April 2024: Congrats, Londoners! April is here, meaning that we’ve officially made it through the winter, the weather is warming up, flowers are blooming all over the city and the evenings are getting lighter. Pretty soon we’ll be getting aggressively sunburnt in beer gardens and rooftop bars, planning day trips to the seaside and lamenting the lack of air con on the Bakerloo line. But before then, there’s loads of wonderful springtime stuff going on around the city.
April is a great month for big new stuff on the stage, with openings including ‘Long Day’s Journey Into Night’ starring Brian Cox, and ‘London Tide’, the National Theatre’s new adaptation of Dickens’ ‘Our Mutual Friend’ featuring music by PJ Harvey. Art-wise, there’s the Tate Modern’s Expressionists exhibition, and a solo show from British-Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare.
The end of Ramadan mid-April means that there’ll be plenty of Eid celebrations taking place around the city, including central London’s Eid in the Square festivities. There’s also the London Coffee Festival, the London Games Festival – headed up Somerset House’s always fun annual video game exhibition Now Play This – and the 44th edition of the London Marathon to look forward to this month.
And if you’re counting down the days until festival season arrives, you’ll be pleased to know that you don’t have to wait until summer to check out some great live music line-ups. In the Round Festival and Brick Lane Jazz Festival arrive this month, and neither of them involve getting aggressively sunburnt, being rained upon all day or queuing for some traumatically disgusting portaloos.
No matter what your vibe, tastes or interests, there is always something to do in London. When the sun’s out, London’s parks turn into leafy social clubs, restaurants dust off their outdoor seating and fountains erupt from dusty concrete squares and suddenly the city air is filled with alfresco theatre.
Whether you want to see cutting-edge art exhibitions, iconic attractions, secret spots, world-beating theatre, stunning green spaces, it’s all here and you can probably fit all this in and more still barely feel like you’ve scratched the surface of the city. And that’s before you factor in all those historic London pubs, the latest must-visit restaurants and vibrant LGBTQ+ venues. And if you need somewhere to stay? Check out London’s best hotels or Airbnbs.
This London bucket list (curated by our editors and always hotly debated in the Time Out office) is a good place to start because exploring this city can be a little daunting. There’s something for everyone here, but you need to know where to look.
Plus, if you want to know what’s happening in London, like, right now, check out things to do in London this week and things to do in London this weekend. After a few days pottering about in the capital, you’ll be more than ready to reel off Dr Samuel Johnson’s famous quote: ‘When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life.’
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