Apple has announced the date of its next big launch event: it’s coming next week, on 13th October.

But the really interesting bit? The tagline.

Welcome Home is the teaser Apple has given us for this one, suggesting we’re looking at some new home tech rather than just a refresh of, say, a MacBook or two.

The current top contenders are a new HomePod mini, a refreshed Apple TV box and something rather newer — a smart home hub.

It’s expected to be somewhat like a one of the smart displays you can already buy from, for example, Amazon. But hopefully with a bit more of that old Apple magic.

Retro revival?

One remaining question is where the retro angle implied by Apple’s teaser video comes in. The event announcement video features a woven version of Apple’s old rainbow logo, which was used from 1977 to 1998.

There’s a suggestion the home hub’s design could be inspired by the old Apple Mac G4, with a speaker base and a touchscreen display sprouting out of it on an arm. But then that old home PC was actually sold from 2002, long after the Apple logo had gone from rainbow to plain black. It’s still retro, mind.

The home hub is expected to have a camera and other sensors to tell when you’re in the room, and will let you do some of the more basic stuff you might use a MacBook for, like video calls.

Why now, when other tech brands have had smart screens out for years? Apple is in the process of releasing a much smarter AI-driven version of voice assistant Siri, and these home devices will be key vehicles for those smarts.

It’s not yet clear whether the launch will come with a full-on stage show or just a flung-out announcement as these home bits arrive at the Apple Store. But it’s one to put in your diary for Tuesday if you have any interest in Apple gear.

This isn’t all we’re apparently going to get from Apple HQ this month either. A busy one is ahead.

Later this month Apple is also reportedly set to announce some rather interesting computing hardware.

According to Bloomberg, later this month we will get a touchscreen MacBook Pro and an iPad mini with an OLED screen. The touchscreen Mac is expected to have an OLED display too.

Could October’s Apple releases turn out to be even more interesting and dramatic than the iPhones we got in September? It’s kinda looking that way, at least for those not too fussed about the iPhone Duo.

• Meet the 5 stars of Apple's class of 2026: From Apple iPhone Duo and iPhone 18 Pro to AirPods 5

In news that sounds made up but is actually true, outgoing James Bond star Daniel Craig is opening up a pub in London.

The bad news: there’s a bit of a wait. The Horseshoe in Clerkenwell is the pub Craig is set to take over, alongside business partners Nick Jones and Charlie Carroll. It closes up shop today, 9th October, with the plan now to re-open the site under new ownership, but not until fairly late into 2027.

Carroll and Jones bring the industry experience to go with Craig’s headline-grabbing acumen, of course. Jones is the entrepeneur behind Soho House, as well as the Cafe Clement restaurant in Temple, and The Ned. Carroll, meanwhile, founded The Devonshire and Flat Iron.

This is a pretty mean trio of gentlemen. However, the plan is apparently to keep The Horseshoe as, above all else, a pub.

“You walk through the door and you go: ‘It’s a boozer!’ Obviously we’ll spruce it up but we’re going to keep it as a boozer,” Craig told The Times.

“We’d love fancy people to come here and spend some money, but that’s not the aim. It’s to make it accessible for everybody and [so you don’t] have to worry about coming through the door.”

The Horseshoe was already a pretty well regarded traditional-style pub, famed for its darts. It’s a little worn inside, but the previous landlords had been there for 36 years — and chose to retire rather than being kicked out.

Top Instagram account London Dead Pubs did a piece on the place last week, worth a watch if you want a view of what it was like before Daniel Craig and co came on-board.

This follows Daniel Craig’s launch of his own beer earlier this year, Bad Belze. You can bet it will be stocked at whatever The Horseshoe eventually becomes, having already made it to the pumps of The Devonshire and select other establishments.

The beer is named after the Ring O’Bells pub in Frodsham, which Craig’s father Tim Craig ran back in the 1970s.

• The UK’s top 50 Gastropubs have been announced – and 11 London spots made the list

London gets some seriously impressive Christmas decorations up each year, but 2026’s will be a bit special — themed around Harry Potter.

The lights will deck the halls of Oxford Street, as part of a collaboration between HBO Max and the New West End Company.

And, of course, it’s here to commemorate the upcoming Harry Potter TV show as much as Christmas.

The series arrives on Christmas Day itself, while Oxford Street’s lights are typically rigged up in early November. Not long to wait now.

This is not just a big year for Harry Potter, it’s a biggie for Oxford Street too. Around half of the busiest shopping area of the road is about to become fully pedestrianised — no cars, no buses, no bikes. It begins on 26th October, just ahead of when the Christmas lights should appear.

Oxford Street is also getting its own Harry Potter store in-sync with these Christmas lights. It’s set to open on 4th November.

“This will be a historic moment for Oxford Street. Bringing the world of Harry Potter to the street will create an unforgettable Christmas experience and showcase the West End at its very best,” says Dee Corsi, CEO of the New West End Company.

Sadly we don’t have any concept images of the lights’ design, but we could be in for something special.

A big bet is clearly being made on the Harry Potter show, which is planned to span seven seasons in 10 years. Just like the films, this will let the stars age somewhat in line with the characters of the books.

The show’s cast includes Domionic McLaughlin as Potter, Paapa Essiedu as Snape, John Lithgow as Dumbledore and Nick Frost as Hagrid.

Nicholas Hoult was originally on-board to play Gilderoy Lockhart, but left the production to be replaced by Kit Harrington. The official line is it was down to scheduling conflicts, not because of the flak he received thanks to the general controversy surrounding Harry Potter author JK Rowling.

• The first Harry Potter TV show trailer is here: 5 magical details worth knowing

The British Burger Awards has announced its finalists for the 2026 awards, and 10 London burger establishments are on the list.

London gets its very own category within the British Burger Awards — hence the nice round number of contenders — but we won’t find out the overall category winner until 9th November, when the awards event itself takes place.

For now, here’s the all-important list of 10.

• Burgers LDN
• Burger and Beyond Soho
• GOAT Burger
• Hanbaagaasuuteeki
• Truffle Burger
• The Burger Firm
• The Joint
• Boom Bap Burger Restaurant
• Bruce Burgers
• Smoky Boys

Last year, following the inaugural British Burger Awards, Burgers LDN came away with the London win.

It’s found in Algdate and Barking, and serves some pretty interesting burgers as well as a plain old classic cheeseburger.

The one we have our eye on is the BLIMEY!, which is laced with scotch bonnet “super spicy sauce."

Vegetarians can choose from a mushroom burger, with that same spicy sauce, or a veggie patty with American “slaw.”

Want something a bit fancier? GOAT Burger in Knightsbridge serves wagyu beef patties in brioche buns, as well as indulgent truffle fries. It’s found at 146 Brompton Road, if that floats your burger boat.

We'd wager all 10 of these establishments are worth checking out, mind.

Other categories in the awards — other than the series of regional ones — include street food burger of the year, burger restaurant of the year and burger takeaway of the year. London doesn’t get a look in for any of those categories.

Neither do the big recent winners of the rival National Burger awards, won by Honest Burger and Black Bear Burger in recent years. Bleecker is another celebrated burger-flinger that has missed out on a shortlist placement this year.

The capital is clearly overflowing with banging burgers right now.

The British Burger Awards will take place on 9th November in Wolverhampton, at the town’s Grand Station venue.

• UK's best burgers crowned following London's Burger Fest event

It’s finally happening. London’s Oxford Street is being partially pedestrianised this month.

From 26th October, almost every form of transport bar legs will be barred from roughly a kilometer of the famous shopping street.

That includes cars, bicycles, taxis and buses.

The first stretch to be pedestrianised runs from Orchard Street to Great Portland Street. While this doesn’t include some of the busiest parts of the strip, the bit running from Great Portland Street to Charing Cross Road, this strategy no doubt reduces the immediate effect on traffic flows in the wider area.

But it does include IKEA, the spot where the giant Topshop used to reside.

This has been one of the key aims of London Mayor Sadiq Khan, and it should help make the always-busy street much less of a nightmare to navigate.

“Following strong support from Londoners and businesses, I'm excited to see my bold vision for Oxford Street really coming to life next month as we start going traffic-free, just in time for the busy Christmas shopping period,” Khan said after the date was announced.

“On 26 October the transformation of the nation's high street into a pedestrian plaza will begin in earnest – a world-class space where flagship retail will sit alongside next-generation workplaces, designed to host exciting retail and leisure experiences from sport to fashion and cultural events in the future.”

Earlier this year we saw concept images of how a pedestrianised Oxford Street might look, lined with trees while the thoroughfare was painted green. But it’s not yet clear what timescale we’re looking at for a full, footfall-friendly revamp of the space beyond banning vehicles.

Further pedestrianisation of the street also has a big TBC over it, although this initial stretch has been dubbed the “first stage” of the plans.

The Oxford Street Development Corporetaion told Londonist in August that it was “exploring the potential” to move beyond that first phase, although that this is a relatively politically incendiary topic makes such moves fraught.

Westminster City Council doesn’t sound too happy about it, for one.

“Westminster City Council, residents and businesses on Oxford Street still have a long list of unanswered questions about how it will work,” says councillor Tim Barnes, who is deputy leader of Westminster City Council.

• We visited the Scotch Malt Whisky Society's Farringdon members room for a newcomer-friendly tasting odyssey

London is not short of great pizza but one of the Top 100 pizzerias in the whole darned world is opening up a branch here this month.

Fobici, which operates in Manchester (and Sheffield) and featured in this year’s The Best Pizza Awards’s top 100 list, is coming to London.

Its first branch in the capital opens on 27th October, and will live right by London Bridge station at 120 Tooley Street.

“We’ll be serving up authentic Neapolitan pizza, cut four ways (Neapolitan style, with scissors). Marco Pierre White said it was the best pizza he ever tasted, we can’t wait for you to come and see for yourself,” says Fobici.

The menu has a distinct Italian feel, proud of its use of San Marzano tomatoes, and with pizza descriptions peppered with Italian terms. Margheritas start at a very reasonable £10.95, although of course elevated running costs for a central London restaurant may well see this nudged up a bit for the upcoming branch.

There are white base pizzas as well as traditional tomato ones, and even a Lancashire Hotpot — yes, it’s still a pizza — topped with lamb ragu and potato chips. Again, given the northern flavour we doubt whether this one will make the trip down south. But it’s an indication Forbici is not some zero-imagination copy-paste pizza place.

It won a spot at number 84 on The Best Pizza’s 2026 list, which specifically awards the pizza chefs behind the cornicione. In this case that was Davide Argentino, and the Manchester branch of Forbici in particular. He’s originally from Naples, so it’s no wonder the master baker has produced an ace dough formulation for the restaurant.

The list features just two pizza places in the UK, the other being Crisp Pizza, in Hammersmith. It landed at number 33.

Forbici’s upcoming London site used to be home to fried chicken spot Butchies, but the chain unfortunately went into liquidation earlier this year.

Once Fobici opens up in London Bridge, you’ll be able to visit every day of the week. It will open from midday each day aside from Saturdays, when its doors open at 11:30am. It will close at 10pm Sunday-Tuesday, 11pm Wednesday to Friday and 11:30pm on Saturday.

• Four London pizza spots have been named the best in Europe – with one West London joint crowned number one

In 2025 a mysterious nightclub popped up in central London, at the site of a former Odeon cinema. It only lasted eight months but appears to be set to return.

We’re talking about Lost, which shut up shop in May 2026 after its lease ran out.

Now, both an Instagram account and website for the returning Lost club have popped up, with a pretty enigmatic message. Well, aside from clearly spelling out the plan is to open in November.

“we have uncovered a city within a city. a 24 hour district in the heart of London. we want to build it with you. no phones. no line up. november 2026,” reads the site.

“missed you. see you soon.”

That’s it. That’s the entire Lost website content for now, aside from a link inviting you to join the “lost list” mailing list, which will no doubt keep you informed on where Lost will actually live. And when its opening date will land.

But where could this “24 hour district” be? There are relatively few legit 24-hour venues in the capital — let alone a mini city’s worth of them.

If, like most folks, you never got to visit Lost first time around, it was not like your average club.

No phones allowed, you couldn’t buy tickets beforehand online and there was no traditional advertising. Phones get locked up in a bag while you’re there, totally changing the vibe of the dance floor.

But, yeah, that does mean if you lose your friends, there’s a good chance you might struggle to find them again.

It’s worth having a watch of dj_theot’s review of the experience from last year.

He talks about how some of the Odeon’s old screening rooms were still used as chillout zones, projecting films onto the wall.

We’re probably not going to get exactly the same thing this time around. But if you want something a little different from London’s club scene, Lost is one to keep bookmarked.

• Four London Nightclubs have just been named some of the best in the world

Get a load of this. You may think of the humble Casio G-Shock as the respectable digital watch you can buy without spending a fortune, but the MRG-D5000 from the Blue Rose collection costs a whopping £67,000.

A high price doesn’t earn you a memorable name, apparently.

Only 20 of these watches are being made. And while it may look much like a G-Shock, just very very blue, it’s a bit special. A lot special.

The MRG-D5000’s bezel and upper casing is blue sapphire crystal, made of parts that lock into one another for peak structural rigidity and strength. It’s a chunky 16.45mm thick and only 20 of these blue wonders are being made.

It delivers unusually good 200m water resistance, as well as solar charging.

Around the back we get a Grade 5 Titanium plate, while the front lettering used 24-carat gold as part of the detailing process. It’s a mad watch that will surely go down in Casio history as a collector’s aspiration piece — each of the 20 watches is also hand-assembled in Casio’s Yamagata lab.

If, like us, you have no chance of ever affording such a dazzling watch, check out the new G-Shock Mudman GDG-B100 instead.

It costs £200 rather than £67k, and shares some of the same features (and more), if none of the same bragging rights.

We get a MIP LCD screen with red backlight, and a chunky built-up case for baked-in screen protection.

It’s also packed with far more fitness features than you might guess. The G-Shock Mudman GDG-B100 has Bluetooth, a lap timer with dedicated button and fitness watch-style motion sensors.

It can also hook up to your phone and use its GPS to check the distance estimates from the watch itself, for more accurate fitness watch-like stats.

These two are actually just a couple from a whole series of watches Casio has announced. But which would you rather wear?

• 5 iconic watches (and the affordable alternatives everyone can enjoy)

A Spanish bar coming to Southwark later this year will offer beers for the princely sum of £2.50 — all but unheard-of in central London.

The site will be called Los Primos, and it comes from the folks behind the Barrafina group of eateries. And, being a Spanish-themed place, you will of course be able to pick up some tapas as well as those tantalisingly affordable drinks.

There’s one snag. For £2.50 you get a traditional cañas measure, roughly equivalent to around 200ml, somewhere between a third and a half of a pint.

It should give the place much more of a Barcelona-style flavour, though, to go with the ham croquettes, honey-laced aubergine and tuna empanadas that have been teased as part of the hot tapas menu.

“Cervecerías in Spain are intergenerational, accessible spaces that won’t break the bank, without compromising on quality — something that’s very important to us,” says Sam Hart, CEO of Harts Group, the umbrella restauranteur group behind Barrafina and the upcoming Los Primos.

“I am looking forward to propping myself up at the bar and watching the world go by, as I would in Barcelona.”

The plan is to run the venue for walk-ins only, with classic tapas bar service atop tall stools — just like you get in Spanish cities. And it’s not just for after work.

There will be breakfast selections, including coffee and churros, and a lunch menu that features bocadillo sandwiches stuffed with chorizo, egg or pork loin.

Los Primos will live at 4 Dirty Lane, on the border of Borough Market. Until just a couple of days ago, it was home to Parillan — itself a Spanish eatery also from the Barrafina team.

By all accounts Los Primos is leaning towards the more fast and casual diner for this latest project. The bar has its own Instagram account, whose first posts were just this week. But we expect to hear more from it soon.

Los Primos is planned to open up this November. And according to the website, it will be open Tuesdays to Saturdays, 11am to 11:30pm.

• Highstreet pleasures and underrated foodie gems: Raymond Blanc's top London dining spots

Forget cereal cafes — that's so 2015 — we’re moving onto the crumpet cafe. And one is opening in London's Notting Hill next month.

Jones’ Crumpets has been around for almost a decade but is on the cusp of opening its own permanent location.

At present you can order Jones’ Crumpets for pick-up from local market spots in Primrose Hill, Marylebone and Queen’s Park — or for delivery — but this new location will make the beloved crumpets more accessible to many throughout the week.

For now at least we expect to see similar offerings in-store as those you can pick up at the markets.

Alongside a classic 5-pack of plain crumpets, at £6.50, you can pick up 4-packs of Cheese & Chive, Dark Chocolcate and Double Cheese styles — those two cheeses are cheddar and Parmigianio Reggiano. The focus is clearly on flaour and, unususally, the parmesan crumpets are still vegetarian.

Those 4-packs also cost £6.50 when ordered for pick-up. Alternatively, there’s a 3-pack of oat-based crumpets, available for £4.50.

We can’t guarantee these prices will hold for the actual Jones’ Crumpets cafe, but it serves as a guide. The cafe will operate a seasonal menu, with the staples being two savoury standards, one sweet and a breakfast option.

It being a cafe, you will also of course be able to pick up a coffee to go with your crumpet, using beans supplied by Allpress.

Jones’ Crumpets was established in 2017 by Ian Endfield, and has since gone on to supply such auspicious places as Ottolenghi’s Rovi and the V&A East Museum’s Cafe Jikoni.

The Jones’ Crumpets Cafe will be found at 44 Golborne Road. It’s set to open some time in October, from 8am to 4pm. For updates, give the Jones' Crumpets Instagram a follow.

• A new cafe dedicated to tiramisu is coming to London

You know the Michelin Guide for its famous and coveted restaurant Michelin stars, but there’s now a similar standard for hotels. And four more London locations have been handed one of these Michelin Keys.

Plenty of you may be faimilar with this system already — you can skip on to the new additions. But for those new to the concept, the Michelin Key has only been around since 2024, just a fraction of the lifespan of the now hundred-year-old Michelin Star.

“The Michelin Key is to hotels what the Michelin Star is to restaurants,” says Michelin. You earn one based on anonymous visits from the team, based on aspects like quality of service, character and, yes, even value for money.

None of the four new additions come cheap, though, lodged firmly in the aspirational hotel category. Let’s take a look.

The Newman, Fitzrovia

A literary-inspired hotel from the Mr & Mrs Smith Group, with elements of arc deco style. This hotel only opened in early 2026, and features 81 rooms including 16 impressive suites. Room rates start at £513.76 according to the website.

The Chancery, Rosewood

An undeniably impressive hotel based in the old spot of the US embassy. Features an impressive spa, and no fewer than eight bars and restaurants. It’s not one for mere mortals to spend a night in, mind. Accomodation is split into suites signature suites and “houses,” with no ordinary rooms on offer. But each of these is truly special.

Six Senses London, Bayswater

Wellness is the specific angle of this hotel. “Find courtyard calm at the heart of the city,” reads the website. The spa area is, sure enough, massive, and features a pool, sauna, steam room and a separate magnesium plunge pool. But it’s sadly so exclusive you can’t get access if you don’t fancy paying around a £1000 to actually stay there.

Pan Pacific London, City

Likely the most practical and accessible of these four, a night at the Pan Pacific need only cost you £400-odd if you pick the right night. And it’s located neat Liverpool Street station — ideal for business travel. It’s a beautiful hotel and the Asian fusion restaurant offers a £29 two-course lunch menu we recommend trying out.

• The World’s 50 best hotels have officially been announced, and three London spots made the list

Looking for something nourishing but mildly creepy to do ahead of Halloween in London? The Barbican’s “ghost tours” begin tomorrow, 1st October.

The Barbican After Dark tours dig into the history of the building, which — despite only opening in 1982 — apparently has quite the history attached.

“Beneath the Barbican lies nearly two thousand years of history: Roman forts, burial grounds, plague pits, fire, war and ruin. The Barbican isn't simply built on history. It's built over it,” reads the website.

The tours last around 75 minutes and, consistent with the title and theme, they only take place later in the day. Early tour days have slots at 6pm and 8pm, but as the nights draw in, earlier slots start to open up, to as early as 4pm.

“Join us after dark for an atmospheric walking tour exploring the site's hidden past and the unexplained experiences reported by Barbican staff. Hear stories of mysterious voices, fleeting figures, unexplained noises and strange encounters in spaces that feel very different once the building falls silent,” is the spooky pitch for the tour.

You end up in the Library Stack Rooms, the most obvious history-filled space amid all that brutalists architecture.

The tour also takes in the Pit theatre, found at the very bottom of the building. You may have visited it if you’ve taken in a smaller show at the Barbican — it seats a 150-odd audience.

With these tours on our doorstep, some of the early dates are — no surprise here — sold out. But you can still get a slot within the next handful of days if you opt to visit midweek or during one of the 6pm sessions.

Tickets cost £26.50 including fees, while members can buy at a reduced £20 rate.

• South London cinema to be replaced by a church — and the locals are not happy

Earlier this week we told you about an upcoming mountaineering VR experience. Prefer something more fantastical? A much larger Alice in Wonderland immersive treat is heading to London within weeks.

Alice Immersive Wonderland doesn't rely on virtual reality at all, instead inhabiting a big chunk of the Dock X warehouse space by Canada Water. It’s spread over 26,000 square feet, split into ten environments representing key parts of the Alice in Wonderland story.

It’s expected to last up to two hours, although your experience will vary based on how fast you barrel through the rooms — and no doubt the mood on the day of any youngsters involved.

Some of the key scenes include the Mad Hatter’s tea party, the Cheshire Cat’s forest home, and the rabbit hole itself. The experience finale is a 20-minute 360-degree projection, which explores “identity, imagination and reality” according to the event designers.

While bringing the story to life is a big part of the appeal for kids, there’s an educational angle here too. A mini museum area will look into the historical context Lewis Carrol lived in, that of Victorian Britain.

Presale access for Alice Immersive Wonderland begins on 6th October, at 10am, and you merely have to sign up at the website to get on-board.

Tickets will start at £26 for adults, £19 for children aged 4+. There will also be a premium Mad Hatter Experience package, which includes a gift bag, fast-track entry, a treasure hunt map and a food/drink combo — we don’t have pricing for this yet.

Alice Immersive Wonderland opens on 13th November and is currently scheduled to run until 16th May, 2027. It is not just here in the run-up ’til Christmas.

The experience is designed by Cites Immersives, which current has experiences running in Paris themed around Viking and Fontaine’s Fables.

• A huge new immersive experience from the producers of Boomtown is heading to London
  

Rachel Zegler, Broadway baby and Hollywood star, is officially coming back to London for a new show.

If securing a Golden Globe, an Olivier Award, and a Critics Choice by the age of twenty-five wasn’t (sickeningly) impressive enough, Zegler will be performing at the Soho Place theatre for a concert residency that’s “unlike anything she’s done before”. Suck on that, Vegas — you’re not the only place that gets epic residencies anymore.

The actress has described her shows, which will run from January 5th until January 17th, as “her most intimate shows to date”, no doubt putting her “sublime vocals and extraordinary stage presence” in the well-earned spotlight. Anyone who has been to Soho Place Theatre will be familiar with its intimate staging, where the audience is fairly snug with the stage, and it’s laid out so that the audience feels immersed in the production rather than just watching it.

Back to the Big Smoke

Zegler is no stranger to London’s West End, starring in the hit revival of Sir Tim Rice and Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Evita as the lead character, the former first lady of Argentina. The role earned Zegler her first Olivier award. The performance became incredibly popular thanks in part to her rendition of the musical’s most famous number, Don’t Cry For Me Argentina, which she performed from the balcony of the Palladium theatre to passers-by on the street. Crowds of excited theatre lovers who couldn’t quite shell out for the full ticket turned up each night. She also appeared in the West End earlier this year, starring as Cathy Hiatt in the musical The Last Five Years, opposite fellow US actor and broadway legend Ben Platt.

Whilst this is a new show, it isn’t the first time Zegler has done a solo concert in the capital’s theatre district; in October 2025, Zegler returned to the Palladium for a one-night-only concert full of story-telling and songs.

This upcoming series of shows mark Zegler’s residency debut, and more details are expected to be revealed soon about the show. On Instagram, the star said she was “so excited” to announce her first ever concert residency.

The concert residency has been produced by Lambert Jackson with musical supervision and arrangements by Adam Hoskins and follows her wildly successful West End debut last year.

Jamie Lambert, the chief executive officer of Lambert Jackson, said: “Being able to bring Rachel back to London, the city that showed her so much love during Evita, her solo shows and The Last Five Years, is a wonderful next step in our partnership.

“We are thrilled to be presenting Rachel in her first residency, a landmark moment for any artist and one which demonstrates the extraordinary connection she has built with audiences.

“It is richly deserved – she is a rare talent.”

Tickets for all 14 performances will be going on sale on Wednesday 30th via Soho Place.

• Ronnie Scott’s is heading to a new London location for a jazz residency this October

A South London Odeon cinemas branch is set to close within weeks, ahead of plans to turn the site into a church.

Odeon Beckenham will close at the end of November, the cinema chain has now confirmed. Its grade-2 listed building was acquired by Citygate Chuch, which currently inhabits the site over the road from the cinema, in July 2026 according to Land Registry records.

Unsurprisingly, many local residents aren’t too keen on the plan.

“Hundreds of you have been in touch,” says local MP Liam Conlon.

“As the MP for Beckenham and Penge, I'm meeting City Gate Church and Odeon next week and want to represent the strength of local feeling about this proposed change.”

Those who would rather see Odeon Becknenham remain open are invited to fill in a form hosted at Action Network.

“I will be reading every response, and putting them to City Gate and Odeon when I meet them – so please do fill out the survey, and share with friends, neighbours, and family,” writes Liam Conlon.

The other side of this drama, Citygate Church, is also holding a consultation at its current church, found at the site of Beckenham’s former post office, on 10th October.

“The proposals seek to return the Art Deco cinema to a single auditorium and uncover the original internal decoration, better revealing the significant features of the listed building,” reads a mailer sent to local residents from Your Shout “on behalf of Citygate Church.”

The site has operated as a cinema since 1930, initially as The Regal Cinema. Over the years it has been run by County Cinemas, Union Cinemas, ABC and Cannon, before Odeon took over the lease in 2000. After that point it was converted into the six screening room space it is today. For now anyway.

Odeon Beckenham offers audience-friendly perks like £5 tickets on Mondays and Silver Cinema screenings intended for the over-60s for just £2.

Citygate Church was investigated by the Charity Commission in 2021 for its investment of almost a £1 million with a Dubai property developer. Lead pastor Julian Melfi was implicated in the findings’ conclusion that “former trustees had demonstrated poor judgement and inadequate decision making.”

“This is serious misconduct and/or mismanagement in the administration of the charity over several years,” the summary reads. Melfi is no longer a trustee of the charity.

It doesn’t appear to have stopped Citygate Church from drumming up the funds to take over the “most iconic venue” in the area, though, as MP Lian Conlon puts it.

• The BIG London Cinema List 2026: Film festivals, seasons, Q&As and rep screenings

London’s latest immersive experience opens this week — Everest: The First Ascent.

You’ll don a VR headset and, for around 40 minutes, will get to experience a virtual version of the first ascent of Everest, the highest mountain in the world. It's the famous and historic trek by explorer Edmund Hillary and his guide Tenzing Norgay, from 1953.

“In 1953, Everest was still uncharted territory. Relive the first ascent of Everest, all the way to the summit,” says Eclipso Cultural Adventures, the company behind this experience.

Everest: The First Ascent is a free-roam VR experience. You walk around immersive 3D scenes, which include base camp and a monastery as well as the mountaintop vistas you may already be picturing. It takes place in a 400 square metre set, and there are physical special effects to amp up the immersion factor.

“Cold air, wind, vibration and pressure cues your body reads as real,” reads the website.

Sound up your street/mountainside? The review of Everest: The First Ascent by Immersive Rumours is worth a read, as it goes into a bit more detail than you’ll get from the official website. It'll give you a better idea of what to expect than the wealth of what look a bit like AI-generated images on the official website.

The claim is we get a legit and properly researched view of the historic expedition, with input from Katia Buffetrille, “professor and specialist in the sacred mountains of Tibetan Buddhism.”

“Each sequence has been checked and enhanced to ensure a faithful historical, cultural and human reconstruction,” says Eclipso.

This is the same company that gave us Colosseum: The Legendary Arena, Space Explorers: The ISS Experience and Titanic: Echoes From the Past.

According to Immersive Rumours, this new experience sees the team upgrade their hardware too. It uses Pico 4 Ultra headsets rather Than the HTC Vive ones employed previously, with a 2160 x 2160 display per eye, similar to that of the Meta Quest 3.

Everest: The First Ascent is found at Eclipso London, at 213-219 Camden High Street. It’s right next to Camden Town Underground station.

Adult tickets cost £27.50, kids and students pay £21.50. It’s suitable for ages eight and up. There are also London resident tickets for £22.50 — make sure to bring some form of proof of address for that one.

The earliest slot you can currently book for Everest: The First Ascent is Thursday, 1st October.

• The best exhibitions in London this autumn: From Bayeux to Picasso and America’s scientific history

The world’s first Minecraft hotel is coming to Greater London next year, and we’ve been given a first look at what we can expect.

The Minecraft hotel will be part of Chessington World of Adventures, where a Minecraft World area opens next year.

This project appears to be a repurposing of the current Azteca hotel, found within the Chessington World of Adventures wider grounds. It features rooms themed around The Gruffalo as well as “Monkey Temple” designs.

The Minecraft hotel will feature 69 rooms spread across four floors, with the decor of both those rooms and the reception area drenched in Minecraft-inspired colourful and blocky visuals. Expect wood block-style bunk beds, walls luridly attired with game visuals, Minecraft bed spreads and a stool that looks like a TNT block.

Don’t let the kids see the concept images unless you want them to be begging you for a visit for the rest of the year — and it may be enough to induce a migraine in some adults. The current Azteca hotel does feature some non-themed rooms but there’s no word of that for the Minecraft revamp’s more grumpy visitors.

The hotel will feature a restaurant with “game inspired” meals, replacing the Temple Restaurant & Bar found there today. It will have an underwater theme, while the bar area will be decked out in Woodland Mansion style.

“Every room, corridor and detail has been crafted with immense love for this game, the stories made within it and its community,” says Daisy Mercedes, Creative Producer at Merlin Entertainments.

This is a part of a £50 million project to bring Minecraft World to the park. It replaces the Wild Asia area, which opened in 2010. The unusual Kobra rollercoaster(ish) experience from that zone will reportedly be repurposed in Minecraft World, but the main attraction of the new area is a rollercoaster called Escape the Nether.

It’s dubbed an “indoor-outdoor” ride, and an early visualisation suggests we’ll sit in a four-a-row blocky Minecraft cart. Height requirements for the ride are yet to be revealed, but there is a little time for the kids to sprout up.

Minecraft World’s opening date is yet to be revealed beyond being some time in 2027. Peak season for the park is, of course, during school holidays so the team will want the area, and the hotel, open by July 2027.

The last new major park area was World of Paw Patrol, which opened in May 2026.

• Universal Studios UK theme park gets go-ahead for development — and thrill seekers are in for a treat

We now know who will direct the next major instalment of the Star Wars movie saga: Jon Watts.

This will be the first film in a trilogy written by Simon Kinburg, whose writing credits include X-Men: Days of Future Past, Star Wars: Rebels and Sherlock Holmes. You can never assume plans will become reality in the Star Wars universe anymore, but will this presumably be the next major Star Wars cinematic arc.

Jon Watts’s directing credits include Star Wars TV series Skeleton Crew, the one starring Jude Law and a bunch of kids. And, on the film side, a trio of super-successful Spider-Man movies, with Homecoming, Far From Home and No Way Home. The man has big box office history.

• EXCLUSIVE: Nick Frost on the secrets behind his new Star Wars: Skeleton Crew character

Before you get too invested, this one has apparently not had the official greenlight from Disney, according to Deadline. That means it’s years away, and judging by how things are going within Star Wars, may end up quietly canned.

But this could be a biggie. The trilogy is expected to see the return of Rey, played by Daisy Ridley in the three main line Star Wars sequel trilogy films released between 2015 and 2019.

News of this trilogy surfaced in 2024, in the era of Kathleen Kennedy’s leadership of Lucasfilm. Arch Star Wars nerd Dave Filoni took over the job in 2026, to act as president alongside Lynwen Brennan.

Since 2019 the series has only seen one major new cinema release, Jon Favreau’s The Mandalorian and Grogu. It did not make a profit at cinemas. While not a true box office disaster like Supergirl, horror flick Obsession earned far more despite being R/18 rated and being made for — according to reports — less than a million dollars. Bit embarrassing for the Hollywood execs involved.

The next movie up on the Star Wars schedule is Starfighter, an offshoot tale starring Ryan Gosling as Kade Oberon.

“When a cynical rogue is confronted by his mysterious past, he is hurled into a dangerous adventure across the galaxy that puts him on a crash course with destiny,” reads the official blurb.

In a rare moment of Star Wars clarity, we can say this one is pretty much definitely coming. The main bulk of the film’s shooting took place in mid-late 2025, and Star Wars: Starfighter is due in cinemas on 28th May, 2027.

• The best Star Wars TV shows of all time

London’s Oxford Street is probably not the first place you’d expect to stumble across a contemporary art exhibition. But that’s rather the point. This October, W1 Curates is bringing together the worlds of art, music, nightlife and technology, transforming its Oxford Street public art platform into an immersive cultural experience as part of Frieze London.

The centrepiece is MUSIC by Sir Michael Craig-Martin, running from 5th October to 4th November. Following its debut in Ibiza, the exhibition brings three decades of Craig-Martin’s instantly recognisable paintings of musical instruments to W1 Curates, with the works blown up to monumental scale across its digital screens.

For its London outing, MUSIC will also feature a specially curated audio component, turning the exhibition into an audio-visual experience and further blurring the boundaries between visual art, sound and live performance.

It’s an idea that W1 Curates has already been exploring in Ibiza. Its second Culture Collective: Ibiza Art Weekend, held in September, brought 70 international artists together with figures from music, fashion and culture across . The programme deliberately placed contemporary art inside spaces better known for DJs and dancefloors. Now that same philosophy is heading back to London.

Frieze week specials

There are two particularly important dates during Frieze week. On 15th October, W1 Curates will host Craig-Martin in conversation with Gagosian, exploring the development of MUSIC and the artist's career, as well as the possibilities of taking art beyond conventional galleries.

Then, on 16th October, things get a bit louder. W1 Curates and The Night League will host a special event featuring headline DJs and live programming incorporated directly into the exhibition. For one night, MUSIC becomes part art exhibition, part club night and part live cultural experience. W1 Curates will also host an October launch party for Tinie Tempah’s forthcoming album The Night’s Not Dead, alongside an exhibition of its album-cover artwork by David King Reuben — another collaboration born from the conversations and connections made during Culture Collective in Ibiza.

For W1 Curates, it’s all part of a bigger idea: getting art out of the gallery and into the places where people actually spend their time. So, whether you’re heading to Frieze specifically for the art or simply passing through Oxford Street on your way somewhere else, this October offers a rather different way to experience it. Just don't forget to bring your ears.

• The BIG London gig list 2026: Your guide to this year's very best shows, festivals and concerts

Usually Ronnie Scott’s is associated with a suave kind of sultry Soho where people are out past 11pm, with saxy jazz music playing away whilst people sip on Sazeracs. And whilst that’s not changing, the legendary live music is heading on a little sojourn, popping over to a bar right beside London’s St Paul’s Cathedral for a month of music.

The Anthologist over in Bank is welcoming in Ronnie Scott’s for a month of Friday night fun across October. The bar will be hosting the London institution for four evenings of live entertainment from some of the jazz club’s most exciting performers. To go alongside all this sophistication, there will be an exclusive menu created for the evenings, consisting of bourbon based cocktails from Maker’s Mark, bringing the taste of vintage New Orleans as well as its sounds and influence.

There are two speciality cocktails on the menu – a Mango Spiced Whiskey Sour & Salted Caramel Popcorn Old Fashioned. If you want some good news, a welcome cocktail is included in the ticket price, so you won’t be shelling out £££ on top of tickets. At least for the first round anyway.

Doors open at 8pm, with tickets priced at £20 including a welcome cocktail and an evening of live entertainment from the likes of Acantha Lang, Marcus Bofanti, Louise Marshall, and Jo Harrop. Lang is a New Orleans-born soul singer, whilst Bofanti is a two-time British Blues Award winner. Meanwhile Marshall is a long-standing vocalist with Jools Holland's Rhythm & Blues Orchestra, who has performed alongside David Gilmour, Chaka Khan and Beverley Knight, and Harrop, rounding off the residency, who is an acclaimed jazz vocalist and has won Jazz Album of the Year.

TLDR: it’s a pretty fab lineup, and your Friday nights are in good hands – or rather, good bands.

You can book tickets here.

• London’s 10 best craft beer bottle shops

Apple Music Hall has only just announced its arrival as a new venue at Battersea Power Station, but it already has one hell of a gig diary.

Apple has announced the first run of artists set to perform at its new 600-capacity London space, with Elton John, Baby Keem, Skye Newman, Troye Sivan, Arlo Parks, Burna Boy, Chase & Status and Charli xcx all booked to take the stage.

And the first name through the door is a pretty big one. Elton John will officially open Apple Music Hall on Monday 28th September, followed by Baby Keem on 2nd October and Skye Newman on 7th October.

The rest of the initial schedule runs through the autumn and into December, with Troye Sivan on 13th October, Arlo Parks on 22nd October, Burna Boy on 29th October, Chase & Status on 26th November and Charli xcx on 2nd December.

Big names incoming

The first three shows are particularly imminent, with tickets for Elton John, Baby Keem and Skye Newman going on sale at 9am BST on Monday 28th September. Yep — tickets for the Elton show are being released the same day as the actual performance itself. Keep in mind that Elton has also retired from large-scale global tour schedules, making this an extremely rare hot ticket.

But refreshingly, the tickets are at very accessible prices — none are listed for more than £40 at present, across all shows.

Tickets for the remaining shows will be released at a later date, with Dice the partnering ticket service to book through.

So what makes Apple Music Hall different from London's other gig venues? For starters, this isn't a massive arena where you'll need binoculars to see the artist. The purpose-built venue holds just 600 people, with Apple specifically designing it to combine the intimacy of a small gig with the production capabilities of a much bigger show.

There's a 38-foot-wide stage that can be rearranged for traditional or in-the-round performances, while a 48-speaker Spatial Audio system surrounds the audience.

Behind the scenes, things get even more Apple-y. The venue has two recording and mixing studios, infrastructure for 16 or more cameras and a dedicated broadcast control room. That means performances can be recorded in Spatial Audio, turned into broadcast-ready productions and captured on multicamera video – all from the same gig. Shows will also be livestreamed globally, so that 600-person capacity doesn't necessarily mean only 600 people get to experience them.

Apple Music Hall might be one of London's smallest new venues – but its ambitions match the scale of the tech giant behind the curtains.

• The BIG London gig list 2026: Your guide to this year's very best shows, festivals and concerts

The Michelin Guide has announced its September 2026 additions, and they include six featured restaurants in London.

As is often the case with these Michelin picks, Mayfair has outsize importance relative to its geographic size. Five of the seven guide additions are in the area, so let’s start with the ones found elsewhere.

Simpson’s in The Strand gets a featured position in the guide. It has, of course, been around for decades at this point, but only reopened in March 2026 after its 2020 closure during the pandemic.

It has its own slice of Michelin history too, having been granted one in the first Michelin Guide from 1974. Simpson’s in The Strand does not hold a star today, but the reception to its 2026 opening was a strong one.

“It’s a place I will lean on when I simply need to be fed, nurtured and taken care of,” said Grace Dent in her review for The Guardian.

Next up is a steakhouse in the City of London area, MRBL, which also opened in March. Steaks are available from £20, while the veggies can try out a cauliflower steak for £18.

“Our steaks are dry-aged for a minimum of 35 days and cooked over charcoal. We use only selected native breeds: English Longhorn, Hereford, and Aberdeen Angus cattle, grass-fed and reared on farms in Yorkshire and Norfolk,” says MRBL.

The restaurant also offers Sunday roasts, topped off by the £32 Roast Hereford, served with potatoes, carrots, hispi cabbage, cauliflower cheese croquette and a Yorkshire pudding.

Mayfair massive

Now it’s time to take a trip to Mayfair for the rest of this month’s Michelin Guide additions:

Chez Rose: A French bistro whose eye-catching menu items include a t-bone steak for two (£145), dover sole with meuniere sauce and lemon (£58) and veal cutlet with salsa verde.

DakaDaka: Georgian restaurant that serves classic Khachapuri — like a Georgian pizza cheese boat — as well as Khinkali dumplings, stews and more meaty fare.

Dante: An Italian restaurant offering a mix of fish, meat and pasta dishes, plus salads, but no pizzas. Because it’s classy. A whole lobster for £96.

Sushi Amamoto: Just 16 seats in this upmarket sushi restaurant, which offers omakase testing menus. £180 off-peak for the 17-course deal, £380 for the 22-course banquet.

Bar Des Pres: French-Japanese fusion, with a notable cocktail list to boot. Headed by chef Cyril Lignac, you can look forward to maki, raw and grilled seafood. And even a wagyu beef sando £89).

• 9 international menu items are coming to London McDonald's restaurants this week

Leytonstone is getting a new music venue and bar next month, dubbed Altar.

The site is set to open on 23rd October, and we’re promised live music at least three times a week, according to a preview by the Leytonstoner blog.

Altar is planned as a multi-identity kind of venue. It’s a cocktail bar, a place to check out new vinyl releases and a place for after-work drinks as well as a gig venue with room for around 100 revellers.

There are no live music listings just yet, but the programme is to be curated by Transgressive Records founder Toby L and the team behind Leytonstone’s Shake the High Road local festival.

Acts at the 2026 edition of the festival included Gold Panda, Pan Amsterdam and Sholto.

Reviving a much-loved space

For now, though, you’ll have to make do with some teasers as to what else you can expect when you step into Altar.

The ground floor seating is decked out in moody velvet, offset by the shiny tiled bar. We expect this area to feel quite different to the sweat-box-ready lower room where you’ll get to see bands and DJs perform.

Altar’s drinks menu is designed by Chop Shop Tavern, and includes unusual picks like the Caprese gimlet, a gin cocktail with flavours of tomato, basil and black pepper. Some of your food options will come with an off-kilter approach too, like the banh mi hot dog, which brings spiced kachumber and sharp pickled carrot flavours to a fast food classic.

Altar takes over the space once inhabited by Luna Lounge. It too was a big live music hub for the area, but closed in 2024 following rising costs and a failed crowdfunding campaign.

Hopefully Altar will have better luck when it opens next month. You’ll find the venue at 7 Church Lane, just a couple of hundred metres away from Leytonstone tube station.

• First two London bars in the worldwide top 100 best revealed

You must have been actively avoiding music news over the last couple of weeks if you’ve missed the Macklemore saga, and the rapper has now announced his own mini tour including a date in London.

There’s not long to wait either. Macklemore’s Free Palestine Tour will land in London on 30th October, at the 12,500-capacity Wembley Arena.

This date follows concerts in Paris on 29th October and Dublin on 26th October, all at sizeable arenas.

“All proceeds benefiting organisations supporting Palestine and the Palestinian movement,” reads the tour poster.

To sign up for ticket availability details, you can enter your number over at the Macklemore website. And given the timescale we’re working with, it can’t be long before tickets go on sale.

Pop problems

This announcement follows Macklemore’s departure from the Ed Sheeran Loop tour following his pro-Palestine statements made during a performance. As Macklemore explained in a a statement, Sheeran was threatened with being blocked from performing at all if he did not remove the rapper from the tour.

Sheeran has said the decision to remove Macklemore was the “promoter’s decision,” rather than his own. He played two dates with Sheeran at the MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, on 4th and 5th September, and was initially signed-up to perform at most dates until the US leg’s end in November.

Since then, Sheeran’s own self-labelled “apolitical” stance has been criticised widely, while other support acts Aaron Rowe, Beoga and Lukas Graham have also left the tour.

To add to Sheeran’s — a pop star with net worth of upwards of £400 million — woes, there’s word his Gilette Stadium shows in New England this weekend may have to be cancelled thanks to a major incoming storm.

Ed Sheeran last played in London at The O2 Arena’s Capital FM Jingle Bell Ball in December 2025, while the Loop tour is yet to have a single London date announced.

• The BIG London gig list 2026

The latest release of the Top 50 Bars in the World list is out, and London has snagged a respectable number of entries in the list.

Yes — despite the headline here, Top 50 is correct. In a slightly odd move, the Top 50 Bars team has actually only released numbers 51-100 in this latest update, with the actual top 50 due on 7th October.

It’s a teaser announcement, ahead of the big day. But there are still a couple of London highlights to sip over.

Our London picks sit at number 73, with Three Sheets’s Soho bar, and Scarfes Bar in Holborn at number 77.

This represents a bit of a fall for one of these in the rankings, compared to last year’s results. Scarfes Bar tumbles from number 31 to 77, but Three Sheets Soho has actually risen slightly, from 81 to 73.

The full list of top bars will be revealed as part of a ceremony in Milan — and the judging panel consists of upwards of 800 folks in the industry, including cocktail experts and journalists.

In last year’s rankings, London locales took up four slots in the top 50 positions, an additional three in places 51 to 100.

The top-billing establishment was Tayēr + Elementary at number five, an Old Street cocktail bar that was tragically forced to close following a fire in the building earlier this year.

Just last week the team confirmed the bar will not re-open in 2026.

“Being unable to open our doors for reasons completely outside of our control has been difficult, and we miss the bar, our routine, our regulars and the everyday rhythm of sharing our space with all of you more than we can say,” the team wrote on Instagram. But Tayēr + Elementary still plan to re-open, and it’s clearer than ever they still plan to.

Presumably, the bar will no longer be a valid contender for the list.

London’s other highest rated spots last year were Connaught Bar at number six — which is very much still open — and Satan’s Whiskers at number 21.

We expect to see that bar do well once more. Just a couple of months ago it won the Best International Cocktail bar at the 2026 Spirited awards, so clearly hasn't dropped off after a strong opening — it has been around since 2013, but had grown in reputation over the last couple of years.

• A huge new bar from the Inception Group is opening up inside one of London’s largest landmarks

Have a hankering for fish and chips? There are three London eateries you absolutely need to consider according to the Fish & Chip Takeaway of the Year Award team.

The 40-strong long list of potential overall winners across the nation has been revealed, and three of them are in London. Not bad going considering it’s not as if anyone’s pulling fish straight out of the Thames and putting them into the fryer.

First up is Southwark’s Fish! Kitchen, which has been around since 1999. It serves some dishes far outside of the chip shop norm, end even ribeye steak. But on the classic fried fish front you can choose from cod, haddock, halibut, plaice, skate, or hake. You’l pay £24-34 for the meal, which includes chips, mushy peas and tartare sauce.

Slightly less pricey is Chipping Wharf Fish & Chips, whose meal deals land at just under £20 for a classic cod, haddock or plaice combo. It’s found in Bow, nearby Victoria Park. And you can even get it via delivery services like Uber Eats — although with every second of steam likely to affect the battery crunch we think it’s best experienced fresh out of the fryer.

Our third chippie is the longest-standing and perhaps most traditional of the lot, Harrow’s Skipjacks. It has been around since 1969, and serves kebab shop fare as well as classic fried and grilled fish.

You’ll pay £15.95 for a smaller serving of cod and chips, according to the place’s Just Eat listing. Skipjacks is found in Harrow, not far from the Queensbury tube station.

Big winner to be announced

Top marks all-round for these fish fryers, but it’s not the end of the story of the Takeaway of the Year awards. Not even close.

These three have made it into the top 40 long list, which will then be whittled down to 20. Then a final ten, revealed in “a couple of months’ time” according to Fry Magazine.

The National Fish & Chip awards will then be held in London on 24th February next year. The Takeaway of the Year final winner will be one of 14 awards revealed at that event.

• Four London restaurants added to the Michelin Guide in globe-trotting update

Master of all things VR, Meta has come up with a new headset in what it calls a “new era for virtual reality.”

For a while it looked like Meta was bowing out of virtual reality altogether, but the Meta VR Glasses offer a rather different take on the category to what the Meta Quest 3 headset offers.

As you might guess from the name, the Meta VR Glasses look a lot more like a pair of normal glasses than the Meta Quest series ever has. They are “five times lighter than Meta Quest 3” according to the announcement blog, with one key design change.

The Meta VR Glasses use a wired housing that contains the battery and brains of the thing — like the Apple Vision Pro — with a belt clip on its back. Not quite everything is built into the glasses themselves, as we saw recently in the Snap Specs.

In the glasses part we get the displays and the motion sensors. And, no, you can’t put the processor puck part in your pocket as it uses cooling fans, which would be blocked by your jeans.

It’s not as if you’re going to wear the Meta VR Glasses and hope to pretend nobody notices you’re wearing something unusual, though. They block your vision like a VR headset, rather than letting you see your surroundings as the Ray Ban Meta smart glasses do.

You aren’t getting quite a Meta Quest 3 experience here either. The Meta VR Glasses use great micro OLED screens rather than LCD ones, for much better contrast. Image sharpness will be superior too, with 37 pixels per degree to the 25ppd of the Meta Quest 3.

That sharpness is here to let you use the Meta VR Glasses a bit like an Apple Vision Pro, opening up laptop/PC style windows for actual work rather than just messing about with gaming or video streaming.

You control the basics with your hands and eyes — no controller needed.

The snag is that the width, the size, of the VR image isn’t nearly as expansive as the Meta Quest series’s, or the Vision Pro’s. You get around 70 degrees vertical coverage, 67 degrees vertical.

A Quest 3 sits at around 110 degrees horizontal, 96 degrees vertical. This means the Meta VR Glasses display feels much more like a screen sitting in the air in front of you, rather than a vision-filling spectacle.

Meta has done its best to offset this in the marketing, though, snagging the VR Glasses the title of the “first IMAX enhanced certified VR device.” They also have Dolby Vision certification and support for Dolby Atmos using the baked-in audio. Not bad.

Other vital statistics include a new Qualcomm Snapdragon Reality Elite processor, optional prescription inserts, 5K overall resolution, around 100g weight, three hours of battery life when playing media and 45-minute charging.

It sounds pretty great to us, leaving just one looming issue: the price. The Meta VR Glasses will cost $1299.99 when they arrive in “Spring 2027.” UK pricing is yet to be confirmed but it’s clear we’ll have to fork out a bunch more than the £549.99 of the Meta Quest 3.

• Space-themed VR experience opens in London

Oasis have announced an entirely unsurprising expansion of their ‘Live 27 tour, as they warn fans not to get taken in by fraudsters as ticket scams ramp up.

The UK gets two more Knebworth gigs, on 25th and 26th September, adding to the four dates between 11th and 19th September the band had already outed.

There are no new Manchester Etihad Stadium dates — 11 is enough for that 60-odd-thousand venue apparently — but the band have also added a few days to the European leg.

Munich adds a 6th July date, Rome gets an additional concert on 25th July. And the Paris plans have been moved around thanks to engineering works in the city.

The 24th July show originally announced has been moved to 20th July, which no doubt helped to bring about the new Rome 25th July show.

This brings Oasis’ ‘Live 27 tour to 42 dates. That is one more show than the band performed as part of the ‘Live 25 tour — 41 — which is no doubt a deliberate move to let the Gallaghers say it’s an even bigger event.

Oasis 'Live 27 Ticket Details

The bad news: while there are new dates, you still need to have signed up for a code to be in with a chance of picking up general sale tickets.

UK date tickets go on sale from 9am on Friday, 25th September, with additional tranches available the following two days too. The date and time you get access to is specified on the invite code fans should have received by now. Registration ended a week ago on 17th September.

There will of course be plenty of opportunities for the fast-fingered among you to get a resale ticket after the fact. This is also the peak time for fans to get targeted by scams.

The band has posted on its social media warning about these scams, focusing on anyone who has been emailed a code that does not come from the official oasis@openstageit.com email.

“Any codes that are offered for sale are fraudulent and will not enable you to buy tickets,” the band warns. It’s also clearly a scam if you end up directed anywhere but Ticketmaster, where the tour tickets will be sold later this week.

The 2025 tour’s ticket sale was absolute chaos, and the hope is the more broken-up ticket process will avoid that this time around. Ticket prices are expected to land between £71.50 and £266.60 including fees.

• Oasis confirm 2027 world tour: Here's how to definitely (maybe) get tickets

Beats has unveiled its new flagship over-ear headphones, and there’s a rather neat trick that sets them apart from the competition: you can swap out the ear cushions and headband to change their look and feel.

The new Beats 360 are the first Beats headphones to feature interchangeable cushion kits, allowing owners to customise their headphones according to their style, activity, or just moods and whims.

They launch in four core colours – Black, Cloud, Pink and Sky – with matching performance knit cushions included. Additional cushion kits are available in (deep breath) Performance Knit in Black, Cloud, Pink, Sky, Navy and Volt, while UltraPlush versions come in Black and Cloud.

The customisation is more than just cosmetic though. Performance Knit cushions use memory foam wrapped in breathable knit and are designed with exercise and stability in mind, while the UltraPlush versions use engineered leather for longer, more comfortable listening sessions.

Beats says the 360 deliver its best sound and comfort yet, with a new acoustic platform and custom drivers designed specifically for the headphones. Active Noise Cancellation is also claimed to deliver up to a very-specific '1.75 times' more total noise cancellation than the existing Beats Studio Pro, while Transparency mode lets outside sound back in when required.

There’s also Adaptive EQ, personalised Spatial Audio with dynamic head tracking and Dolby Atmos support, making the 360 suitable for everything from listening to your playlists to settling in for a lengthy podcasts or film.

Gym ready

They’re built for life beyond the sofa, too. Beats 360 are the brand’s first over-ear headphones with an IPX4 sweat and water-resistance rating, while the fold-flat design and included ripstop fabric case make them easier to chuck into a bag.

Battery life is rated at up to 32 hours, with ANC and personalised Spatial Audio enabled, while a five-minute Fast Fuel charge provides up to an hour of playback.

Beats 360 are available to order now for £299.95, with in-store availability from 24th September. Cushion kits normally cost £49.95, although UK customers can currently pick them up for £9.95 as part of a limited introductory offer.

• New Snap Specs revealed: Are augmented reality glasses the next must-have accessory for Londoners?

Fancy adding some real art to your walls without spending a small fortune? The Other Art Fair is returning to East London this October, bringing more than 135 independent artists to Brick Lane’s Truman Brewery for four days of exhibitions, live events and creative happenings.

Running from 8th - 11th October, the fair is designed to make buying art feel less intimidating for those more accustomed to blue tacking a poster to their walls. Visitors will be able to meet artists, hear the stories behind their work and buy directly from the people who made it. Almost 80% of the artists taking part are based in the UK.

There’s plenty of new talent to discover, too. Four artists will be making their London debuts, including London-based oil painter Holly Garbett, Korean-American painter Courtney Bae, hyperrealistic pastel artist Danielle Verbeeten and painter Emmanuelle Walker, whose work finds beauty in everyday scenes through grids, repetition and abstraction.

British photographer Amelia Troubridge is the fair's 2026 Guest Artist, showcasing photographs from her England archive spanning 1995 to 2023, including portraits of Steve Coogan, Nick Cave and Olivia Colman. She'll also be at the fair throughout the weekend, giving visitors the chance to meet her and hear more about her work.

Friday night gets an Ibiza twist, meanwhile, as legendary club institution Manumission takes over for a special evening of DJs, conversation and culture, including a discussion around its new book, The Motel. Saturday will be soundtracked by London collective Club Lune Bleue, which champions women DJs and producers.

There are plenty of hands-on bits, too. You can get a poem written for you on the spot by resident typewriter poet Luke, contribute to the evolving Creative Corner display, or simply browse the Under £300 Collection, which brings together original works priced at £300 or less.

Tickets and further information are available via The Other Art Fair website.

• The best exhibitions in London this autumn: From Bayeux to Picasso and America’s scientific history

Two decades after Amy Winehouse released Back to Black, the seminal album is coming home to Camden for a very special one-night-only concert.

The Amy Winehouse Band will perform the album in full at Camden’s Roundhouse on Wednesday 21st October, with original producers Mark Ronson and Salaam Remi reunited for the celebration.

And they won't be doing it alone. A seriously impressive collection of artists and friends of the late star will take on Amy's songs, with Corinne Bailey Rae, Jorja Smith, Lianne La Havas, Yebba, FLO, Jessie Reyez, Baby Rose, Nia Smith, Sasha Keable and Skye Newman among the special guests.

The event’s music will be masterminded by Ronson and Remi alongside Amy's long-term musical director Dale Davis, producers Paul O'Duffy and p*nut, and Darcus Beese.

“I’m honoured to be asked to come celebrate Amy alongside Salaam and some amazing artists worthy of singing her songs,” said Ronson. “Doing justice to the legacy of Back to Black is the order of the night.”

Released in October 2006, Back to Black remains a much-loved, landmark album, earning Winehouse five Grammy Awards and selling more than 25 million copies worldwide. Its combination of brutally honest songwriting, retro soul, with Winehouse's unmistakable voice cementing her place as one of the defining artists of her generation. The creative partnership with Ronson also gave us a perennial wedding party classic in the shape of her cover of ‘Valerie’, found on Ronson's Version album and also as a live bonus track on Back to Black in some territories:

What sort of anniversary would it be without a reissue though? A deluxe version of Back to Black will arrive on 23rd October, featuring unreleased demos, rare B-sides and a live performance recorded at Amsterdam's Paradiso in 2007. It will also include previously unseen photography and new liner notes from Ronson and Remi.

And if you can't make it to Camden, the concert will be broadcast on BBC Two in late October, with BBC Radio 2 also airing the show during Jo Whiley's programme on Monday 26th October from 7pm.

How to get tickets for Back to Black 20

An official artist pre-sale is available to fans who pre-order a 20th Anniversary edition of Back to Black from the Amy Winehouse Official Artist Store by 12pm on Monday 28th September.

General ticket sales open at 10am on Thursday 1st October, with tickets available via Metropolis Music.

Twenty years on, it feels particularly fitting that Back to Black is being celebrated in Camden – the London neighbourhood that was so closely intertwined with Amy's life and music. Expect this one to be very hard to get tickets for.

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Harrods has given its menswear department a major refresh, unveiling a newly redesigned Designer Collections room on the second floor of its luxury Knightsbridge store.

The reasoning behind the revamp is pretty simple: according to Harrod’s buyers, the average moneyed bloke isn't necessarily looking for one big-ticket fashion flex any more. Instead, they're increasingly looking for clothes that can form a complete wardrobe, and work across everything from lazy weekends to slightly smarter occasions. It’s about convenience, taking the stress out of finding the perfect full fit.

The new space puts that idea front and centre, with a particular focus on the modern weekend wardrobe. That means greater prominence for the sorts of pieces that can do a bit of heavy lifting in your wardrobe, including outerwear, knitwear and gilets.

Big name brands

As you’d expect from the store for big spenders, there are plenty of big names to browse. The Designer Collections room brings together brands including Herno, Purdey, Barbour, Sease, Orlebar Brown, Paul & Shark and Vilebrequin, alongside an area curated by Harrods itself. A new dedicated pop-up space will also allow Harrods to host exclusive launches, seasonal collections and events to attract window shoppers across the year..

"The new Designer Collections room marks a significant expansion of our lifestyle

category and reflects how our customers are increasingly shopping for a complete

Wardrobe,” says Yasmin Mehmet, Menswear Buying Manager at Harrods.

“We are seeing growing demand for versatile pieces that seamlessly transition across different occasions, particularly within categories such as outerwear, knitwear and gilets. By bringing together a carefully curated selection of brands and creating an environment dedicated to discovery and inspiration, we are further strengthening our offer for the modern menswear customer."

The new Designer Collections department is now open, so if you’re in a fix for a fit for Friday, take a look.

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Crazy golf can sometimes be a little of a disappointment as the only crazy part of it is the price or the queues or the amount of times you miss the hole on the supposedly ‘easy’ course. However, a new course opening up in Shoreditch is set to remedy this, being a completely bonkers take on a standard crazy golf circuit, entirely decked out in 80s Americana with a horror film twist.

Called Ted’s Crazy Golf, the east London spot is set to open up at the end of October, just in time with spooky season’s big day. If the name sounds somewhat familiar it might be because Ted has another venue, although this one is a tad further away in Oxford and only opened up last month. Both the Oxford venue and the upcoming London one have taken over from former Junkyard Golf outposts. Aloso both of Ted’s courses are downright extra, drenched in old-school Americana props, paying homage to cult film favourites and serving up a good dose of proper comedy horror.

Luckily we already have an idea of what house of horrors treats we’re in for at the new spot. Ted's “twisted world” will see visitors take on two fun and creepy 9-hole crazy golf courses. The expansive location will be completely littered with a whole host of crazy creatures like gargoyles, vampire robots and jumping jack in the boxes and plenty more spooky sights. Those won’t be the only ghoulish things to gawp at; the first course is called Bad Bones which will take players through a gothic graveyard. The other course is called Toy Bites and according to Ted’s, it’s ‘part toyshop, part vampire nightmare’. Whilst the first course will feature huge Venus fly traps, snakes, zombies and more, the latter will be packed with mutated toys and scary scenes that will feel straight out of a horror-comedy flick.

If all that sporting (well, more like gaming), works up a thirst, you’ll be able to head to the aptly named Deadbeat Diner, a Ted-ian twist on a retro American joint. You’ll be able to stock up on pizzas, hot dogs, milkshakes, ice blasts, coke floats, themed cocktails, and a bar well stocked enough to help get rid of any jitters.

Co-founder Larissa Houghton said: ‘Bringing Ted’s to London was always something we wanted to do, but we knew that if we were going to do it, we had to go big. We want people to walk through the doors and immediately feel like they’ve left London behind and stepped into another world. It’s weird, nostalgic, funny, a little bit creepy and completely immersive. There really isn’t anything quite like Ted’s Crazy Golf and we can’t wait for people to see what we’ve been creating.’

Whilst the course opens up at the end of October, bookings will open up on 22nd September. Whilst ticket prices haven't been confirmed yet, judging by the Oxford ones, it will cost around £12.50 for 9 holes, and £21.50 18 holes.

• London is hosting a huge Surrealist exhibition with works from Magritte

Though London has plenty of brilliant places to see live music, from tiny pub back rooms to enormous arenas, it’s an area of the capital under fire. For every great venue Londoners can enjoy, there’s a handful more either closed or under threat of closure from rising costs — especially in the grassroots space where up-and-coming artists build a name for themselves outside of record label prep schools.

Entering into the fray is Apple — yes, the Apple behind your iPhone. Having changed the way the world consumes music with the iPod, iTunes, and now purveyor of the Apple Music streaming service, Apple is hoping to carve out a rather different niche with its brand-new Apple Music Hall, which opens this month inside Battersea Power Station.

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The 600-capacity venue has been designed to bring the intimacy of a small gig together with the production capabilities you'd normally expect from a much larger concert space. And, naturally, because this is Apple we're talking about, there is a serious amount of technology hiding behind the scenes.

Apple Music Hall takes plenty of visual cues from its iconic surroundings, with heritage brickwork, fluted arches and bronze balconies echoing the architecture of Battersea Power Station. It’s slick — this is a venue more in the vein of the Royal Festival Hall or Barbican than, say, the sticky floors of the Brixton Academy.

But it's what's happening behind the stage that makes the new venue particularly interesting.

Small venue, big tech

Apple says the 600-capacity space has been deliberately designed to “close the gap between intimacy and production value”.

The 38-foot-wide stage can be configured for a conventional front-facing performance or an in-the-round setup, while a 48-speaker Spatial Audio system surrounds the audience. That means you could be watching an artist from relatively close range while experiencing the sort of audio and staging production normally associated with a much larger show.

You won’t necessarily need to be in the room to enjoy the performances taking place at Apple Music Hall, either. Behind the stage are two professional recording and mixing studios, allowing performances to be captured as multitrack recordings and mixed in Spatial Audio either during or after the show.

The venue is also wired for 16 or more cameras, feeding into a dedicated broadcast control room. Apple says iPhone video capture can run alongside conventional broadcast cameras, meaning an artist can perform a relatively intimate London gig and leave with a broadcast-ready mix and multicamera footage. It’s all set for capturing a full concert movie, ready to be shared with fans — presumably through Apple’s own platforms.

ITunes Festival: The Sophomore Album?

The opening also marks something of a return to Apple's long-running relationship with London's live music scene.

Apple previously brought its Apple Music Festival (née iTunes Festival) to venues across London (with a long-standing stint at the Roundhouse). Massive acts like Oasis, Amy Winehouse, Elton John, Coldplay, Charli XCX and dozens more household names played. The line-ups really were impressive.

Apple Music Hall takes that idea in a rather different direction: rather than temporarily taking over an existing venue, Apple now has a permanent London home specifically designed around live performance, recording and broadcasting.

According to Apple Music's global creative director and Apple Music 1 host Zane Lowe, the intention is to make the connection between artists and fans the centre of it.

“We’re always looking for new opportunities to connect the artists and the fans because we are fans,” he said of the opening.

“What better way to celebrate this relationship than a new music venue where we get to experience amazing music in an amazing space and share it with the world. Great music and memories will be made at Apple Music Hall.”

There are still some questions to be answered. Apple has yet to announce the full programme of artists who will take to its new stage, how ticketing will work, and how much shows will cost. Given the company's track record of landing some seriously big names for its London music events, that's the bit we're particularly interested in seeing — could Apple subsidise the cost of seeing the mega-stars it pulls into its orbit? And will there be space for unsigned artists whose live music performance options are dwindling? It’ll be exciting to see how the Battersea spot evolves, but consider us very excited indeed.

• The BIG London gig list 2026: Your guide to this year's very best shows, festivals and concerts

Jorja Smith, Charli XCX, Bruno Mars, Raye, Sombr – these are all names you’d usually associate with London’s O2 Arena, but thanks to Wimbledon, tennis legends John McEnroe and Billie Jean King are joining the lineup for a very special evening.

For one afternoon only in June 2027, two of the biggest names tennis has ever produced are heading to London to share some of the stories behind the scenes from their unmatched tennis careers – from first serves to their current broadcasting gigs, and even giving their own thoughts on the current players. The event comes as part of the celebrations for Wimbledon’s 150th anniversary, as well as the O2’s 20th birthday celebrations. Whilst marking milestones for both the home of tennis and the London landmark, they’re not the only not significant birthdays – June 2027 marks 50 years since McEnroe’s Wimbledon debut, and 54 since Billie Jean King won her triple title.

Swapping centre court for centre stage, the pair – who are both notoriously outspoken – will be sharing unfiltered stories from the biggest moments of their lives, from McEnroe's unforgettable Wimbledon finals to King's iconic "Battle of the Sexes" win over Bobby Riggs – immortalised in film by Steve Carrell and Emma Stone. Billed as "a spoken word event”, according to the organisers, it is set to be "a unique matinee event quite unlike any other."

Billie Jean King, the sports icon and equality champion who captured a record 20 Wimbledon championships, and John McEnroe the man with the most combined singles and doubles titles on the ATP Tour, and the voice of tennis, didn’t just win at the top of tennis - they changed the sport – and with a staggering 56 Grand Slam titles between them. And now they're coming together at London's O2.

Whether you’re a die hard tennis fan or not it’s a pretty rare opportunity to hear two Hall of Fame legends reflecting on the lessons of a lifetime spent competing at the very top – and hopefully a fair bit of Wimbledon gossip too.

Speaking about the gig, King said: “Anytime John and I get together, it is a lively and engaging conversation and I am looking forward to being part of The O2’s twentieth anniversary season,”

“Tennis has given both John and me a wonderful platform for our lives and it will be fun to share stories that take the audience behind the curtain into the real world of our careers.”

Meanwhile, McEnroe said: “I am really looking forward to coming to London for a first time ever show with Billie Jean King. She is not only the most influential person in the history of Women’s Sports, but also my good friend and a living legend."

Tickets will go on general sale on Friday 25 September 2026, with O2 Priority, LTA & AELTC Pre-Sale happening on Tuesday 22 September 2026. Tickets will cost between £56 and £541. You can browse more information and tickets here.

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A sure-fire hit for kids and adults alike — aside from the few who find them unfathomably creepy — a Moomins exhibition is set to open in London this November.

The Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration has announced the exhibition, which begins on 21st November, but it’s clear this one won’t entirely focus on the beloved cartoony characters.

Tove Jansson and her Families is the title of the exhibition, which hopes to shine a light on “the personal relationships behind the celebrated artist,” through more than 100 illustrations and other artefacts, including those featuring — of course — the Moomins characters.

Finnish finesse

If you’ve read up on Jansson at all, you may well have heard about how the author and illustrator spent many summers living in a small cabin on a tiny rocky island in Finland with her partner Tuulikki Pietilä. It’s an evocative idea we’re likely to hear more about in the upcoming exhibition.

“Tove’s extended Moomin cast are intimately inspired by her family, friends and lovers in Helsinki’s cultural circles and lesbian community,” says curator Paul Gravett.

“Her lifelong celebration of inclusivity and individuality has never been more inspiring and necessary."

Alongside some of the earliest illustrations featuring the Moomins characters, through drawings surrounding her first book, we’ll see pieces of work Jansson created for “satirical magazine” Garm and those from her mother, who was a graphic designer.

A bit of an eye-opener, this is the “UK’s first ever exhibition to focus on Tove Jansson’s work as an illustrator,” according to the Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration.

However, in 2016 and 2017 the Southbank Centre held an Adventures in Moominland exhibition-slash-immersive-experience. And there was a Moomin-related exhibition at the Dulwich Picture Gallery in 2017, should you swear you’ve seen Moomins exhibits in London before.

How to visit

Tickets for the upcoming Tove Jansson and her Families cost £15 for adults, and go on sale from 10am on 22nd September. The show will be on at the centre until 9th May, 2027.

It’s one of two exhibitions announced for the Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration's winter season, alongside Faerdom: Now, As Ever.

That’s an exhibition from Fromm Studio, whose work combines modern techniques like 3D printing with tales of folklore.

Faerdom: Now, As Ever opens on 23rd October and runs until 29th March 2027 — tickets are also £15, and go on sale from 22nd September too.

Not heard of the Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration before? It only opened earlier this year, in June, and is found in Clerkenwell nearby the Angel tube station. Memberships start at £45 a year, which grant access to all exhibitions, plus a 10 per cent discount in the shop and cafe.

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The Smithfield area of London is in the process of getting a thorough revamp thanks to the incoming London Museum, and the latest chapter in that story is a rather special-sounding pub.

The Poet pub is set to open in “late 2026” and is much more than just a place to get a pint.

There will be a dedicated dining area, and the menu is devised by Charlie Tayler. He was previously head chef at Soho’s Aulis, which won a Michelin star in 2024.

“A new chapter in an old London story,” is the tagline the pub has given itself ahead of the grand opening.

We’re yet to see the place’s full menu, but Aulis gives us an idea of what to expect. It is based around intimate dining experiences based on “farm-to-fork” cooking, typically with absolutely loads of courses.

Two spaces for guests can be booked — the pub's dining room which is a la carte, and then Envoi launching in 2027 with 10 seats and a 14 course tasting menu.

'Thousands of years of London’s history'

Each of those zones will have a distinct feel. On the ground floor is the pub, which will also serve snacks including a "scampi fries" scotch egg.

The restaurant area is on the first floor, while the top level will be home to a cocktail bar, dubbed Shambles, although that’s not scheduled to open until 2027.

The Poet comes from the team behind Sune Restaurant in Hackney. It’s yet to receive a Michelin star but is a highly regarded spot that does feature in the guide. As if The Poet needed any more cred, anyway.

The pub will live at House 5 at the Central Market, between Farringdon and Barbican stations — in the spot where Bubb's Le Restaurant Francaise was once found.

There’s no firm opening date for The Poet just yet, but we have a pretty good clue in the form of the opening date for the London Museum. It opens its doors on 28th November.

“It brings together thousands of years of London’s history alongside a new social space for the city,” reads the official blurb on the upcoming museum.

The London Museum will be free to visit, and the space’s “permanent galleries” are set to open in November, with additional exhibition spaces planned to open through into 2028.

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From this week, new items will start appearing on McDonald’s menus across the country thanks to the World Menu Heist.

Less dramatic than it sounds, this involves a fistful of McDonald's picks from other countries coming to our local Maccies — including ones from Germany, Canada and China.

There are nine of these international interlopers, and all will arrive in UK McDonald’s locations from 22nd September.

Before you get too excited, there are just two mains.

First up is the Big Rösti from Germany, a beef burger with a potato rosti layer alongside bacon, cheese and both baconnaise and cheese sauces.

Or from Canada there’s the Maple & Cheddar Chicken, a crispy chicken burger given a Canadian twist with mustard maple sauce and citrus mayo.

Both of these will be available until 19th October.

Here’s the full list of World Menu Heist items, and how much you can expect to pay at a typical McDonald’s.

• Big Rösti (Germany) - £6.99
• Maple & Cheddar Chicken (Canada) - £7.29
• Mac and Cheese Triangles (UAE) - £2.89
• Paprika McShaker Fries (The Netherlands) - £2.29
• S’mores McFlurry (Canada) - £2.69
• Szechuan sauce (China) - 70p
• Guava x Sprite (India) - £2.39
• Chicken and Egg McMuffin (Australia) - £4.39
• Chicken and Bacon McMuffin (Australia) - £4.59

This World Menu Heist promotion also took place last year, bringing us treats like the Pineapple McSpicy from Australia, Garlic & Black Pepper nuggets from Japan and the Choco Caramel Pie from Indonesia.

Only one of this year’s picks is a returning hero, the Mac and Cheese Triangles from UAE, which McDonald’s describes as “crispy golden triangles of macaroni pasta filled with a rich cheddar cheese sauce and served with a classic Tomato Ketchup dip.”

Not exactly exotic, but we wouldn’t say no to a serving.

In other McDonald’s news, Shoreditch had a rather unusual pop-up at the end of last week, called The Counter. The idea is you’d be able to prepare and press your own burger patty, in a marketing scheme designed to promote that McDonald’s burgers are indeed made of beef. However, it was only open on 18th and 19th September.

Thankfully the World Menu Heist isn’t quite as fleeting, with items available until at least 19th October — and many well into November.

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In some of the biggest music news of 2026, Oasis recently announced another tour for next year, but the band apparently won’t play at the UK’s most famous music festival, Glastonbury.

A small gap in the Oasis Live ’27 schedule led some fans to speculate the band could play the festival, but organiser Emily Eavis has replied to one fan, appearing to shut down the rumours.

“Sorry Jimmy, not this time,” Eavis responed to Instagram user named Jimmy Chew following an post announcing Glastonbury ticket details. He had previously commented “please say you’ve got Oasis,” on the post.

Next year’s Glastonbury festival begins on 23rd June, 2027, and runs until 27th June. This sits amid Oasis’ run of gigs at Manchester’s Etihad Stadium, with dates on the 22nd, 25th and 26th June.

In order to play Glastonbury, the band would need to play consecutive days in Manchester and Worthy Farm — and there’s a four-hour drive between the two, and that's when the festival isn’t on.

It's a bit of an ask.

Possible headliners

Oasis last played Glastonbury more than twenty years ago, in 2004, following sets in their 90s heyday in both 1994 and 1995.

Emily Eavis, who has been a key part of the running of Glastonbury festival since 1999, has confirmed the headline acts for 2027 have been secured. She said so during an interview with BBC Radio 4’s PM programme.

No acts have been announced for Glastonbury 2027 yet, though, with Eavis simply suggesting Madonna is not among the headliners.

Bookmakers favourites to appear at the festival's Pyramid stage in 2027 include Sam Fender, Taylor Swift, Charli XCX and Eminem.

There was no Glastonbury this year — it was one of Worthy Farm’s “fallow" years, intended to let the farm's environment recover from having 200,000-plus people move in for the weekend.

Tickets for Glastonbury 2027 go on sale from 1st October, starting with coach packages ahead of general ticket sales on 4th October. Weekend tickets cost £408 and, as usual, they will be in high demand, even without a hand from Oasis. To be in with a chance of attending the festival, you need to pre-register for access over at the festival site — registration closes on 25th September.

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If your idea of a good Sunday involves eating your way through a Japanese street-food market while watching sumo, taiko drumming and dreaming of becoming a ninja, we've got some very good news.

Japan Matsuri is returning to London’s Trafalgar Square on Sunday 4th October, bringing a huge celebration of Japanese culture, food and entertainment to the city centre landmark. This year there's an added reason for Nintendo fans to turn up to the annual event: Pikmin are coming to the party.

The festival, which has been running since 2009 and has been held at Trafalgar Square since 2012, is free to attend and runs from 10am until 8pm.

Here's everything you need to know.

Japan Matsuri 2026: In short…

• What: A one-day celebration of all things Japanese culture, including food, music, art and entertainment in the heart of Central London
• When: Sunday 4th October 2026, 10am–8pm
• Where: Trafalgar Square, London
• How much: Free entry

The event is spread throughout Trafalgar Square, with food stalls around the fountains and further stalls and activities dotted around the front of the National Gallery.

The nearest Tube station is Charing Cross, although Leicester Square, Piccadilly Circus and Embankment are also within walking distance.

It's worth getting there early, though. If Trafalgar Square reaches capacity, organisers will operate a one-in, one-out system. Bags larger than A4 size, bikes, scooters, e-scooters and weapons are among the things prohibited from the site — so leave your katanas and sake at home.

What’s on?

The main stage will host entertainment acts throughout the day, beginning with traditional taiko drumming and a performance of the event’s Japan Matsuri song "IBUKI" with Naomi Suzuki — kinda like a theme tune for the festival. The opening ceremony will feature a mikoshi procession (a spiritual event where a shinto shrine is paraded), while later performances include Yosakoi dance, Eisa dance (a kind of folk dance usually performed by children), a ‘Samurai Rock Band’ and a ninja show.

You’ll also get to limber up with Radio Taiso (Japan’s popular morning calisthenics routine), quizzes, traditional Japanese music, dance and martial arts, with more performances scheduled throughout the afternoon and evening.

You can see the entire day’s performance schedule at the Matsuri website.

What’s cooking?

The food offering might be reason enough to make the trip. The square will be packed with Japanese food and drink stalls, with options including ramen, takoyaki, karaage, yakisoba, okonomiyaki, Japanese curry, donburi, gyoza and onigiri.

Among the traders are Shoryu Ramen, IPPUDO, Japan Centre, Okan & Oton, Hiden Curry, Tsujiri and Matchado, alongside a host of smaller food businesses.

And it isn't just savoury food. There'll be Japanese sweets, wagashi, mochi, matcha drinks and ice cream, while belly-loving yoghurt drink Yakult is also going to have a stall. Yakult’s presence isn’t as odd as you might think — it’s actually a Japanese invention.

Pop culture shopping

Japan Matsuri also has plenty for fans of Japanese pop culture.

The stalls include Otaky, with Pokémon, ONE PIECE, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Dragon Ball and other anime and manga merchandise, alongside Japanese toys, figures and trading cards.

Elsewhere you'll find everything from ukiyo-e prints and vintage kimono to Japanese ceramics, calligraphy, jewellery and handmade accessories.

There are also plenty of opportunities to learn more about Japan itself, with tourism organisations representing destinations including Tokyo, Hokkaido, Oita, Tohoku and Central Japan, as well as Japan's railway network and travel companies.

Pikmin are coming to Trafalgar Square

Mario makers Nintendo are returning to Japan Matsuri with a collection of free Pikmin activities and goodies — you know, the colourful little lads that have the plants sprouting out of their heads.

Nintendo is using its Pikmin Bloom app — the walking game that turns your everyday strolls into a Pikmin-collecting adventure — into a special Japan Matsuri Party Walk, running from 28th September until 7th October, meaning you don't actually have to be in Trafalgar Square to participate.

If you're heading to the festival itself, visit the Nintendo stall to find a pop-up Pikmin Bloom ‘Special Spot’. Players can receive a Gold Seedling which grows into an exclusive Red Photo Button Badge Decor Pikmin, as well as a postcard. Only one seedling is available per player.

Those taking part in the Party Walk can also show their screen at the Nintendo stand to receive a Pikmin-themed gift, such as a smartphone lanyard. Nintendo will also have a Pikmin photo opportunity and — more exciting than that lanyard — free Pikmin headwear to give away at its stall.

The Party Walk can be registered for in advance through the Pikmin Bloom app, which should save you having to sort everything out when you arrive.

Irasshaimase! (That means ‘Welcome!’)

If you've got even a passing interest in Japanese food, gaming, anime, travel, music or culture, there's a lot to get stuck into.

The best bit is that it's completely free, so you can dip in for an hour, spend the afternoon eating your way around the stalls, or make a full day of it.

And if you're a Pikmin fan, this year's Nintendo presence gives you an extra reason to visit – particularly if you want to pick up the limited-edition goodies and exclusive Pikmin app treats.

For more info, visit the Japan Matsuri festival website.

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Luckily, London’s art scene is not reserved for those with an art history degree nor a toothbrush moustache and pinstripe trouser suit. Instead, there are plenty of free glorious galleries and museums dotted across the city which regularly host displays of some of the biggest and most celebrated names. One of which is the Gagosian Gallery who will be hosting a huge new surrealist exhibition this month.

“This Is Still Not a Pipe: The Afterlife of Magritte” will show around 70 works by the Belgian Surrealist and dozens of contemporary artists inspired by him.

The exhibition will be on view at the Gagosian’s Grosvenor Hill outpost in London from 24th September until 12th December, showing a collection of some of the most celebrated surrealist works, as well as new works which are being made especially for the show. The location for the exhibition is a nod to the 1936 International Surrealist Exhibition which was staged just down the road at the New Burlington Galleries, marking a key moment for the surrealist movement and in making Magritte’s name.

Gagosian has not yet released a full list of artworks or the names of the contemporary figures who will be involved in the exhibition. However it has confirmed that the show will include more than 20 Magrittes, some for sale and some on loan from major collections.

One of the paintings includes La Lampe philosophique, which the artist made just ahead of the 1936 Surrealist exhibition. It’s the one you’ll probably recognise from a postcard someone in your family got in a museum gift shop or a jaunty teatowel that has been slung over the oven for half a decade. The painting depicts Magritte smoking a pipe by candlelight, his overgrown nose snaking into the pipe’s bowl. He wrote of it: “The meditations of an absent-minded, obsessive philosopher may conjure up the image of a mental world closed in upon itself as, in this case, the smoker is the prisoner of his pipe.”

Other Magrittes with his most iconic motifs—apples, bowler hats, clouds, and of course more pipes—will be peppered throughout.

The show comes 20 years after “Magritte and Contemporary Art: The Treachery of Images” (2006–07), the Los Angeles County Museum of Art‘s landmark group exhibition designed by artist John Baldessari that traced the Surrealist’s influence on postwar American and European artists.

Larry Gagosian, owner of the Gagosian, said: ‘It is difficult to imagine a world today without Magritte. Almost six decades after his death, his influence continues to resonate within contemporary artistic production, and beyond into the broader landscape of visual culture – shaping advertising, design, fashion, and even music.

‘I am delighted to be presenting his work at the gallery once again, and to offer audiences a renewed opportunity to engage with the poetry, wit, and mystery that define his vision.’

The exhibition is free to look around, although if you did want to buy one of the pieces for sale, just a heads up, his last pieces that were up for auction went for for £16 million (La Belle Promenade) and $121.2 million (Empire of Light) the last couple of years.

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Sure, London might have an epidemic of pubs closing across the capital, but for some, it’s less of a simple shut down and more of the caterpillar-to-butterfly arc, reopening as something more glamorous and glorious. One such spot is a beloved North London boozer which is set to reopen as a pop-up comedy and cabaret venue.

The Old Dairy on Crouch Hill will relaunch with a series of Saturday night events, starting in October. It’s a Crouch End local who is taking over the spot for the initial run – Martin Besserman, who runs the Monkey Business Comedy Club will be hosting comedy nights for at least three shows this autumn. The first events will take place on October 31, November 28 and December 12 - currently the lineups are firmly under wraps as they finalise details, but more dates are expected to be announced.

The Old Dairy itself is a Grade II listed pub which unfortunately closed during lockdown and was taken over by squatters. Greene King who owned the establishment sold it in 2023 but it has been closed since. Originally built in 1890, the building gets its name from its history – it was once stables and cowsheds, with the outside wall sporting large panels depicting all stages of the milk production process, from cows grazing to the milk being delivered. It was sold and transformed into a pub in 1997, after ceasing work as a dairy in the 1960s.

Mr Besserman wrote on Facebook: "We’re incredibly excited to announce that Finsbury Park Cabaret will be taking over the whole pub at The Dairy.

"We’ll be bringing you a series of exciting Saturday night pop-up comedy and cabaret shows, with fabulous performers, great entertainment, food and a fully stocked bar.

"The Dairy has been closed for the past few weeks, so we’re thrilled to be bringing this fantastic space back to life with a series of one-off pop-up nights."

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London is not short of culture – just in the last year the city has been peppered with dozens of big hitting names from exhibitions on Frida Kahlo to a Seurat special, and not forgetting the big wig Bayeux Tapestry which has set foot thread on British soil for the first time in decades. After the Tate’s announcement of a huge new Monet exhibition in 2027, and the National Theatre pulling out all the stops (i.e. huge names) for their respective 2027 slates, there was a fair bit of pressure on London’s Barbican for its own upcoming programme – and it didn’t disappoint.

The Barbican has announced its 2027 art programme, which includes the hip happenings of exhibitions inside the Barbican Art Gallery, The Curve gallery, The Barbican Lakeside Gallery and the Sculpture Court. Which as you can imagine requires a fair bit of art to fill up. Just because some of the Barbican will be closing for renovations (even giving away free plant cuttings from its conservatory), they’re not holding back on pulling out the artsy bells and whistles for its other areas. Currently, the 2026 programme is set to wrap up its run in February 2027 with the exhibition Robert Ryman: The Real Thing.

In short, it’s a lot of fashion, specifically high and flamboyant fashion that will be giving the Barb a glow up.

Barbican 2027 Visual Arts Programme at a glace:

• EXHIBITION Dayanita Singh – March – May 2027
• EXHIBITION Characters of Fashion – April–August 2027
• PUBLIC COMMISSION Ximena Garrido-Lecca, May – August 2027
• EXHIBITION Magdalene Odundo, September 2027 – January 2028
• PUBLIC COMMISSION Rosa Barba, September 2027 – January 2028
• EXHIBITION: Alice Adams, October 2027 – February 2028

Characters of Fashion will be taking over the Art Gallery, charting fascinating relationships with literature, this major exhibition explores fashion from an interdisciplinary perspective, showcasing a wide array of authors and designers. This will be kicking off on April 15th and running until late August 2027. It follows on from last year’s landmark exhibition Dirty Looks, and will use the lens of clothing, previously unexplored facets about the intimate lives of authors and their characters come to life, spotlighting literary voices from Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, and Virginia Woolf to James Baldwin, Toni Morrison and Jean Rhys. The exhibition will explore how acclaimed authors have used clothing as a way of exploring interior worlds and developing characters, and as a tool for self-fashioning their own image.

Before that lands, a new exhibition from New Delhi artist Dayanita Singh who will be taking over The Curve, transforming it into a shifting landscape of images, reflecting the impact of Indian classical music on her five-decade long practice. The exhibition will feature several of the artist’s portable museums—modular display structures made of teak—including Ustad Museum (2025), Museum of Tanpura (2021) and Musicians’ Bus (2021), shown alongside new work. Through these structures, described by Singh as ‘mobile, organic and changing’, a selection of photographs from her archive will fill the Barbican’s 90-metre-long gallery.

Straight on its heels will be an exhibition from Ximena Garrido-Lecca which will be taking place at the Sculpture Court from 6th May until 1st August. It’s a huge new public commission marking the Peruvian artist’s first solo presentation in the UK. The installation will combine the plant as botanical organism and industrial processing system in a sculptural infrastructure exploring the colonial legacies and contemporary impact of extraction. Which is set to be pretty striking thanks to the Brutalist backdrop of the Barb.

Another first in terms of solo presentations will be heading to the Lakeside Gallery in September 2027, with Kenyan artist Magdalene Odundo exhibiting. It will be heading to the Barbican’s new Lakeside Gallery, home last year to the critically acclaimed Encounters: Giacometti series. The exhibition will present Odundo’s poetic exploration of the ceramic vessel as an elemental form that resonates across time, geographies, and cultures. Taking gestures from everyday life as dynamic cues, Odundo’s vessels have a bodily presence, their forms evoking swelling bellies, swaying torsos and gaping mouths. Considering the human body as a vessel itself, Odundo sees her own body as a channel for transforming her thoughts into clay.

Rosa Barba at the Barbican Foyer is next up on the docket and it's set to be an expansive installation, bringing together cinematic and kinetic sculptural works – using a newly commissioned 35 mm film will be projected onto the Barbican’s iconic architecture. Concluding the 2027 visual arts programme is an exhibition by Alice Adams, a retrospective which will introduce audiences to her experimental tapestries of the 1950s and architectural sculpture of the 1970s to the work she continues to make today, at the age of 95.

You can find more information about each of the exhibitions at the Barbican's website.

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For years we’ve been wondering: what is going to be the next big gadget to change the world, after the smartphone did just that years ago? And change in a positive sense — not just bring it to an end, as AI apparently is hell bent on doing.

Smart and AR glasses are this end-times era’s top candidate. Until recently all many of them did was play music and let you take photos and videos worse than your phone could manage, but the Snap Specs are here to change all that.

Snap has made legit sci-fi grade augmented reality glasses for five years and the Snap Specs take things mainstream. You may not be able to afford them, at a fiver under two grand, but you’ll soon be able to buy them. Pre-orders are open now.

I’ve had a play with a pair to see exactly how AR smart glasses may — or may not — help the average Londoner go about their day.

The most important bit to start with is in addressing how the Snap Specs are different to the smart glasses many of you may have clocked out on London streets already, the Meta Ray-Ban. That set looks like an ordinary pair of glasses but has a speaker, microphone and camera baked in. The Snap Specs takes the tech forward a few light years with an actual display in your field of vision.

Yep, even though they serve wannabe fashion specs vibes rather than VR headset stylings, the experience here can be like actual virtual reality when you want it to be.

The Snap Specs place what’s known as a waveguide display within each glasses lens. This involves basically projecting an image into your eyes. And that means while you see the equivalent of a screen hanging in your vision, other folks don’t see what you see. And the list of places in which you can realistically use a pair of Snap Specs isn’t limited in the way an Apple Vision Pro or Meta Quest 3 is.

You can still see what’s around you, and it’s not the view of a tiny little camera projected onto a display as it is in sight-blocking AR gadgets either. Those lenses? They're clear (ish).

The Snap Specs weigh around 130g, which is a quarter the weight of a Meta Quest 3, around a sixth the heft of an Apple Vision Pro. Real talk: 130g is still several times the weight of the average pair of glasses, and to compensate the Snap Specs’ stems do have a fairly firm hold of your head, behind your ears.

And those stems are not skinny, what with each housing a mini computer — a design that handily keeps the weight balance just about perfect as far as I can tell.

You can choose for yourself whether you’d want to be seen out in public wearing them. But I’m honestly not sure I’d feel more self-conscious using the Snap Specs on a train journey versus pulling out my Steam Deck.

That such a comparison is in any way valid makes it clear: we’re not dealing with glasses in the lineage of the Ray-Ban Meta in the Snap Specs. They're as much a PC as they are glasses. And here are some of the ways we can picture using them around London, which I've test driven.

Checking emails

These smart glasses don’t just have a full VR-style interface, there’s an app store and a fully-fledged web browser.

And how do you control it? With your hands. Get your pointer finger out and it becomes a cursor in the display. Open up a palm and interface shortcuts light up on its surface — you prod them like buttons to move about the UI.

You can ask the Specs’s AI assistant to take you to specific sites, or can type away with your fingers mid-air on a virtual keyboard. Yes, you will look a bit odd doing this on the Tube.

Writing docs on the train

People often say it’s movies that show up a great screen versus a bad one. But you know what really shows a display at its most useful? A plain old document. Few things have the potential to look as scraggly as small fonts on a pixel-poor monitor.

But you know what? While the Snap Specs don’t have a gangbusters 4K screen — we may be a generation or two away from that tech getting small enough for glasses like these — writing up some notes on Google Docs felt totally at home.

No, you don’t have to “air type” on a virtual keyboard. The Snap Specs can hook up to an ordinary Bluetooth keyboard, becoming a portable PC rig even the most cramped of train seats can’t trip up.

Navigating to a pub or restaurant

The Snap Specs have an in-house mapping app that helps you navigate towards any place you like, Google Maps style. At first it’s much like doing so on a phone app, but with in-air hand gestures rather than a touchscreen. You can search for local points of interest in categories like restaurants and shops, and then are shown a turn-by-turn map route on a floating map screen.

When you start the actual navigation, though, the view takes a step back. A screen showing a video game-like arrow pointing you in the right direction is only visible when you look down. Makes sense: you don’t want your view blocked while walking around busy Soho or Chinatown streets.

The Snap Specs can do this because it has a full set of motion sensors and two cameras, allowing it to root elements to part of yoru vision and, in other use cases, part of the environment. We don’t yet have an app that maps your route onto the actual pavement like the racing line in Forza Horizon, but Snap has actually shown off that in concept already.

Watching a movie on the train home

Snap does not claim the Specs are like having a personal cinema but they are surprisingly good for that job and are way less obtrusive than a VR headset. I got to try watching a bit of The Pitt on HBO Max, which is one of the two streaming services confirmed for support so far, alongside YouTube.

Thanks to the waveguide display’s 51 degree field of view, you can arrange the image to appear larger than it would on a 50-inch TV in the average living room. And it’s sure going to beat staring into the back of a train seat on the way home from work.

I got to try the Specs’ video streaming in a car, where the seat in front was black, which actually did wonders for the image’s contrast and pop. But as the level of the environment-dimming sunglasses style effect of the lenses is actually adjustable here, you should be able to compensate for the average London train’s dull grey seating. Details, details.

The Snap Specs can connect to Wi-Fi, and there’s a charger case that acts as a mobile hotspot, as well as keeping the things safe when not in use. One of the key messages here is the Specs don’t need your phone in order to work. Snap has partnered with EE in the UK for data plans — cost and details TBC on that one.

Dating in a foreign language

Feeling bold? You could even use the Snap Specs to translate a date with someone who doesn't speak English.

Granted, for them to understand what you're saying we're also going to need a second pair of Snap Specs. And four grand is an expensive date, even factoring in London bar prices.

How it works is pretty neat, though. A set of six microphones live aboard the Snap Specs, which also lets them disambiguate between sound you make versus sound coming from elsewhere.

Fire up the translate app and the mics listen for conversations with another person. Shortly after they've spoken, written text appears below their head, video game style. A whopping 60 languages are supported. The only issue is in reminding yourself to look them in the eye every now and then.

The Snap Specs are due out before the end of the year, and are available to pre-order for £1995.

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A lofty number of impressive, and even historical buildings in London are actually plush old pads that weary travellers can stop at, resting their heads on 4,000 threadcount pillows. And a couple of heavenly hotels have been recognised by the international bigwigs over at 50 Best who are quite literal experts in luxury.

Head into our fair capital and you’ll find three of the best hotels in the world, dotted across Whitehall, and Mayfair. Sliding into the highest spot for the UK was Claridge’s in Mayfair, which snapped up the 13th place overall. As soon as you step inside the glitzy interiors, it will become pretty clear as to why it makes it on the list at such a lofty position. It opens with an art deco lobby, huge glittering chandeliers, and plenty of brilliant bars and dining spots which are drenched in the kind of old school, vintage Hollywood-esque glamour you long for every time you go back to watch an Audrey Hepburn flick.

The next London entry on the list was Raffles London at the OWO which landed in the 28th spot. If you’ve ever wondered why it’s called OWO, that just stands for the Old War Office, as that’s precisely what the hotel used to be – Whitehall’s staggering and opulent former War Office. The whole interior feels equally cinematic to Claridge’s, but whereas Claridge’s leans more into that Golden Era of the Silver Screen, Raffles is more smooth talking martini-sipping spy movies. It’s Bond meets Operation Mincemeat but with nine stunning restaurants, three highly rated bars, and a subterraneous spa and pool reminding you that whilst it may have impressive provenance, it has all the luxury amenities you’d want.

The final entry on the list for London was The Connaught which landed at the 49th spot – and it's a happily recognisable name for plenty of Londoners who regularly flock to the beloved Connaught bar (which has swept up its fair share of awards too) and sip on its trolley wheeled martinis, served up ice cold tableside. But the bar isn’t the only draw in the hotel; it boasts 31 beautiful rooms and sumptuous suites, an art collection from Damien Hirst, and a luxury hidden spa.

Only one other UK spot made the list, including the magical Estelle Manor in Witney, the sister property to London’s Maison Estelle.

You can browse the full 50 Best hotels here.

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Even if you’re an art luddite and the closest you got to galleries was watching reruns of Art Attack on CBBC, you’ll probably be au fait with Monet. The French painter pops up everywhere from Parisian Galleries to Emily in Paris (his work that is, not him, although what a cameo that would be). London’s Tate Modern however has never hosted a solo exhibition dedicated to Monet – until now.

After 26 years welcoming in both art aficionados, school trips and people finding a free spot to shelter from the rain, the Tate Modern has confirmed a huge new exhibition featuring 60 paintings from the French Impressionist painter. The exhibition comes in time with the 100th anniversary since the artist’s death, and it will be the UK’s biggest display of his work in almost a decade.

The landmark Monet exhibition was teased back in March when it appeared on the Tate’s 2027 programme. Now, we finally have more details, including its opening date and the sheer scale of the exhibition. It will be opening up 25th February and running until 27th June.

According to the Tate, it will “bring together breathtaking paintings from lenders across the globe, including rarely seen works from private collections” meaning you could be gawping at rarely seen works and adding a new layer of smugness to your cultural conversations (boasting) at the office. The exhibition centres on Monet’s profound and evolving relationship with time. According to the Tate, in the collection, we see how he echoed the rapid pace of modern life by capturing the fleeting, instantaneous ‘impressionist’ moment, through works such as Arrival of the Normandy Train, Gare Saint-Lazare (1877). We are also shown, in celebrated series such as Poplars on the Epte (1891–1897), Monet’s attempts, through variations of the same subject, to capture a specific, transient instant in time. It will also explore the artist’s “enduring relationship with nature and how, as a subject in perpetual movement, it shifts with the passing years and seasons.”

Based mainly in France, Monet worked from around 1860 until his death in 1926, living through an era which saw the rise of railways, industrialisation, the modern city, and the adoption of standardised timekeeping, all of which massively influenced his work. Drawing on new research, the show explores how Monet responded to these seismic changes through his work. Whilst he’s known as a founder of impressionism, his influence is also central to modernism, and his portrayal of the natural world as he saw it around him still has huge influence today.

Although it won’t be opening until late February, tickets are already on sale, priced at £26, although it’s free for Tate members, with the usual £5 tickets if you’re 25 and under. You can find out more and book tickets via the Tate Modern's website.

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A sad amount of old school rocker London has gone to the graveyard of good times, being priced out of staying open thanks to the new cost of living crisis and the anti-raving probiotic Gen Z. One victim of this was club night Trash, which closed nearly 20 years ago, but thanks to Erol Alkan, it could be getting a new lease of life…

“January 2027 will mark 20 years since we closed our doors forever," Alkan – who founded the club back in 1997 – teased on Instagram. "But there is a light that never goes out. Got somethings to share with you, let's stay in touch." The North London DJ also posted a link to sign up in his bio for the first announcements, encouraging readers to sign up to a new Trash mailing list.

For those not in the know, Trash was a weekly club night in London, known for its indie kid credentials, and celebrated for its genre-defying blend of indie, electro, rock and bootleg mash-ups, hosting early performances from acts including LCD Soundsystem, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Bloc Party. It was basically the kind of alternative sub-culture night out which would get casually referenced by cool people in Camden, and now gets talked about (well, lamented) by the same Camden cool kids who you’ll overhear in a natural wine bar talking about gentrification. Trash was the kind of night that shaped the identity of the city’s nightlife, influencing the electroclash and nu rave movements that followed.

It first appeared at the original Plastic People in Soho, then at neighbouring venue The Annexe on Dean St, before finally heading to a new home at The End off New Oxford Street. When the club moved and expanded to The End they were joined by Rory Phillips and in the years that followed, Mavs and The Lovely Jonjo.

For the latter 5 years of the club, the last two tracks played were always the same. "There Is a Light That Never Goes Out" by The Smiths (which is referenced in the revamped Trash’s Instagram bio) and then "Rock 'n' Roll Suicide" by David Bowie. Erol Alkan believed "they are the two songs that best reflect club culture, its people and places, highs and lows and bring people together".

Trash joined the likes of The Blitz Club, Plastic People, Turnmills, and Bagley's, all legendary nightclubs which have since closed and become various developments, including forming part of King's Cross' Coal Drops Yard. It's a similar arc to the indie goth kid in your year at school who lost the black eyeliner and is now an accountant with two kids. But maybe, as Trash might be about to prove, there's life in the old dog battered leather jacket yet.

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There are plenty of landmarks littered across London and in fairness, quite a few of them now have bars inside, in keeping with the British tradition of getting lightly trollied at any given point. London’s Admiralty Arch is the latest historical hotspot to be getting a boozy revamp, as Inception Group – the lads behind popular spots like Mr Fogg’s and Bunga 90 - are set to open up The Admiral’s Mess.

The Arch itself is located in central London, overlooking Trafalgar Square and was created to provide a road (and pedestrian access) between The Mall and Trafalgar Sq. It was built back in 1912 and since then it has seen hundreds of thousands of people posing in front of it. It used to house Government offices up until 2011 but the government sold the building in 2012 for a super chill £60m for the hotel redevelopment.

The Inception Group isn’t the only new resident of the old arch, as it is going to be forming part of the The Waldorf Astoria London. The hotel is also going to be the main site opening up inside this Grade-I listed landmark, set to open its (presumably grand) doors in Autumn 2026, marking the famous brand’s London debut. With a name like Waldorf Astoria and a location like the Admiralty Arch, it’s not exactly surprising that the current lineup of foodie establishments is already stellar. And by stellar we do mean Michelin starred; Clare Smyth MBE will also be one of the new inhabitants with her dining spot Coreus, joined by fellow star holder Daniel Boulud who will be bringing Café Boulud to the site.

If you're familiar with any of Inception Group's sites like Cahooots, Bunga 90 or Control Room B then you'll know the gang like to go big. Each venue is completely decked out in keeping with its themed, whether it's cocktails delivered via hydraulic chutes in a former Post Office, loo-lobby karaoke in a 90s themed bar, or cocktails served up in a Winston Churchill bust in a former tube station. So, hopes are high for the kind of bells and whistles The Admiral's Mess might have – personally, we're picturing waiters in full naval gear à la Regency era (wigs, hats, and all) but so far Inception Group have been tight lipped on details for the venue. So far all we do know is that it will span 2,400 square feet with a 60-seat capacity. It will be an immersive bar (as per their MO) offering guests the opportunity to ‘discover something distinctive and unexpected’.

Charlie Gilkes, co-founder of Inception Group, said: ‘We are honoured to have the opportunity to open within such an iconic London location and are excited to have created a totally unique concept fitting for such a historic site.’

The Waldorf Astoria London Admiralty Arch is billed to open in autumn 2026.

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It’s hard to imagine a gallery dedicated to one of Britain’s biggest designers as one in need of a little revamp and touch up but that is exactly what Walthamstow’s William Morris Gallery has done. The east London spot which has been closed across summer (for said revamp, not because they gave themselves a maximum working temperature) is unveiling a rehang of its major collection.

The gallery is homed over Walthamstow’s Water House – a Grade II* listed Georgian pad which backs onto the expansive and lush Lloyd Park. A young Morris actually lived in the building between 1848 and 1856, so it’s only fitting that it’s the home of his largest collection of work. The unveiling ties in with 130 years since the designer’s death, and the new style has been created alongside Sam Jacob Studio.

Whilst the gallery is undergoing a glow-up, it’s not a complete overhaul, with the newly revamped galleries keeping their beloved staples, like the Morris-own wallpaper and designs in its decor. There will be a couple of new additions alongside the traditional pieces, including some of Morris’ earliest works.

The new spaces have been devised with local residents and local community groups, with a focus on feeling more welcoming, accessible and homely, championing stories which haven’t had the spotlight they deserved. One of these is celebrating May Morris – William’s daughter who was also a designer and ran the gang’s embroidery biz. Joining her in the exhibitions will be pieces examining the influence of South Asian and Islamic art, looking at how it influenced Morris’ own work, through motifs, patterns and blocking.

Excitingly for art nerds fans, there will be plenty of items that have been kept firmly under wraps until now. Pieces like Morris’s original Hammersmith Socialist League banner will be heading to the gallery (on loan from Manchester), alongside his personal copy of beloved book One Thousand and One Nights (a collection of folklore and fairy tales from the Middle East) which heavily inspired his writing and love for Asian decorative arts. These aren't the only new additions to the gallery, as an entirely brand-new space called Morris Today is set to open in 2027. It will be a dedicated hub for contemporary artists to put their own spin on Morris' original ideas, with wood-turners, glass blowers, and furniture makers coming together to create and share their work. This will open alongside a major new exhibition which will explore and celebrate 200 years of British art and activism, called Earthly Paradise: Radical Living in the UK.

Essentially a lot of newness is heading to the gallery, with new exhibitions, new artworks, and even a new space, so it's good news for anyone who loves a good gawp and a lovely (and fancy) house. And a gift shop, obviously there's a great gift shop.

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Oasis have officially announced another huge global tour. After a good old tease across socials, the band have confirmed Live 27.

Registration has already opened for a chance to get tickets, and strict rules are already in place which is no surprise given the absolute stampede (and online queues) it took to secure spots for Live 25. Registration for a chance to buy tickets for all the 38 live shows across UK, Ireland, Mainland Europe and US is open now. However, fans must register before Thursday 17 September 4pm BST (5pm CEST / 8am PT / 11am ET) for a chance to buy tickets.

Demand for Oasis Live ’27 is expected to be extremely high (again, no surprises), and so this registration process has been put in place to reduce queuing times and organised ticket touting in order to give genuine fans the best possible chance to buy tickets. Registration is open now at www.oasisinet.com.

Oasis have today ended months of feverish speculation with the announcement, and Oasis Live ‘27 will see the band play 38 live shows, visiting Scotland, England, Germany, Spain, Netherlands, France, Italy, US and Ireland. With the exception of homecoming shows in Manchester, the tour will see the band perform in a completely new set of locations from the Oasis Live ‘25 tour. Fellow musician and artist Richard Ashcroft will also be returning on the band's live tour as a Special guest at all shows.

Fans who are successful with the registration will be sent a unique, non-transferable code to access an allocated onsale window. In the UK, onsale will take place across Friday 25, Saturday 26 and Sunday 27 September, with three onsale windows on each day. Fans will be informed directly which of the onsale windows they can access, and at what time. The registration process is the only public way to buy tickets for Oasis Live ’27. There will be no general onsale or other public presales outside of this process. This structure has been created to ensure the purchase process is as fair and smooth as possible for Oasis fans. Standard ticket prices will be fixed and range between £71.50 and £266.60, including fees.

We don't have any idea of what the setlist will be like yet, and it's likely that this will stay under wraps until opening night. Although, given the duo are performing at all new venues (bar Manchester) it's not a complete stretch to imagine they might mix it up considerably over the previous 2025 tour setlist. Will there be new music? Who knows... Liam has previously stated that the band have no intention of releasing new music for fear of critical backlash.

Oasis Live ‘27 Tour Dates

May

• May 21 Glasgow, Celtic Park
• May 23 Glasgow, Celtic Park
• May 25 Glasgow, Celtic Park
• May 28 Glasgow, Celtic Park
• May 29 Glasgow, Celtic Park

June

• June 04 Manchester, Etihad Stadium
• June 06 Manchester, Etihad Stadium
• June 08 Manchester, Etihad Stadium
• June 11 Manchester, Etihad Stadium
• June 12 Manchester, Etihad Stadium
• June 15 Manchester, Etihad Stadium
• June 18 Manchester, Etihad Stadium
• June 19 Manchester, Etihad Stadium
• June 22 Manchester, Etihad Stadium
• June 25 Manchester, Etihad Stadium
• June 26 Manchester, Etihad Stadium

July

• July 02 Munich, Allianz Arena
• July 03 Munich, Allianz Arena
• July 10 Barcelona, Estadi Olímpic Lluís Companys
• July 11 Barcelona, Estadi Olímpic Lluís Companys
• July 16 Amsterdam, Johan Cruijff ArenA
• July 17 Amsterdam, Johan Cruijff ArenA
• July 23 Paris, Stade de France
• July 24 Paris, Stade de France
• July 29 Rome, Stadio Olimpico
• July 30 Rome, Stadio Olimpico

August

• August 10 Boston, Gillette Stadium
• August 13 Boston, Gillette Stadium
• August 14 Boston, Gillette Stadium
• August 20 Las Vegas, Allegiant Stadium
• August 21 Las Vegas, Allegiant Stadium
• August 24 Las Vegas, Allegiant Stadium