London is a city filled with culture year-round, but summer is when the city really comes into its own. Open-air theatre shows and gallery visits are best enjoyed alongside bike rides, park strolls and alfresco dining, all of which the season brings in abundance.

Curated by Living Rooms Founder, Tracy Lowy, this is our edit of the exhibitions and theatre productions worth experiencing in London this summer.

A major summer exhibition in London, Fashion Becomes Art is the first UK exhibition dedicated to Maison Schiaparelli, tracing the house’s relationship with art, fashion and surrealism across nearly a century of design.

It explores Schiaparelli’s bold approach through more than 400 objects, including archival garments, artworks, photography and jewellery. Highlights include the only surviving Skeleton Dress from 1938, the Lobster Telephone, and Elsa Schiaparelli’s Evening Suit from Autumn 1937.

21st March – 8th November 2026

Tate Modern’s A Second Life brings together key works from across Tracey Emin’s career, including her iconic and once highly controversial My Bed, alongside previously unseen pieces.

A summer exhibition in London that reflects her long-standing exploration of self-expression, intimacy and lived experience. Working across painting, neon, drawing and installation, Emin often draws on personal memory and the body to examine themes of love, loss, pain and healing.

27th February – 31st August 2026

Tracey Emin, The End of Love 2024. Tate © Tracey Emin. All rights reserved, DACS 2026

Influential artist David Hockney presents a new body of work in London at the Serpentine, located in West London’s Kensington Gardens. Led by A Year in Normandie, a long, continuous study of time and landscape around his studio in Normandy, it captures the changing seasons through a sequence of drawn observations. Alongside it are ten new works, including still lifes and portraits of people close to the artist.

12th March – 23rd August 2026

Cecily Brown returns to London with her first major solo presentation at the Serpentine, drawing directly on the surrounding nature of Kensington Gardens. Picture Making explores themes of park life and landscape within a site of personal significance to the artist, experimenting with scale and colour, alongside recurring motifs such as amorous couples and woodland scenes.

27th March – 6th September 2026

Serpentine South, 2026. © Cecily Brown. Photo: © Jo Underhill

V&A East is now home to the David Bowie Centre, an archival collection dedicated to the life and work of the musician and creative icon. Bringing together 200 archival pieces of personal objects, costumes, photography, sketches and handwritten lyrics, the space offers a closer look at Bowie’s creative process and cultural influence across music, fashion and performance.

Photo by Christina Radevich

London’s much-loved Open Air Theatre returns for the summer season with a new production of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats. Set beneath the trees of Regent’s Park, the musical combines familiar songs, choreography and theatrical spectacle in one of the city’s most distinctive summer settings.

25th July – 19th September 2026

Part of this year’s London summer theatre season is one of contemporary theatre’s most celebrated plays, Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia. Bringing together science, history and human relationships, the production moves between a 19th-century country house and the present day through parallel timelines, where questions of love, knowledge and time quietly overlap. It offers a rewarding evening even for those who don’t usually gravitate towards traditional theatre.

20th June - 12th September 2026

Another staple on this season’s theatre calendar includes a bold new play from Suzie Miller. Following its run at the National Theatre, Inter Alia, starring Rosamund Pike as a Crown Court judge, follows Jessica Parks as her carefully balanced life begins to fracture when a personal crisis collides with her professional world.

Production moves between courtroom and home, blending live performance with heightened staging to reflect the pressures placed on women working at the centre of the justice system.

19th March to 20th June 2026

Photo by Manuel Harlan

A production promising the time of your ‘afterlife’, Beetlejuice, based on Tim Burton’s cult film, arrives at London’s Prince Edward Theatre. A cult comedy among musicals in London this summer, it leans into the absurd with sharp wit, striking set design and a score that doesn’t take itself too seriously.

20th May 2026 - 17th April 2027

Photography by Matt Crockett

Experience London’s rich cultural scene this summer by making the city your home-from-home. Stay at The Laslett in Notting Hill, or enjoy added privacy with one of our luxury serviced apartments across central London - each complemented by access to our 24-hour concierge team, on-hand to share even more local recommendations.

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