Autumn starts properly on Wednesday, there is no Premier League football in London at all, and the best tennis player in the world is at The O2 from Friday. Thirty things worth leaving the house for between 21 and 27 September.
Two things shape this week. The first is the new sixteen-day international break, which runs from Monday to 6 October and means no league football in London until the 10th. The second is the autumn equinox on Wednesday, which the city has answered with a harvest festival, a druid ceremony and fifty sheep on a bridge.
Laver Cup, The O2 (Friday 25 to Sunday 27 September)
Carlos Alcaraz is playing in Greenwich. So are Alexander Zverev, Casper Ruud and Jakub Mensik for Team Europe under Yannick Noah, against Taylor Fritz, Alex de Minaur, Alexander Bublik and Francisco Cerúndolo for Andre Agassi’s Team World. Three days, two sessions a day on Friday and Saturday, one on Sunday.
Tickets are by session and by full-tournament package, from around £90. The Sunday session decides it and sells last, so if you are gambling on one ticket, gamble on that.
Negroni Week (Monday 21 to Sunday 27 September)
The week proper, inside a month that Campari has already stretched across all of September. The passport is the thing to organise around: collect a stamp at six bars and the sixth drink is free. The one-week-only serves are where the bars actually try, and they vanish on the 28th.
Our pick: the frozen tropical Negroni at Side Hustle in the old Bow Street Police Station, and the smoky Pào at MiMi Mei Fair, which is £12 in Mayfair and therefore close to a clerical error. Where to drink all of them.
Alba’s omakase counter opens (Monday 21 September)
Ten seats, one sitting a night at 7.30pm, a window facing Harrods, and a chef who spent eight years at Zuma. Ten-seat counters in Knightsbridge do not stay bookable for long.
Blue Note London opens (from Wednesday 23 September)
The New York jazz institution opens its first UK room in the basement of the St Martin’s Lane Hotel, and the opening season is not a soft launch: Robert Glasper, Erykah Badu, Jamie Cullum and Nubya Garcia across the autumn.
Whistler at Tate Britain closes (last day Sunday 27 September)
The first major European Whistler retrospective in thirty years finishes on Sunday. £24, or £5 if you are between 16 and 25 and sign up to Tate Collective, which is the best art deal in London and criminally under-used. Go on a weekday if you can.
The Last Ship, Theatre Royal Drury Lane (Tuesday 22 September to Saturday 3 October)
Sting performs, as shipyard foreman Jackie White, in a new staging of his own musical with a company of more than fifty. Twelve performances and then it is gone. From £19, which for Drury Lane is remarkable.
Four West End openings in three days (Monday 21 to Wednesday 23 September)
An unusually loaded week. In order:
- The Standard of Living, Theatre Royal Haymarket, from Monday. James Graham on John Maynard Keynes, directed by Nicholas Hytner, with Rory Kinnear and the Royal Ballet’s Natalia Osipova. From £32 and already going
- Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? at @sohoplace, from Monday. Gillian Anderson and Billy Crudup, directed by Marianne Elliott. Largely sold out already, so day seats and returns are the route in
- Hay Fever, Wyndham’s, from Tuesday. Christine Baranski making her West End debut opposite Richard E. Grant. From £38
- Into the Woods, Noël Coward Theatre, from Tuesday. The Bridge production transfers, Kate Fleetwood back as the Witch
If you can only do one, make it The Standard of Living. Graham and Hytner have not missed yet.
Cabaret comes to Balthazar (from Monday 21 September)
The Kit Kat Club’s Prologue performers get up on the bar at Balthazar between courses, Friday nights only, with a three-course menu around it. Runs to 1 November and the early dates go first.
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 shut to the public almost all year, and it opens for three days this weekend. Signs, ticket machines, uncatalogued rolling stock, the things that never reach Covent Garden.
The most under-booked thing on this list. What is on and how to get in.
V&A East Thursday Lates, the last one (Thursday 24 September, free)
V&A East has been staying open to 10pm on Thursdays all summer with a free rotating DJ residency, a pop-up bar and a terrace over the Olympic Park. This is the final Thursday of the run.
Wellcome Collection Lates: The Friendship Effect (Thursday 24 September, free)
Seven till ten, free, no ticket, BSL-interpreted and relaxed. Live music, workshops, talks, friendship-bracelet making and BLINK Dance Theatre. The best free museum late of the week by a distance, and Wellcome lates are consistently better organised than the bigger museums’.
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. Free to get in, which for a show of this weight is faintly absurd.
Amar Kanwar opens at Serpentine North (from Wednesday 23 September, free)
A site-specific installation of new and existing films on decolonisation and the legacies of Partition, running to the end of January. Free, as everything at the Serpentine is. There is a talk with Kanwar and Hans Ulrich Obrist in the Pavilion on the Wednesday, £10.
The Burberry Trench at the V&A (from Monday 21 September, free)
A small, sharp free display tracing the trench coat from First World War kit to fashion object, with a Hardy Amies coat and, inexplicably and delightfully, a knitted duck hat. Twenty minutes, no ticket, no queue. The best kind of V&A visit.
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 free, all outdoors, and it finishes on Sunday. The Line, Olympic Park to North Greenwich, is the one to do as a proper walk.
Japanese Women Photographers closes (last day Sunday 27 September)
Two hundred-plus photographs, videos and rare photobooks from twenty-seven women artists, 1950s to now, at the Photographers’ Gallery. The best-reviewed photography show of the London summer. The gallery is free from 5pm every Friday, so Friday evening is your last free shot at it.
Classic Car Boot Sale, King’s Cross (Saturday 26 and Sunday 27 September)
A hundred vintage fashion specialists, seventy classic cars, the country’s biggest open-air Charity Super.Mkt, DJs and a Routemaster bar across Granary Square, Lewis Cubitt Square and Coal Drops Yard. £8 in advance, £6 concessions, under-12s free, dogs welcome.
Go early on Saturday. The good vintage is gone by lunchtime and the queue for the bus bar is not. Full details here.
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 a backgammon tournament, with Rory Sutherland and The Guilty Feminist on the bill. The oddest line-up of the week and the building alone justifies the ticket.
The Sheep Drive, Southwark Bridge (Sunday 27 September)
Around fifty sheep driven across Southwark Bridge by a celebrity shepherd, followed by a livery fair on Queen Street. Watching is free and takes ten minutes of your Sunday.
One correction worth making, because every listing gets it wrong: walking across with the sheep is restricted to pre-booked Freemen of the City and their guests, and it is fully booked for 2026. Turn up to watch, not to take part. Our guide to the Sheep Drive.
British Art Fair, Saatchi Gallery (Thursday 24 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 and you must pre-book. The Thursday and Friday late closes at 9pm are the civilised ones.
Bell Square Calling: FRANCE, Hounslow (Thursday 24 to Sunday 27 September, free)
Four days of outdoor French contemporary circus, dance and street performance in a square in Hounslow, every performance free. Sauf le Dimanche on Friday evening, the acrobats of La Triochka twice on Saturday afternoon, Cie Xuan Le’s hip-hop and visual art piece on Saturday night, accordion from Cie Les Rustines de l’Ange on Sunday.
The best-programmed free thing happening in London this weekend, and central London mostly does not know it exists.
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 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, so go early.
Brixton Windmill Harvest Festival (Sunday 27 September, free)
One till five at the windmill in Windmill Gardens: milling demonstrations, craft workshops, children’s baking and live music from SELFolk. Free, charming, and the most literal way to mark the equinox week.
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.
Catarina and the Beauty of Killing Fascists closes (last performance Saturday 26 September)
Tiago Rodrigues’s UK premiere is at the Dorfman for one week only and then gone. The Portuguese director’s work rarely comes to London and this is the closest thing to a limited run the National does.
Electra/Persona at the National (to Saturday 10 October)
Cate Blanchett and Nina Hoss, directed by Benedict Andrews, in the Lyttelton. Not closing this week but closing soon, and Thursday 24 September is one of only four 6.30pm starts in the whole run, which matters if you are coming from work.
£5 standing at Shakespeare’s Globe (all week)
Much Ado About Nothing and As You Like It are both in the autumn stretch of the season, and a yard ticket is still £5. It remains the cheapest good night out in central London. Take a coat, the roof is still not on.
Our piece on the season closer.
Free plants from the Barbican Conservatory (all week)
More than 2,000 cuttings grown from the Conservatory’s own collection are being given away free before it closes for a three-year restoration in early 2027. The adoption events run into December and the good specimens go in the first hour.
Oktoberfest starts early (all week)
Two are already running and neither charges at the door. Albert’s Schloss on Shaftesbury Avenue has keg tapping, brass bands and all six Munich beer brands to 25 October, walk in or book a table. Brigadiers in the City is doing an Indian-German crossover to 3 October: masala currywurst kathi roll, Bavarian old fashioneds, Paulaner steins.
On Saturday, Anspach & Hobday in Croydon does the cheapest version in London, £5 on the door including your first festbier. More Oktoberfest in London.
Free lectures at Gresham College (Tuesday 22 to Thursday 24 September)
Three this week at Barnard’s Inn Hall, all free and none requiring anything more than turning up: Daniel Susskind on creativity and AI on Tuesday, Chris Lintott on cosmic inflation on Wednesday, Helen Czerski on carbon on Thursday. Gresham has been doing this since 1597 and it is still the best free education in the city.
The Bayeux Tapestry, and why not to bother this week
The British Museum show is the biggest ticket in London and every date from now to the end of December is sold out. The next release, covering January to March 2027, goes on sale on 21 October. Put that in your calendar rather than refreshing the booking page. What is actually in the exhibition.
Autumn equinox, Primrose Hill (Wednesday 23 September, free)
A druid ceremony on the hill, eleven till one, free to watch. Autumn arrives on Wednesday whether you attend or not, but this is a more interesting way to acknowledge it than putting the heating on.
Gigs this week
- Monday 21: Snow Patrol at the Royal Albert Hall (also Tuesday), Judas Priest at the Eventim Apollo, Rawayana at O2 Academy Brixton
- Tuesday 22: Ezra Collective at CIRCUIT Kingston, LiSA at Troxy, María José Llergo at the Jazz Cafe
- Friday 25: Death Cab for Cutie at Troxy, Pale Waves at KOKO, The Maine at the Roundhouse, Ella Mai at the Eventim Apollo, Grace Petrie at Union Chapel
- Sunday 27: La Londonise Orchestra play sixty years of salsa at the Jazz Cafe, thirteen pieces, Havana to New York
And on Saturday, England v Spain at Wembley
Sold out, in the Nations League, and the only football happening in London all weekend. If you did not get a ticket, this is a pub afternoon rather than a stadium one, and every decent screen in the city will be taken by six.
The London x London Take: The through-line this week is that the city is changing season in public. The equinox lands on Wednesday, the harvest festival and the sheep drive bookend the weekend, and two of the best shows of the summer finish on Sunday. Do Whistler on a weekday, get to the Photographers’ Gallery free after five on Friday, then give Saturday to the Classic Car Boot Sale and Sunday to sheep and a windmill. The under-booked pick is the Acton depot, which opens three days a year and this is one of them. If you want one thing and one thing only, it is the Laver Cup, because Alcaraz playing competitive tennis in Greenwich is not an annual occurrence. And if you were planning a football Saturday, plan something else: there isn’t any.
Planning further ahead? Our guide to what is on in London in September has the rest of the month, and October is now up.
