The first weekend of autumn, and the first in years with no Premier League football in London at all. What fills the gap: Carlos Alcaraz at The O2, a warehouse in Acton opening its doors on 320,000 hidden objects, fifty sheep on Southwark Bridge and four days of free French circus in Hounslow. Twenty-eight things to do from Friday 25 to Sunday 27 September.
Two of the summer’s best exhibitions also close on Sunday, so there is a real deadline built into this one.
Laver Cup, The O2 (Friday 25 to Sunday 27 September)
Team Europe under Yannick Noah, with Carlos Alcaraz, Alexander Zverev, Casper Ruud, Jakub Mensik, Flavio Cobolli and Rafael Jodar. Team World under Andre Agassi, with Taylor Fritz, Alex de Minaur, Alexander Bublik, Francisco Cerúndolo, Brandon Nakashima and Learner Tien.
Two sessions on Friday and Saturday, doors at 11.30am and 5.30pm, one on Sunday with doors at 10.30am. From around £90. Sunday is when it is decided and it is the session worth holding out for.
London Transport Museum Depot open days, Acton (Friday 25 to Sunday 27 September)
The museum keeps 320,000 objects in a warehouse in Acton that is closed to the public almost all year, and it opens for three days this weekend. Signs, ticket machines, uncatalogued rolling stock, the stuff that never makes it to Covent Garden.
This is the best thing on this list that nobody outside transport circles books early enough. What is on and how to get in.
England v Spain, Wembley (Saturday 26 September, 7.45pm)
Nations League, sold out, and the only football being played in London this weekend thanks to the new sixteen-day international break. Hospitality is the only route left. Everybody else: pick your pub by four, because every decent screen is taken by six.
Classic Car Boot Sale, King’s Cross (Saturday 26 and Sunday 27 September)
Granary Square, Lewis Cubitt Square and Coal Drops Yard given over to a hundred vintage fashion traders, seventy classic cars, the country’s largest open-air Charity Super.Mkt, DJs and a bar inside a Routemaster. £8 in advance, £6 concessions, under-12s free, dogs welcome.
Get there for opening on Saturday. The genuinely good vintage goes in the first two hours and the queue for the bus does not. Everything you need to know.
Vision Festival, King’s Cross (Friday 25 to Sunday 27 September)
Town Hall by Bottaccio, the restored Grade II-listed former town hall five minutes from St Pancras, opens for three days of talks, music and, genuinely, a backgammon tournament. Rory Sutherland and The Guilty Feminist are both on the bill.
It is the oddest line-up of the weekend and the building alone justifies the ticket. The full programme.
The Sheep Drive, Southwark Bridge (Sunday 27 September)
Around fifty sheep driven across Southwark Bridge by a celebrity shepherd, with a livery and wool fair on Queen Street either side of it. Roughly ten till four, and watching costs nothing.
The bit every listing gets wrong: crossing with the sheep is for pre-booked Freemen of the City and their guests only, and 2026 is fully booked. Come to watch. Our full guide.
Bell Square Calling: FRANCE, Hounslow (Friday 25 to Sunday 27 September, free)
Every performance free, outdoors, in a square in Hounslow. Sauf le Dimanche perform Assemblée, made on site, at 7pm on Friday. Saturday brings the acrobats of La Triochka at 1pm and 3.30pm and Cie Xuan Le’s dance and visual art piece Reflet at 7pm. Sunday afternoon is CoraSon, accordion and music, at 2pm.
The best-programmed free thing in London this weekend, forty minutes from Piccadilly Circus on the Piccadilly line.
Camden Inspire (Saturday 26 and Sunday 27 September, free)
Two free days of talks, making and mending at Camden Collective, built around a shade pavilion that anyone can help put up. Take a broken lamp and leave with a working one, which is a better offer than most festivals manage.
What is on across the two days.
Pintxo Pote at Broadgate (Saturday 26 September, free)
Bar Kroketa brings a Basque festival to Broadgate Circle for one day: txakoli poured from a height and over your head if you want it, natural cider, and a public vote on croquetas. Tickets are free and include a drink.
Free food events in the City on a Saturday are rare because the City empties. Go early. Details here.
Whistler at Tate Britain, last day (Sunday 27 September)
Thirty years since the last major European Whistler retrospective and it closes on Sunday. £24, or £5 for anyone aged 16 to 25 through Tate Collective. If you can move it to Friday, do. A final-Sunday crowd at Tate Britain is not how anyone should see the Nocturnes.
Japanese Women Photographers, last day (Sunday 27 September)
Twenty-seven artists, two hundred-plus photographs, videos and rare photobooks, 1950s to now, at the Photographers’ Gallery. The best-reviewed photography show of the London summer. The gallery is free from 5pm on Fridays, which makes Friday evening the last chance to see it for nothing.
London Sculpture Week, final days (to Sunday 27 September, free)
Five programmes tied into one: the Fourth Plinth, Frieze Sculpture, East Bank, Sculpture in the City and The Line, turning the whole city into an open-air gallery. All of it free, all of it outdoors, and it finishes on Sunday.
The Line, from the Olympic Park to North Greenwich, is the one to do as a proper walk. The five programmes.
Magritte at Gagosian, Mayfair (from Thursday 24 September, free)
This Is Still Not a Pipe pairs Magritte loans with new work by more than forty contemporary artists, Jeff Koons, Maurizio Cattelan and Yoko Ono among them, in one room on Grosvenor Hill. Nobody is charging to get in, which for a show of this weight is faintly absurd.
British Art Fair, Saatchi Gallery (Friday 25 to Sunday 27 September)
Seventy-plus dealers, and the only fair given over entirely to modern and contemporary British art: Moore, Hockney, Emin, Hirst. From £20, pre-booking required. Friday runs to 9pm and that is the civilised slot.
RENT turns thirty, Tom Stoppard Theatre (opens Saturday 26 September)
The thirtieth anniversary production, directed by Luke Sheppard, with Gaten Matarazzo making his West End debut as Mark. £20 previews and front-row day seats are both on sale, which is the cheapest way into a major opening this autumn. The theatre is the old Duke of York’s, recently renamed.
Cabaret at Balthazar (Friday 25 September)
The Kit Kat Club’s Prologue performers get up on the bar at Balthazar between courses, six Friday nights only, with a three-course menu around it. It runs to 1 November and the early dates go first.
Sunday Papers Live, Clerkenwell (Sunday 27 September)
Bourne & Hollingsworth Buildings turned into what the organisers call London’s largest living room for the day: roast lunches, Bloody Marys, a live crossword and a bill of talks. Three dates this autumn and this is the first.
World Halal Food Festival, London Stadium (Saturday 26 and Sunday 27 September)
A hundred and fifty-plus vendors, chef demonstrations and family entertainment at the Olympic Park, billed as the biggest halal food festival in the world. Ticketed through Ticket Tailor. Come early, because the queues at the best stalls double after 2pm at anything this size.
Brixton Windmill Harvest Festival (Sunday 27 September, free)
One till five in Windmill Gardens: milling demonstrations, craft workshops, children’s baking and live music from SELFolk and others. Free, small, and the nicest hour of Sunday afternoon going in Brixton this month.
Two last chances at the table (Saturday 26 September)
The Big Brunch at Freight Brixton has its final Saturday, closing an eight-week run of genre parties with sixty minutes of free-flow drinks, and alto by San Carlo runs its last date with Cotton Beach Club Ibiza on the Selfridges roof. Both finish on the 26th.
Our piece has the detail on the Brixton one.
Little Londoners Festival, Docklands (all weekend)
London Museum Docklands hands children a hard hat and a real trench to dig in, and gives a whole day over to the under-fives for free. Running to 30 September, so this is the last weekend of it.
The Rose Playhouse, Bankside (weekend tours)
The archaeological remains of the theatre where Shakespeare worked, and where Titus Andronicus was first staged, are open for guided tours this autumn to 29 October. Almost nobody knows it is under there.
Silent disco in the Painted Hall, Greenwich (Friday 25 September)
Half seven till eleven, dancing under Thornhill’s ceiling at the Old Royal Naval College. Soft-soled shoes required and stilettos banned, which tells you the floor is as listed as the ceiling.
Serpentine Park Nights (Friday 25 September)
Ebun Sodipo and Rosa-Johan Uddoh perform a new commission inside the Pavilion after dark. £10, £7 concessions, and Park Nights sells out on word of mouth rather than advertising, so book rather than turn up.
Soane Late (Friday 25 September)
Six till eight at Sir John Soane’s Museum, guides doing spotlight talks on single objects. Hogarth, Turner, Canaletto, and the most overstuffed house in London. A much better building after dark than in daylight.
Crochet under the whale, Natural History Museum (Friday 25 September)
Half six till half nine in Hintze Hall, making a grey whale underneath the skeleton of one. All abilities. Exactly the sort of thing the NHM does well and does not shout about.
Typographia, Spitalfields (Saturday 26 September)
Ten till ten at Libreria and Second Home on Hanbury Street: sixty-plus independent publishers including Fitzcarraldo and Rizzoli, plus talks. The best single day of the year for anyone who buys books by the cover.
Murder mystery at Apsley House (Saturday 26 September)
Six or half eight at Number One London, where the Duke of Wellington’s party takes a turn. Welcome drink included and Regency dress encouraged, which most people take more seriously than you would expect.
Oktoberfest, cheaply, in Croydon (Saturday 26 September)
Anspach & Hobday’s brewery does the £5 version: entry includes your first festbier-inspired beer, with live music and Bavarian street food. Boxpark Croydon runs its own the same day with stein-holding and pretzel-eating contests. The rest of London Oktoberfest.
Beyond 30 at XOYO (Saturday 26 September)
Four till nine in the afternoon, over-30s only, Judge Jules headlining house and trance, and you are home by ten. Ridiculous on paper, entirely sensible in practice.
Three free openings nobody advertises (Saturday and Sunday)
- Coombe Conduit, Norbiton, Saturday and Sunday 11am to 2pm. A Tudor water-supply building that opens a handful of days a year, free
- St Augustine’s Tower, Hackney, Sunday 2pm to 4.30pm. Hackney’s oldest building, open one day a month, free
- Barometric Rhythm Machine, Greenwich Foot Tunnel, Sunday, free. A low-frequency sound installation under the river, which is as odd as it sounds
Markets and makers (Sunday 27 September)
- Maker’s Market, Dulwich Picture Gallery, 10am to 3pm. Ceramics, textiles, homewares, flowers and food in the gallery garden
- Yes! Art, Big Penny Social, Walthamstow, midday to 6pm, £5. Sixty-plus artists under one roof
- Tufnell Park Yard Sale, 2pm to 5pm, free to browse and spread across the streets
- Mudlarking at London Museum Docklands, free both days, with a paid talk from Nicola White on Sunday at 2pm
More of this sort of thing in our guide to the best markets in London.
Negroni Week signs off (Sunday 27 September)
The last day of the week and of Campari’s month-long London programme, with a closing party at The Shaston Arms in Soho. £5 Negronis and free Perelló olives are on every Sunday there, and this is the last one. Where else to drink them.
Gigs this weekend
- Friday 25: Death Cab for Cutie at Troxy, Pale Waves at KOKO, The Maine at the Roundhouse, Ella Mai at the Eventim Apollo, I Prevail at Alexandra Palace, Grace Petrie at Union Chapel, Voxtrot at The Lexington
- Saturday 26: bat walks at Osterley Park at 6.50pm for £10, if you would rather be outside
- Sunday 27: La Londonise Orchestra at the Jazz Cafe, thirteen pieces, sixty years of salsa from Havana to New York
The London x London Take: The football absence is the shape of this weekend, and London copes. Give Friday to the Photographers’ Gallery free after five, then the silent disco in the Painted Hall if you want the night out or Soane Late if you do not. Saturday belongs to the Classic Car Boot Sale first thing and then whichever screen you have chosen for England. Sunday is the good one: sheep on Southwark Bridge at ten, Whistler in the afternoon before it closes for good at six, and a windmill in Brixton if you would rather be outside. The under-booked pick of the whole weekend is the Acton depot, because a warehouse of 320,000 objects opens three days a year and this is one of them. And if you can get a Laver Cup ticket for Sunday, drop all of the above.
Looking further out, our September guide has the rest of the month and the October guide is now live.
