There are 6 exhibitions on in London worth the trip. I checked the dates, the venues and the opening hours one by one, on the museums’ own pages.
Last checked: 28 July 2026
16 June to 18 October 2026
The Hayward Gallery has handed Anish Kapoor the whole building: not a selection but a full takeover. There are the light-swallowing concave pigment pieces, plus new works never shown. Worth it for the contrast with the Brutalist building, but budget time.
28 March to 15 November 2026
The first UK exhibition devoted to Elsa Schiaparelli, with over two hundred pieces spanning the 1920s to the house today under Daniel Roseberry. Worth it less for the clothes than for how it treats fashion as a Surrealist project, jewellery displayed as sculpture.
25 June 2026 to 3 January 2027
Not a psychological portrait: the show traces how Frida Kahlo became a global icon. Her thirty paintings sit alongside over two hundred works by predecessors and artists she influenced. A curatorial angle more than a biographical one.
14 July 2026 to 17 January 2027
The first in-depth show of Ana Mendieta in the UK for more than ten years, with newly restored films and many works never seen in Britain. At its centre is the Silueta Series, body outlines made with fire, water and flowers and kept only in photographs and film.
8 June 2026 to 3 May 2027
Seven decades of kinetic work: light sculptures, mirrored surfaces, rooms that only activate once you step inside. Le Parc, co-founder of the GRAV group in 1960, wanted art to be a collective experience. He died in 2026, making this also his last major retrospective.
10 September 2026 to 11 July 2027
The Bayeux Tapestry is back in England for the first time in centuries, in Room 30. Entry is by booking only, in forty-minute slots: tickets up to 31 December are sold out, and those for January to March go on sale from 21 October.
2 exhibitions that have not opened yet, but whose dates are already announced.
1 October 2026 to 31 January 2027
Two thousand years of Korean art and culture in the Joseph Hotung Great Court Gallery, with works from the collection of Lee Kun-hee, the former Samsung chairman. The British Museum stages it as Korean culture enjoys a moment of worldwide fame.
2 October 2026 to 10 January 2027
Salman Toor’s first solo museum show in Europe: nineteen paintings of queer and immigrant lives caught between two cultures. The key work, The Bar on East 13th of 2019, answers Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergère, which hangs in the Courtauld’s own collection.
It is always these 6, and I check them one by one. When a venue has nothing on I say so, with the date I checked: it is something you would otherwise have to look up museum by museum.
| Venue | Status |
|---|---|
| British Museum | exhibition on |
| Courtauld Gallery | opens on 2 October 2026 |
| Hayward Gallery | exhibition on |
| National Portrait Gallery | programme not yet checked |
| Tate Modern | exhibition on |
| Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) | exhibition on |
Dates and prices change, and this page may not reflect the latest updates: before you travel, always check the museum’s own page, linked under each exhibition, which is the most reliable source.