London Gallery Weekend is back this week, offering 130+ free exhibitions across the city. Sixth year running. More than 130 galleries are running events and opening their doors over the weekend, all free, including talks, performances, late openings and guided walking tours throughout the capital, from Friday 5 to Sunday 7 June.
The format is simple if you haven’t been before. Each day is dedicated to a different area of the city — Friday for Central London, Saturday for South London, Sunday for the East End — and galleries are open 11am to 6pm on Friday and Saturday, noon to 5pm on Sunday. Most exhibitions run through to 28 June, so if you can’t make the weekend itself you’ve got three weeks to catch up.
This year nine galleries are joining for the first time, and a number of established names have opened fresh spaces or expanded since last summer. That alone is a pretty good indication of where London’s gallery scene is going.
What’s new for 2026
The big addition is Curated Routes. Musician Kelly Lee Owens, Royal Ballet principal Lauren Cuthbertson, architect Sumayya Vally, fashion designer Giles Deacon and Whitechapel Gallery director Sally Tallant are among the cultural figures who have created walking trails through the city’s shows. The ArtRabbit app offers access to the complete programme and is the easiest way to find what’s happening near you.
The other new thing to note is the LGW x Arts Council Collection Under 40 Acquisition Fund, which is devoted to younger collectors purchasing work by UK-based artists. All acquisitions go into the national collection. It’s an actual structural investment in the ecosystem, not just a weekend thing.
New gallery spaces that opened since last year
The gallery sector has been busy. Since the previous edition:
- Sadie Coles HQ opened a third London space on Savile Row
- Maureen Paley added a fourth space on Herald Street
- Modern Art opened in St James’s
- Emalin relocated from Shoreditch to a 5,000 sq ft space in Clerkenwell
- Edel Assanti added a second space in St James’s
- Lehmann Maupin launched a 2026 programme at Frieze’s No.9 Cork Street
- Annely Juda Fine Art relocated to a larger space in Hanover Square
- GRIMM expanded to a new gallery in St James’s
A lot of investment in real gallery space, in a year when everyone is supposedly going digital. Real rooms and real walls are far from finished in London.
Ten shows worth making time for
Not a ranked list. Only the ones that stood out from the programme.
Francis Picabia: Expanding Horizons — Hauser & Wirth, Mayfair (until 1 August). Basically a free mini-retrospective of one of the most important French modernists. Early landscapes through to late abstracts. The gallery is also hosting a literary salon on Friday evening inspired by Picabia, alongside their Roni Horn show next door.
Anne Imhof: Citizen — Sprüth Magers, Mayfair (5 June – 1 August). Gothic heavy-metal conceptualism. Scratchy paintings, a morose new film, an installation made of crowd barriers. Not light, not fun, but really good when you’re in the mood for it.
Dominic Watson: Vinegar and Piss — The Sunday Painter, Vauxhall (until 11 July). A huge galleon constructed from reclaimed children’s playhouses filled with papier-mâché sculptures of vomiting heads. Acidulous, surreal and wonderfully crazy. A denunciation of the UK’s descent into intolerance with a touch of silliness and a healthy dash of savagery.
Savannah Harris: Gloria’s — Harlesden High Street (5 June – 26 July). The gallery has been turned into a faux upscale coffee shop, complete with elaborate coffee drinks and cream walls. A critique of gentrification and the loss of community spaces, showing work by outsider artists alongside Harris’s own paintings.
Keith Piper — Niru Ratnam, Fitzrovia (5 June – 25 July). A founding member of the Blk Art Group, alongside Lubaina Himid and Sonia Boyce. Four decades of work confronting racism and the relationship between images and power.
Elena Njoabuzia Onwochei-Garcia: Grown — William Hine, Camberwell (5 June – 25 July). Huge theatrical paintings using allegory and folklore to explore memory and identity. William Hine only opened in 2024, making it one of the newest galleries participating.
Oliver Beer: The Sky in the Cave — Thaddaeus Ropac, Mayfair (5 June – 31 July). Work made inside an ancient cave in France filled with palaeolithic paintings. Beer’s in conversation with Rufus Wainwright at noon on Friday.
Gray Wielebinski: Bring Me Men — Nicoletti, Old Street (until 4 July). Collage and installation picking apart how masculinity is constructed, including a large aluminium sign taken from a US army base. Fun and satirical.
Delaine Le Bas: Leap — Maureen Paley, Bethnal Green (4 June – 25 July). The 2024 Turner Prize nominee returns with found objects, textiles and new glass works exploring alchemy and witchcraft. Her first show at Maureen Paley, one of the UK’s most established galleries.
Helen Marten: This Weather — Sadie Coles HQ (until 12 September). Five films from the Turner Prize winner’s recent opera project. The gallery itself is part of the story — Sadie Coles HQ has been going nearly 30 years and just opened that third space.
The practical bits
- Dates: Friday 5 – Sunday 7 June 2026
- Hours: 11am–6pm Friday & Saturday, 12pm–5pm Sunday
- Cost: Free. Everything. All of it.
- Daily focus: Central London (Friday), South London (Saturday), East End (Sunday)
- Shows continue: Most exhibitions run through to 28 June
- Walking tours: Guided tours across Central and East London neighbourhoods including Mayfair, Fitzrovia, Shoreditch, Spitalfields, Bloomsbury, Clerkenwell and Carnaby
- App: Download ArtRabbit for the full programme, curated routes and map
- Website: londongalleryweekend.art
One thing worth adding. It’s a stressful time for the gallery scene. Tiwani Contemporary, one of London’s most highly regarded spaces, announced its permanent closure just last week. Rents are brutal and the business of running a gallery in London remains genuinely hard going. London Gallery Weekend exists partly as a celebration and partly as a reminder that this kind of thing needs supporting. Showing up is the simplest version of that.