Events

Architecture practice dRMM and partners in science and manufacturing present new construction products made from underused UK hardwoods. Prototypes, models and research show how local mixed-species forests could support lower-carbon building systems.

Free; no separate display ticket is required. Verify with Victoria and Albert Museum.

A free family programme inspired by inventions and future cities brings hands-on model making, wearable-art workshops, sensory play for babies and toddlers, music performances and a digital wind-sculpture lab to spaces across the museum. A spoken-English and BSL interactive family performance runs on 28–29 October.

The main programme is free and drop-in, with limited places allocated first come, first served. The BSL Pop-Up Performance is also free but advance booking is strongly recommended; children must remain with an adult. Verify with Victoria and Albert Museum.

A half-term festival of family activities inspired by prehistoric oceans, with dinosaur shows, specimen encounters, science tours, crafts and volunteer-led discovery sessions for a range of ages.

Most activities are free and first come, first served; booking free museum entry is recommended. Paid shows and behind-the-scenes tours require separate tickets, with prices and age guidance listed in the programme. Verify with Natural History Museum.

Chelsea Physic Garden's Halloween programme combines family workshops in pumpkin carving, potion making, crafts and sensory play with botanical magic sessions, ghost stories, storytelling performances and an evening folklore feast.

Activities are separately ticketed, generally from £10 to £50, and many include Garden admission. Advance booking is required; availability varies and some sessions are already sold out. Verify with Chelsea Physic Garden.

More than 100 paintings, sketchbooks and miniatures explore how military art shaped public attitudes to soldiers and the Army during Queen Victoria's reign. Rarely seen works and major loans contrast first-hand images of conflict with idealised battle scenes and heroic portraits.

Free; no separate exhibition ticket is required. Visitors can plan a free museum visit in advance. Verify with National Army Museum.

This exhibition explores the life of suffragette Princess Sophia Duleep Singh through the stories of her sisters Catherine and Bamba, her mother Bamba Müller, her grandmother Jind Kaur and her godmother Queen Victoria.

Included with palace admission. Adult tickets are £24.70 and child tickets £12.40; members enter free and do not need to pre-book. Verify with Historic Royal Palaces.

The UK's first exhibition devoted to Elsa Schiaparelli follows the fashion house from its 1920s origins to Daniel Roseberry's present-day couture, with garments, jewellery, accessories and collaborations with artists including Salvador Dalí and Jean Cocteau.

Timed tickets: £28 weekdays and £30 weekends; concessions apply, members visit free, and advance booking is recommended. Verify with Victoria and Albert Museum.

Costumed performers bring the Georgian court of Queen Caroline to life through family-friendly scenes in the King's State Apartments. Visitors encounter ambitious courtiers, whispered rumours and a staged duel while exploring how reputation and influence shaped palace life.

Included with palace admission; no separate event booking is required and members enter free. Verify with Historic Royal Palaces.

An expert-led walking tour traces more than 300 years of the palace and gardens, from the Jacobean mansion and royal playground to Queen Caroline's landscape design, with access to the Orangery and Sunken Garden.

Tickets cost £15 or £10 for Historic Royal Palaces members. They are sold on the day from the palace Ticket Office only and are subject to availability; palace admission is not included. Verify with Historic Royal Palaces.

Chelsea Pensioner guides lead small groups through the Royal Hospital's historic buildings and share an insider's view of life in the community. Tours meet at the restored Soane Stable Yard and can extend to two hours depending on questions.

Advance booking is required. Public tour tickets cost £30 adults and £17.50 children; tours are limited to 25 people and the organiser recommends them for ages 14 and over. Check the live calendar because times and access can change. Verify with Royal Hospital Chelsea.

A family exhibition about the marine reptiles that ruled prehistoric seas, from pliosaurs and ichthyosaurs to mosasaurs. Fossils, specimens and hands-on displays explore how these predators lived; the museum recommends the exhibition for ages eight and over.

Timed tickets are required. Adults cost £15 off-peak or £17.50 standard, children aged 4–17 cost £7.50 off-peak or £8.75 standard, under-fours enter free, and members visit free. The South Kensington museum will be closed on 9 October for a charity gala. Verify with Natural History Museum.

This free display traces the Burberry trench coat from practical outerwear and military attire to an internationally recognised fashion icon. Historic catalogues and garments show how the design has evolved while retaining its distinctly British identity.

Free; no separate display ticket is required. Verify with Victoria and Albert Museum.

This free display examines the life and legacy of the zoologist and palaeontologist whose vision led to the Natural History Museum. Original drawings, publications, printing blocks and architectural designs connect the museum's Victorian origins with current scientific research.

Free. A free museum entry ticket can be reserved online to guarantee admission at busy times. The South Kensington museum will be closed on 9 October for a charity gala. Verify with Natural History Museum.

London-based Uzbek artist Aziza Kadyri combines hand-embroidered suzani with digital textile printing and motifs developed through a bespoke AI model. The free installation asks how technologies that can erase authorship and context might instead help preserve and reinterpret cultural memory.

Free; no separate exhibition ticket is required. Verify with Victoria and Albert Museum.

Justin Caguiat's first UK institutional exhibition combines heat-sensitive paintings, sculpture, printmaking, film and a sound installation of flower- and seed-shaped bronze bells in a site-responsive transformation of the gallery.

Free. Advance time slots can be booked; walk-ups are welcome but may need to queue when slots are sold out. Verify with Serpentine Galleries.

Created with stop-motion studio LAIKA, this behind-the-scenes exhibition follows the making of Wildwood from early visual research and character design to costumes, puppets, rapid prototyping, miniature sets, animation and cinematography.

Timed tickets are on sale from £15.29 adults, £11.47 concessions and £7.65 children; members enter free. The museum is fully closed on 24–26 December. Verify with Design Museum.

More than 70 works by over 40 artists from 25 countries survey contemporary art across Asia, Australia and the Pacific. The V&A and QAGOMA collaboration foregrounds First Nations perspectives through sculpture, photography, painting, ceramics, weaving and body adornment.

Timed tickets are £17; concessions apply, members visit free, and advance booking is recommended. Verify with Victoria and Albert Museum.

Visitors can read and handle the shortlisted books for the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson's award, which recognises photographers who conceive, produce and distribute their work outside traditional publishing channels.

Free; no separate display ticket is required. Verify with Victoria and Albert Museum.

A relaxed weekly coffee morning with coffee, cake and conversation, offering adults a chance to meet people at Chelsea Library. All are welcome.

Free; reserve a place through the Eventbrite link on the council event page. Verify with Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea.

Free weekly football coaching from Chelsea FC for boys and girls aged 8 to 12, with sessions focused on having fun and developing skills with trained coaches.

Free; no booking is required. The council currently lists weekly Thursday sessions through 14 January 2027. Verify with Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea.

A free museum-wide trail celebrates Freddie Mercury in his 80th anniversary year through eight looks from his career, spanning stage performances and music videos and featuring objects loaned by Mary Austin.

Free; no ticket is required. Verify with Victoria and Albert Museum.

Four sculptures by British Indian artist Bharti Kher enter into dialogue with the V&A's historic collections. The works use sari fabric, bindis, casting and hybrid figures to explore the body, womanhood, mythology and cultural identity.

Free; no separate display ticket is required. Verify with Victoria and Albert Museum.

Simone Brewster's first museum show explores her multidisciplinary practice across jewellery, furniture, sculpture and public architecture. Four sections trace how material histories, the female form and African diasporic traditions shape work ranging from ebonised furniture to a large-scale pillar and sound piece.

Free; no advance booking is required. The museum is fully closed on 13 October and 24–26 December. The interactive table will also be unavailable for maintenance on 14 October and 16 December. Verify with Design Museum.

New Delhi-based artist and filmmaker Amar Kanwar transforms Serpentine North with a trilogy of film installations exploring memory, displacement, justice and the legacies of Partition, including the premiere of The Charcoal Man.

Free. Advance time slots can be booked; walk-ups are welcome but may need to queue when slots are sold out. The exhibition is presented in very low light, including moments of complete darkness, and the three films run for about three hours in total. Verify with Serpentine Galleries.

More than 50 original drawings by French artist and liaison officer Paul Sarrut offer a close view of Indian Army soldiers serving on the Western Front during the First World War. Uniforms, photographs, archives and medals accompany works shown publicly for the first time in over a century.

Free; no separate exhibition ticket is required. Visitors can plan a free museum visit in advance. Verify with National Army Museum.

Saodat Ismailova's cinematic short film draws on the story of the eighth-century Central Asian mystic and rebel Al-Muqanna, using his legendary veil to explore how history, myth and images reshape ideas of truth over time.

Free; no booking is required. Verify with Victoria and Albert Museum.

A free display of recent acquisitions in the Silver Galleries, showing work by metalsmiths from around the world that the V&A has collected since 2010.

Free; no booking is required. Verify with Victoria and Albert Museum.

A small-group expert tour enters State Apartment rooms that are normally closed to visitors. The route explores spaces associated with Edward, Duke of Kent, Queen Victoria, Queen Anne, royal servants and Princess Margaret's household.

Advance online booking is required. Tickets cost £49 including palace admission or £25 for Historic Royal Palaces members; the standard price rises to £55 from 2 January 2027. The route uses steep stairs and is not suitable for wheelchair users or people with access needs. Verify with Historic Royal Palaces.

The first European retrospective of artist and stage designer Es Devlin brings together installations, film and the largest solo presentation of her archive to date, spanning 30 years of work across stage, sculpture, music, language and light.

Timed tickets are on sale from £17.09 adults, £12.82 concessions and £8.55 children; members enter free and can collect a timed ticket on arrival. The museum is fully closed on 13 October and 24–26 December. Verify with Design Museum.

Marking 250 years since the Declaration of Independence, this exhibition traces the scientific undercurrents that shaped the emergence of the United States across four decisive decades from the 1760s to the 1790s. Maps, paintings and instruments on display include a rare 1776 Declaration of Independence print, Benjamin Franklin's map of the Atlantic Gulf Stream and an ornate microscope commissioned for King George III.

Free, but a timed entry ticket must be booked in advance. Recommended for ages 11 and over. Verify with Science Museum.

A display of 21st-century Japanese lacquer explores how artists extend a craft used in Japan for more than 7,000 years, combining long-established local techniques with contemporary forms and cross-cultural influences.

Free; no booking is required. The gallery is closed for essential maintenance from 5 to 13 October and reopens on 14 October. Verify with Victoria and Albert Museum.

This free display reunites all eight issues of Sun Artists, the influential 1889–91 publication that promoted photography as an art form through finely printed photogravures. Featured photographers include Julia Margaret Cameron, Eveleen Myers and Frank Meadow Sutcliffe.

Free; no booking is required. Verify with Victoria and Albert Museum.

More than 50 works connect Vera Molnar's pioneering experiments with computers and algorithmic thinking to contemporary generative art, including plotter drawings, digital prints and work by artists influenced by her practice.

Free; no separate display ticket is required. Verify with Victoria and Albert Museum.

The 62nd edition of the Natural History Museum's annual photography exhibition presents 100 newly awarded images selected from more than 65,000 entries, spanning wildlife behaviour, landscapes and conservation stories.

Tickets are on sale: off-peak adults from £17, concessions from £13.60 and children from £8.50. Verify with Natural History Museum.

Seven religious artworks from the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, shown in the UK for the first time, reflecting the monastery's long tradition of devotional craftsmanship.

Free; no booking is required. Verify with Victoria and Albert Museum.

Marking 200 years since Samuel Palmer's visionary Shoreham period and a century since the V&A exhibition that revived his reputation, this display pairs his rural watercolours and prints with work by artists he influenced, including Paul Nash and Eric Ravilious.

Free; no booking is required. Verify with Victoria and Albert Museum.

A volunteer-led walk through the Victorian studio-houses of Holland Park Road and Melbury Road, tracing the artists, sculptors and architects of the Holland Park Circle and the distinctive homes they commissioned.

Free, but advance booking is required. Tours may change or be cancelled at short notice because they are volunteer-led; museum admission is not included. Verify with RBKC Museums.

A gallery closed to the public for more than 80 years reopens with 50 objects exploring how people have understood and represented nature. This experimental display is the first gallery project in the museum's NHM150 transformation.

Free. Museum entry can be reserved online to guarantee admission at busy times. The South Kensington museum will be closed on 9 October for a charity gala. Verify with Natural History Museum.

Portobello Road's market runs through Notting Hill, with antiques and collectables concentrated toward the southern end and fashion, food and household stalls farther north. The whole street market trades on Friday and Saturday, with Saturday the busiest day; outside summer and December, Sunday activity is limited to Acklam Kitchen, Portobello Green stalls and local shops rather than the full street market.

Free to browse; no booking required. Verify with Portobello Road Market.