October to 7 February 2027, free
Shonibare reimagines Mr and Mrs Andrews and it hangs next to the original. A single-room show, free, and a far sharper twenty minutes than the blockbuster downstairs.
Tim Walker: Fairyland, National Portrait Gallery
St Martin’s Place, WC2H 0HE
Thursday 8 October to 7 February 2027
Queer identity, community and love through Walker’s lens, which is to say through the most extravagantly staged photography anyone in Britain is making. Tickets were not yet on sale when we checked, so watch for the release.
Hamlet Hail to the Thief, and the rest of the theatre
Barbican Theatre, EC2Y 8DS
Saturday 31 October to 23 January 2027. From £34, or £18 on Young Barbican for 16 to 29s
The RSC’s Hamlet set to Radiohead, orchestrated by Thom Yorke and played live, directed by Steven Hoggett and Christine Jones, with Samuel Blenkin as Hamlet. An hour forty, no interval, 14+. Eighteen pounds for under-30s is the best-value booking of the month at this scale.
Four more exhibitions opening in October
Barbican, Serpentine South, Dulwich and the British Library
Through the month
Robert Ryman: The Real Thing brings around sixty paintings to the Barbican Art Gallery from 8 October, with Yuko Mohri taking The Curve from the 1st. Justin Caguiat’s first UK institutional show opens free at Serpentine South on 8 October. Dulwich has the complete Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, including The Great Wave, from 20 October, from £21.50. And the British Library marks fifty years since Agatha Christie’s death from 30 October with her notebooks, letters and dictaphone recordings, £20 to £25, and £3 for anyone on Universal Credit or Pension Credit, which is a scheme far too few people know about.
Two free ones people miss
Science Museum SW7, and the Bank of England Museum EC2R
From 23 October and 5 October, both free
Becoming America at the Science Museum covers two hundred and fifty years of American independence, with a copy of the Declaration of Independence and a Benjamin Franklin map. After the Fire at the Bank of England Museum recreates a London street of 1700 and Edward Lloyd’s coffee house. Both free, both forty-five minutes, both better than they sound. More free museums in London.
Last chance
Six things that finish in October
Across London
Various closing dates
Electra/Persona, Cate Blanchett and Nina Hoss at the National, has its final performance on Saturday 10 October, and it is the biggest last chance of the month. Anish Kapoor closes at the Hayward on 18 October, with extended hours to 9pm until then. V&A x LDF: Awakenings also goes on the 18th and is free. Richard Dadd at the Royal Academy closes on 25 October, as do the Serpentine Pavilion and Jesús Rafael Soto’s Pénétrable in Kensington Gardens, both free. The Story at the National finishes on 24 October. And NIGO: From Japan with Love at the Design Museum goes on 4 October.
Theatre and performance
The Lives of Others, Adelphi Theatre
409-412 Strand, WC2R 0NS
Wednesday 14 October to 9 January 2027. From £44
Robert Icke adapting the Oscar-winning Stasi surveillance film, with Keira Knightley returning to the West End alongside Luke Thompson and Stephen Dillane, original music by Max Richter. The hottest ticket of the autumn and 14+, with adult themes including sexual coercion and suicide.
Nine more openings
West End and beyond
Through October
The Cherry Orchard with Kristin Scott Thomas, directed by Ian Rickson, opens at the Harold Pinter on 3 October. Some Woman with Anne-Marie Duff opens in the Dorfman on the 7th. Tim Crouch’s An Oak Tree, with a different guest co-star every night who has never seen the script, runs at The Other Palace from the 7th and is the most interesting hour of theatre in London. The Pianist opens at Park Theatre on the 15th, Love Never Dies in Concert does three nights at the Palladium from the 16th, Surinderella brings Bollywood panto to Theatre Royal Stratford East from the 20th, Cirque Berserk takes the Garrick from the 21st, London City Ballet premieres Ghost Light and Firebird at Sadler’s Wells from the 22nd, and Carmen opens at the Royal Opera House on the 29th.
Sport
Three NFL games in three weeks
Tottenham Hotspur Stadium N17 and Wembley HA9
Sundays 4, 11 and 18 October
Colts against the Commanders at Tottenham on the 4th, Eagles against the Jaguars at Tottenham on the 11th, then Texans against the Jaguars at Wembley on the 18th. Tickets are limited to six per account per game and digital passes land up to seventy-two hours before. Most are effectively gone, so resale is the realistic route.
Royal Parks Half Marathon
Starts in Hyde Park, W2
Sunday 11 October
Thirteen miles on closed central roads through Hyde Park, Green Park, St James’s Park and Kensington Gardens, past Buckingham Palace, Parliament and the Royal Albert Hall. Entry is paid and charity places exist, but the better fact is that watching is free and the course gives you the best single morning of central London without traffic all year.
And the free list, if that is all you need
- Frieze Sculpture, The Regent’s Park, to 1 November
- Diwali on the Square, Trafalgar Square, Sunday 25 October
- Hyundai Commission: Tarek Atoui, Tate Modern Turbine Hall, from 13 October
- Chelsea Physic Garden open weekend, 3 and 4 October, normally £15-plus
- Bloomsbury Festival, all month, most of 150 events free and walk-in
- Yinka Shonibare and Gainsborough, National Gallery, from 15 October
- Justin Caguiat, Serpentine South, from 8 October
- Harvest Festival, Morden Hall Park, Saturday 3 October
- Becoming America, Science Museum, from 23 October
- After the Fire, Bank of England Museum, from 5 October
- The deer rut, Richmond and Bushy Parks, all month
- Hair-Raising Halloween, Hyde Park, 27 to 29 October, Royal Parks family nature days
- Stampex International, Business Design Centre, 28 to 31 October, free entry
- Big Story Festival, Imperial War Museum, 25 and 26 October, free entry
- British Wildlife Photography Awards, Horniman, free, to February
Plenty more in our round-up of free things to do in London, and we keep this week and this weekend updated as October goes on.
Practical bits
- Half term runs Saturday 24 October to Sunday 1 November for most London boroughs, so the last week is the busy one. Book Kew, the Dungeon and anything with a trail before the end of September
- The clocks go back on Sunday 25 October, which gives you an extra hour in bed and takes sunset back to around half four
- Halloween is a Saturday, so club nights will sell out earlier than usual and restaurant tables will go from the Wednesday
- Frieze has no gate sales and no re-entry. Buy online and do not plan to leave for lunch
- Costume rules differ. The Tower of London refuses entry to visitors in costume. Hampton Court welcomes it, minus realistic weapons, fake blood and masks
- Only one Christmas thing opens in October: Skate Leicester Square, from Saturday 31 October. Everything else, including Winter Wonderland on 19 November, is next month
The London x London Take: The month’s best value sits at its two extremes. At the free end, Frieze Sculpture runs the whole month for nothing and gets you the Regent’s Park at its best, and Diwali on the Square is one of the great London afternoons. At the cheap end, the BFI’s £6 under-25 tickets and the Barbican’s £18 Young Barbican seats for a Radiohead Hamlet are the two bookings we would make first, and both need doing early. For the Halloween decision: Kew if you have children, the Nightmare Realm if you do not and you want to be genuinely frightened, and the Prince Charles Cinema if you would rather be warm. Book the trails now, leave the club nights until the week before, and be somewhere with trees on the last weekend of the month.
Really enjoying the range of ideas you share. Thank you