Your 2027 diary is about to get a lot more cultured, and a lot more crowded. Book early.
London is gearing up for a year in which you can stand in front of Monet’s water lilies in February, pogo (in spirit) through punk in March, and be gently emotionally flattened by Edvard Munch in November. In between, there is Rembrandt pulling faces, a fashion show starring Frankenstein, and a deadpan comedian let loose among the Old Masters. It is, frankly, a lot of culture. We are not complaining.
The trouble with a bumper year is the logistics. Which blockbusters sell out first? Which quiet gems are over before you have found your coat? Which ones deserve a proper day out with lunch attached? We have lined up the 11 shows worth planning around, in the order they open, so you can drop them straight into your calendar. Still hungry for something before the new year? Our guide to the 12 best exhibitions in Europe to see before 2026 ends has you covered.
London art exhibitions 2027 at a glance
- Best for a first-time-ever moment: Monet: Painting Time
- Best for a nostalgia trip with safety pins: Punk to Pop
- Best for fashion people who read: Characters of Fashion
- Best for a good laugh: David Shrigley
- Best for colour overload: Baya
- Best for the big feelings: Edvard Munch
- Best for a Friday-night date: Matisse, Picasso, Klee
Phillip King: Kamakura Ceramics, Camden Art Centre
Best for: a January pick-me-up with a sculptural twist
Dates: 29 January to 14 March 2027
Tickets: check Camden Art Centre for entry details
Start the year small and glazed. Phillip King is remembered for huge, vividly coloured geometric sculptures, so the plot twist here is a residency in Kamakura, Japan, where he threw himself into hand-built vessels and experimental glazes. More than 70 of those ceramics stayed in Japan for three decades, and this will be the first time they are shown in the UK. The run is only six weeks, so this is the one to pencil in before the blockbusters start jostling for your attention.
Monet: Painting Time, Tate Modern
Best for: anyone who has ever said “I’ll just pop in for the water lilies”
Dates: 25 February to 27 June 2027
Tickets: from £26, with £5 tickets for 16 to 25s and free entry for Members
Come on, it’s Monet. This is Tate Modern’s very first exhibition devoted to him, which feels almost unbelievable, and it spans 60 years of his career, from the 1870s to the 1920s. The idea is time itself: the railways, the changing seasons, the same haystack caught at different hours. Expect rarely seen loans from private collections, plus his London views, including Waterloo Bridge at dusk and Charing Cross Bridge in the fog. The show is co-organised with the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris, home of the great Nymphéas panels. Tip: Tate Modern stays open until 9pm on Fridays and Saturdays, which is the civilised way to do it.
Punk to Pop, V&A South Kensington
Best for: safety pins, shoulder pads and every outfit your parents once regretted
Dates: 13 March 2027 to 2 January 2028
Tickets: on sale soon, free for V&A Members
The V&A is rewinding to 1972 to 1985, the loudest, messiest and most inventive stretch in British music and style. Around 300 objects will trace the road from glam rock and disco, through the underground scenes that tore up the rulebook, to the shiny new pop of the early 1980s. The cast list is absurdly good: the Sex Pistols, The Slits, The Specials, Joy Division, Wham! and Eurythmics, with stage costumes, photography, music videos and graphic design along for the ride. With a run of nearly ten months, there is no excuse not to go, though we suspect the first weekend will be chaos.
Rembrandt: Radical Printmaker, Royal Academy of Arts
Best for: proof that the old masters were rule-breakers
Dates: 9 April to 19 September 2027
Tickets: price to be confirmed, free for Friends of the RA
You know the paintings. Now meet the experimenter. More than 120 of Rembrandt’s prints will come together at Burlington House, made in collaboration with the Petit Palais in Paris, showing how he used etching to capture everything from tender family portraits to religious scenes and ordinary neighbours. The fun part is that he treated mistakes as part of the process, reworking plates until they said what he wanted. Keep an eye out for the wide-eyed, open-mouthed self-portrait from 1630, which is the original pulled-face selfie.
Characters of Fashion, Barbican Art Gallery
Best for: bookworms with a very good wardrobe
Dates: 15 April to 29 August 2027
Tickets: on sale from spring 2027
What if the best fashion exhibition of the year is really a literary one? Here, writers from Jane Austen and Virginia Woolf to Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, Zadie Smith and Joan Didion show how clothes build a character, and how authors have dressed their own public selves. Garments, manuscripts, letters and photographs sit alongside designs from Dior, Prada, Comme des Garçons and Alexander McQueen. Orlando, Frankenstein, Alice in Wonderland, Beloved and Dracula all make an appearance. There is also a reading room curated by writer Lou Stoppard, so bring a coat with pockets for the book you will inevitably buy afterwards.
South Asia Now: Fashion. Art. Design., V&A East Museum
Best for: a fresh look at what is happening in South Asian creativity right now
Dates: 24 April 2027 to 23 January 2028
Tickets: on sale soon
Forget the old shorthand of heritage crafts and traditional fashion. This show is about the here and now, with more than 200 works across fashion, art, architecture and design from Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Expect new commissions and pieces making their UK debut. It is also the perfect excuse to visit the V&A East Museum in Stratford, which opened in April 2026 and is still the shiny new kid on London’s museum block. Nine months is a generous window, so you can go twice.
David Shrigley, Dulwich Picture Gallery
Best for: proving that art is allowed to be funny
Dates: 25 May to 5 September 2027
Tickets: not yet on sale
Picture the scene: a gallery full of solemn 17th-century Dutch and Flemish masterpieces, and one very naughty man with a pen. David Shrigley, king of the deadpan drawing, has made new commissions in conversation with Rembrandt, Jan Steen, David Teniers the Younger and Pieter Brueghel the Younger, tracing how artists have always poked fun at everyday life and human nature. It is his first major UK exhibition in 15 years, and Dulwich is just the place for it: leafy, elegant and about to be gently heckled. Make a day of it in the village.
Baya, Tate Modern
Best for: a proper hit of colour
Dates: 10 June to 17 October 2027
Tickets: free for Members, public pricing to be announced
This is the UK’s first-ever solo exhibition for Algerian artist Baya Mahieddine, and it is long overdue. More than 100 glowing gouache paintings join ceramic sculptures, all bursting with pattern, imagined gardens and musical, storybook scenes drawn from her homeland. Her self-taught modernist style refused to sit neatly in any box, and it caught the eye of Pablo Picasso and André Breton. If you only add one unfamiliar name to your 2027 list, make it this one. We promise you will leave with a new favourite.
David Hockney, Tate Britain
Best for: a joyful, heartfelt look back at a very British legend
Dates: 7 October 2027 to 20 February 2028
Tickets: free for Members, public pricing to be announced
This one was planned to mark David Hockney’s 90th birthday, and following his death in June 2026 it becomes a tribute to his life’s work. More than 200 pieces will span seven decades, tracing the joys and complexities of love and friendship, from early explorations of queer relationships to portraits of family and friends and the later scenes from his home and studio. Painting, drawing, photography and digital work all feature. The last Hockney retrospective at Tate Britain became the gallery’s most visited show ever, so treat this as a book-the-minute-tickets-open situation. Warm up beforehand with our look at London’s Renoir blockbuster.
Edvard Munch, Tate Modern
Best for: anyone who loves a dramatic, moody winter afternoon
Dates: 11 November 2027 to 23 April 2028
Tickets: free for Members, public pricing to be announced
Yes, The Scream man. But this show is far more interesting than a single famous face clutching its cheeks. Organised with the MUNCH museum in Oslo, it looks at his “soul paintings” through the lens of cinema and visual storytelling, with major paintings, prints, photographs, experimental film and archive material. Think The Sick Child from 1907, plus a surprising look at how Munch saw like a film-maker. Love, loss, loneliness and desire, all in one gallery. Brace for feelings, and maybe save a post-show treat for afterwards.
Matisse, Picasso, Klee: Masterpieces from the Museum Berggruen, Royal Academy of Arts
Best for: a blockbuster you can catch after work
Dates: 19 November 2027 to 19 March 2028
Tickets: sign up with the RA to hear when they are released, free for Friends
Save the best dressed for last. Berlin collector Heinz Berggruen spent more than four decades assembling a collection that reads like a greatest-hits album of modern art, and a selection is heading to London. At its heart are Matisse’s joyful cut-outs, Giacometti’s gaunt, elongated figures, and works by Picasso and Klee spanning their entire careers. Rarely seen by British audiences, they land in the Royal Academy’s Gabrielle Jungels-Winkler Galleries, with late opening until 9pm on Fridays. That makes it our pick for a very stylish date night.
Planning a London art weekend around any of these? Start with the best design-led hotels in London and book your bed before the blockbusters fill the city. Happy gallery-hopping.
