Pride is a London institution, and it’s nearly upon us. From parades to parties, drag queens and DJs, there is plenty going on across the city, and Londoners gather to celebrate queer culture, love, visibility, and equality.

Looking to join the party? Here’s all the key info you need to know.

WHEN IS IT HAPPENING?

Pride is taking place across Saturday 4th and Sunday 5th July. A whopping 1.8 million people are expected to attend.

THE PARADE

The Parade, which is the core of the whole weekend celebration, is taking place as usual across the Saturday. The main event will be marching all the way from Green Park to Whitehall as thousands of individuals, community groups, charities, and more take to London streets with some of the best signs, banners, floats, and outfits the city has ever seen. The parade will start at 12pm at Hyde Park Corner, making its way past Piccadilly, and ending at Whitehall around 6pm. Here's a map to help you figure out the best spots to watch from:

Note that the stretch through the Soho heartland of Pride will be absolutely packed, but don't let that put you off, as that's where the most fun to be had is.

THEME

This year’s theme is Many Voices. One Front, which is all about embracing everyone, spotlighting the need for unity across generations and communities. This year, the campaign focuses on four main issues: trans healthcare rights, Back and Brown queer visibility, chosen family rights, and ending hate crime.

TRAVEL

With nearly 2 million people taking part in Pride (and probably a further couple of thousand who forgot it was Pride and will get caught up in the melee as they try to do their Uniqlo return) it’s going to be a pretty busy weekend in the capital. If you want to join the parade the best stations to head to are Marble Arch and Hyde Park Corner.

As it’s a pedestrian-led celebration, there will be extensive road closures in place, meaning some bus routes will be on diversion. There’s a road closures map on Pride in London’s website to check your route before you go, or have a look at TFL’s website to make sure your tube line doesn’t have any planned closures.

Currently, parts of the Hammersmith & City line, parts of the District line, the DLR, and Overground have some part closures already in place for the weekend.

TICKETS AND COSTS

London Pride is completely free to attend, and you can enjoy the parade and stages without paying anything. There are some paid elements if you want to upgrade your experienced, like VIP experiences though, and individual clubs and venues along the parade route may have a door charge.

AFTER PARTIES & CELEBRATIONS

There are plenty of celebrations happening outside of the official events. There’s the Beyond Pride afterparty at Fire in Vauxhall. The new Soho site Coven which took over the former G-A-Y bar will be pulling out all the stops, plus there are five LGBTQ+ venues in Hackney Wick which will host an event called Howl Pride, which will see hundreds of dancers and performers taking it away until the early hours of Sunday morning.

If you’re worried you’ve left it too late to get tickets to an afterparty, remember there are hundreds of bards across central London – like our faves Mr Fogg’s – who are throwing open their doors till late for all your post-parade revelry.

PERFORMERS

As always there will be a whole host of artists soundtracking the parade. This year, down in Soho there will be a pretty impressive array of artists performing across six stages. Will Njobvu is hosting alongside drag royalty Tia Kofi, Ade Adepitan, and Asifa Lahore. MNEK is headlining this year on Trafalgar’s main stage.

Trafalgar Square – Main Stage

• MNEK (headliner)
• Beth Ditto
• Asifa Lahore (host)
• Ade Adepitan (host)
• Bombaymami
• Hannah & Jake Graf
• James Indigo
• Jason Jones
• JEA
• Kinky Kabaret
• Lexa
• Le Fil
• Leo Kalyan
• Love Itoya
• Maris
• Meek
• Olivia Campbell-Cavendish
• Stardust
• Tia Kofi (host)
• Titanique
• Will Njobvu (host)

Leicester Square – LGBTQIA+ Women and Non-Binary Stage

• Anita B Queen
• Butch, Please!
• Che3kz
• DJ Kaspa
• Jordan Gray
• Krystal Lake
• Lexa
• Lick
• Love Itoya
• Macie Nyah
• Maris
• Professor Emeritus Sue Sanders
• Raga D’Silva
• Smashlyn Monroe
• The Darklings
• Tony & Toni
• West London Queer Choir

Golden Square – Global Majority Stage

• Angeli
• Che3kz
• Delwboy
• DJ T.Rock
• Donnie Sunshine
• Jay Jay Revlon Presents: Kiki
• Karteer
• Kenan Kián
• Lost Girl
• Me-Ow
• Rhys’ Pieces
• Rileasa
• Tiara Skye

Dean Street – Cabaret Stage

• Ash Akan
• Billie Gold
• Boibox
• Danny Beard
• Deeva D
• Drag Idol UK Winner (to be announced)
• Flick
• House of Pantha
• Jordan Gray
• Kate O’Donnell
• Lucky Roy Singh Presents the Queer Asian Takeover
• Monroe
• Queer Crip Power Half-Hour
• Ryan Graham Hinds
• Sandra
• Tia Kofi
• The Groove Chorus ft. Louis Cypher

Soho Square – Trans and Non-Binary Community Stage
Stage curated by Mzz Kimberley

• ARXX
• Brandy x Temptation
• Curvy Black Witch
• Custodians
• Dr Helen Webberley
• Ebony Rose / Para Pride
• Frigid Presents Mother
• ISH99NI
• Lexi & Aisha
• E.N Live
• Marty Davies
• Nathan Ethan
• Panty Soaker Sound System
• Tabs from Butch, Please!
• Taman
• DJ Tasty Tim
• Telisa TK
• The New Cross Dresser
• Trans Legal Clinic
• Women of Colour in the Global Women Strike

Victoria Embankment Gardens - Family Area and Youth Zone

• Aida from Drag Queen Story Hour
• Andi from Dadda and Daddy
• Badge Cafe
• Brass United Social Club
• Face painting by Carnivelle Party
• David Ribi
• Emma from at your Beat!
• Joelle D’Fontaine
• Make with
• Norvil & Josephine
• Pop’n’Olly

• The 8 best festival line-ups of summer 2026 for anyone with a Glastonbury-shaped hole in their calendars

The pilgrimage up to Edinburgh in creative pursuit has been done for years by artsy students who had a gap year and want to find themselves – or at least find themselves at a raver with a free joint in hand. However, it’s also a journey done by hundreds of top and emerging comedians, playwrights, and actors with some of the best of (undiscovered) talent making their mark on the historic city.

But before they make the journey up north, plenty of shows will be putting on small runs across London theatres for a Fringe warm up, meaning you can catch all of the theatrical goodness without any of the jacked up hotel prices or packed trains with their inevitable delays.

1. Big Dog

Hit playwright and five star recipient Izzy Radford is back at fringe with another play for 2026. Following her sell out run of her debut play Seating Plan, Big Dog is another comedy but this time interrogating the true crime industry, influencer culture and workplace politics. It asks who gets to tell certain stories, who profits from them, and who ultimately bears the emotional consequences., all with Radford’s razor sharp wit and observation.

• Catch it at Riverside Studios from 30th July-1st August.

2. REDACTED: The Cover-Up of a Cover-Up of a Cover-Up

Sounding like something that could equally be a BBC/ Telegraph / Daily Mail headliner about literally any country’s leader, this play is “Fargo meets The Office meets The Matrix”. It’s a high-octane darkly comic thriller set in 1973. And if it didn’t sound enough like a safe bet, it’s proper theatre with live music from the multi-award-winning Voloz Collection.

• Catch it at Pleasance London on 22nd July

3. Remember, Remember

No, not a reminder from your girlfriend to take the bins out the night before bin day, but a showstopping new production that’s got everything. And by everything we mean a voiceover from national treasure Sir Stephen Fry. Dubbed the lovechild of Operation Mincemeat and SIX, this production is “an incredibly misformed, inaccurate retelling of one of Britain’s most infamous tales of treason”. It’s got songs, forbidden, love, explosive action, and some pretty impressive musical chops.

• Catch it at The Pleasance on 24th and 25th July.

4. Big Stuff

The idea of an improvised comedy about the loss of a parent sounds like something you’d have to be dragged to. However, that’s until you hear about Canadian comedy duo Matt Baram and Naomi Sneickus’s new show Big Stuff. The married duo bring their signature mix of storytelling and improv from Canada to the Fringe via a quick London pit stop after selling out on home turf at Toronto’s Crow’s Theatre.

• Catch it at Omnibus Theatre on 22nd and 23rd July.

5. An A-Z Guide to Dating

Not my memoir, but a brand new brilliant one-woman musical from the wunderkind Grace O Keefe. Specifically, it’s actually based on the real life dating advice book O’Keefe’s mother wrote which publishers said “would set feminism back 20 years” – and it's being put to the test. With an original 80s-inspired score. “The theatrical equivalent of a little girl struggling in her mother’s heels,” it blends romance with comedy, and a whole load of performance. What more could you want?

• Catch it at Underbelly Boulevard in Soho on 29th July.

6. The Librarians: A Very Serious Comedy

If this sounds like something the legendary Mischief theatre would come up with, you’re actually not too far off, as it has been penned by Mischief alum Matthew Howell and Jack Michael Stacey who actually met whilst performing The Play That Goes Wrong in the West End. This play is a chaotic romp set against the crumbling Plumstanton Library which is on the brink of being shut down. It’s a fast paced satire which sort of acts as a mirror for modern Britain: clinging to tradition, strangled by red tape, and desperately trying to keep up appearances as everything quietly collapses.

• Catch it at The Pleasance on 30th and 31st July

7. Target Audience

If a political style thriller is more up your reading list, then Target Audience might be one to catch. It’s a dark comedy set in the near future and explores the increasingly complex relationship between media, government, and technology. A satire style play that follows in the tradition of shows like In the Loop, and Dr Strangelove, it’s a more nuanced take on your usual fringe affair but with all the entertainment you’d want.

• Catch it at the Pleasance on 25th July

8. Tarang Hardikar: If I’m Not Wrong

Stand up comedian Tarang Hardikar is making his Fringe debut across August, but before he deos, he’s giving London audiences a treat with his take on life’s contradictions, cultural chaos, and eternal questions. If you haven’t seen his sketches on Instagram, you’ve probably caught segments of his at favourite spots on London’s famous comedy circuit. It will be one of those ones you can brag about in a couple of years time hwere you point at a screen and go “I saw them before they were big you know” – bragging power: what everyone goes to the theatre for.

• Catch it at Soho Theatre from 30th July-1st August

9. Jitters

Okay, so first up we need a disclaimer, you can’t actually see Jitters in London before it heads up to Fringe. However, Jitters has been created by acclaimed double act Ellen Robertson and Charly Clive (who starred alongside Steve Carell in Roosters), the latter of whom you can currently see in Relics alongside Sally Phillips at Lyric Hammersmith Theatre. Jitters is set an hour before a big wedding is taking places, exploring themes of ownership, tradition and the all-important 'L' word of any relationship: leverage. It's well worth a watch if you're at the Fringe but if not, head to Relics and have a good old laugh anyway.

• Catch Charly Clive in Relics at Lyric Hammersmith from 18th June- 18th July

Fringe Exclusive must-sees:

As always, there are a couple of elusive shows which are making their world debut at Edinburgh Fringe (and fringe only) but are worth having on your radar, even if it's just so you snag tickets when they inevitably do a sell-out run at London's Soho theatre post-fringe.

• Father, Away She Goes by Elektra Kolb
• Roomies, Julia Stephens
• Roleplay, Francesca Moody
• Concerts of the Future, Ciaran Frame

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If you gave up hope of seeing My Chemical Romance in London at Wembley after seeing ticket prices, there's still a surprisingly affordable way to get through the gates.

While resale prices for the band's hugely anticipated reunion shows continue to climb, official premium tickets are still available from just £39 per person on Seat Unique, with private VIP box seats working out cheaper than some standard tickets being sold elsewhere.

The cheapest deal we've spotted is for premium tickets in Block 204, priced at £39 per person.

These tickets are in the venue's premium seating area on Level Two, giving fans a reserved padded seat rather than general admission, along with access to the premium concourse where food and drink can be purchased.

If you'd rather be even closer to the stage, there are also front row seats in Block 204 available from £49 per person, while seats in the first five rows are currently listed for £55 each. Both options include the same premium Level Two experience, with the bonus of being positioned at the front of the block.

There's another premium seating option available in Block 224, where tickets are currently selling for £59 per person.

For anyone celebrating a special occasion or heading to the show as a group, the standout deal has to be the private boxes.

Wembley is currently offering places in an eight-person private box from £99 per person. While that might initially sound like a luxury purchase, it's cheaper than some standard seated tickets currently listed elsewhere.

The experience includes exclusive use of the private box, comfortable seats directly outside overlooking the stage, a private kitchen and bathroom, a personal host and chef, plus a fast-track exit once the concert finishes. Food and drink aren't included, but can be purchased throughout the evening.

My Chemical Romance's return to the UK has proved one of the biggest live music events of the year, with demand for tickets remaining high months after the original sale.

That's what makes these tickets stand out. In several cases, they're cheaper than fans might expect to pay.

If you've been waiting for resale prices to come down before committing, it's worth checking what's still available through Seat Unique.

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

To be or not to be? That’s the question about a lot of London’s cultural venues thanks to the current climate (cough cough: cossie livs). Luckily, there are a few institutions which have been steadily going since 1600 and are pretty firm fixtures across the infamous city skyline. We’re talking, of course, about Shakespeare’s gorgeous Globe Theatre, which is far from extinction, and after a bumper summer with a sprinkle of midnight matinees, its 2026/7 winter programme has been officially unveiled.

If you think The Globe is just Shakespeare, then think again. In addition to the Tudor Ruffs and verse, The Globe has some pretty exciting shows on its docket across its winter theatre season. If you’re not au fait with the theatre’s modus operandi, then you might be picturing shivering your way through a two-three hour play in the glorious but chilly open-air space.e However, between October and March, the outdoor theatre at the Globe shuts, and it’s the intimate, indoor Sam Wanamaker Playhouse which plays host to the season’s shows.

The winter season is a nice mix of traditional Shakespearean plays, as well as a couple of newer ones. The season is kicking off with a big hitter; Julius Caesar is heading to the stage at the beginning of November and running until 14th February – who said an early modern masterpiece about democracy under attack isn’t a romantic Valentine’s Day plan? The production is set to be directed by Joe Hill-Gibbins, who theatre buffs may remember as the guy responsible for the Measure for Measure performance that used a set entirely constructed from sex dolls. So, it probably won’t be your average Julius Caesar, but a more provocative spin on the beloved history play.

Next up is a new piece from playwright Timberlake Wertenbaker called The Animals Come To The Table, which will be running from December 11th until January 24th. The play is a subversive piece which follows a surreal world where animals put humanity on trial. Its run at Sam Wanamaker will be the play’s world premiere.

Another recognisable name making a comeback is Chekov’s play The Seagull, which has seen many famous adaptations over the years, and is now heading over to The Globe. Running from 15th January until 10th April, this rendition of The Seagull will see Caroline Steinbeis and Rory Mullarkey return to the Globe as director and translator. The duo previously wowed audiences with a stellar (and by that we mean five stars from everyone) production of Three Sisters, also at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse.

Rounding off the season in true Globe style is another Shakespeare classic. King John will be heading to the stage from February 20th until April 11th. If you’ve heard the words “Shakespeare Play” and “King John” and are scratching your head a little, that might be because this particular play is one of Shakespeare’s least performed works – even the Globe points out it’s a “rarely performed masterpiece”. In fact, even The Globe hasn’t staged this play much, just the one performance back in 2015 at the traditional open-air stage. The play follows – unsurprisingly – King John, who ascends to England’s throne after England’s most beloved monarch, Richard the Lionheart, dies. Desperate to carve out an identity of his own to escape the shadow of his adored older brother, King John must step into the role he claims the right to and attempt to rule his England.

Driven to prove himself, his rule brings chaos, turbulence and power struggles across nations as he demonstrates he’ll go to any lengths to keep the crown and maintain control.

Olivier-nominated director Jaz Woodcock-Stewart will be making her directorial debut at The Globe with this production, which is already looking like one to remember.

Tickets will be on sale for the general public on 14th July, with the usual £5 and £10 standing tickets available – if you’re quick, that is. You can browse the full lineup and details for each performance over at The Globe’s website.

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Whoever lands the role of the next James Bond won't just have to fill some very expensive shoes. They could also end up rewriting one of the franchise's oldest unwritten rules.

Since the 60s, Bond has almost always been played by an older actor in his 30s or 40s, someone more distinguished and refined. Daniel Craig bucked that trend slightly by being a bit more rugged, but ultimately he still fit the usual age profile. Even the youngest 007, Sean Connery, was already 32 when he first introduced the world to shaken martinis and licence-to-kill charm.

Now, though, the latest rumours suggest Amazon MGM could be ready to go in a very different direction. According to industry chatter, 23-year-old British actor Louis Partridge has emerged as a genuine contender to become the next Bond. Better known for starring alongside Millie Bobby Brown in Enola Holmes before popping up in Argylle and House of Guinness, which is conveniently written by Steven Knight, who is also penning Amazon’s reboot.

Partridge wasn't even part of the Bond conversation a few months ago. That changed when Variety reported in April that Partridge was genuinely "in contention" for the role, rather than simply being another name added to bookmakers' lists.

Fast forward a couple of months, and it's beginning to look a bit more plausible. The actor has rapidly climbed the betting odds and now sits among the favourites to inherit the Aston Martin. This will no doubt be helped by the recent success of the James Bond game 007 First Light, which also opts for a younger, less polished take on the spy.

When Variety caught up with him recently, Partridge didn't exactly pour cold water on the speculation either. "No, no. Not yet, at least. But that's something to keep in mind."

If he did get the nod, it would be a genuine Bond first. At 23, he'd be almost a decade younger than Connery was when he debuted as 007, while Daniel Craig was 38, Pierce Brosnan was 42, and Roger Moore was 45 when they first stepped into the tux.

It's a move that would make plenty of business sense, too. A younger Bond could potentially front the franchise for 15 years or more before another reboot becomes necessary, giving Amazon plenty of mileage from its biggest blockbuster spy.

Of course, this is still Bond, where rumours spread fast as anticipation continues to build for who will don the tux in Denis Villeneuve’s take on the character. Amazon MGM hasn't confirmed anything, and Partridge remains one of several names linked to the role alongside Callum Turner, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Harris Dickinson, Regé-Jean Page and Jacob Elordi.

• James Norton set to play Hamlet in London’s West End

The expanded FIFA World Cup has delivered exactly what fans were hoping for: goals, goals and even more goals.

The group stage alone produced a record-breaking 215 goals across 72 matches, smashing the previous tournament record and giving supporters no shortage of moments to replay or discuss with their pals. Rockets from 30 yards, outrageous solo runs, pinpoint free-kicks and last-gasp screamers have all made the cut, with football's biggest stars rubbing shoulders alongside the tournament's surprise packages.

Lionel Messi and Kylian Mbappe have once again reminded everyone why they belong among the game's greats, but they've been joined by breakout stars such as Bosnia's Alajbegovic, who has announced himself on the biggest stage in style.

Narrowing it down has been no easy task, but we've picked out the best goals of the tournament so far. With the knockout rounds only just beginning, expect this list to change.

We'll be updating our rankings after every round all the way through to the World Cup final on the 19th of July, so don't be surprised if a few more worldies force their way into the conversation.

Best World Cup goals of the Group stage

The groups have seen some cracking goals, with long range efforts seemingly being incredibly effective as pointed out by BBC pundit and former England goalkeeper Joe Hart.

The Trionda, the ball being used during this tournament, has been spotted by Hart as moving quicker in the air catching a lot of keepers out. You can check out his analysis below at the 8:33 mark, but it raises some interesting theories about Adidas's latest ball.

Kevin Pina vs Uruguay (Group H, 21 June)

Cape Verde had never scored at a World Cup before Kevin Pina stepped up, and he made sure the moment would live long in the memory. Standing more than 30 yards from goal, the midfielder spotted a gap in Uruguay's wall and drilled a fierce, low free-kick through it. The ball skipped off the turf and beyond the dive of Fernando Muslera before crashing into the bottom corner.

It was a goal worthy of any tournament, and can be seen at the 1:20 mark in the video above, but its significance made it even sweeter. Not only did it secure a famous 1-0 win, but it also went down as the first World Cup final goal in Cape Verde's history.

Kerim Alajbegovic vs Qatar (Group B, 24 June)

If this tournament has produced a breakout star, Kerim Alajbegovic has every right to be in the conversation. Still only 18, the Bosnia and Herzegovina youngster produced a moment of brilliance that mixed composure with skill.

Picking the ball up on the edge of the box, Alajbegovic danced past two Qatar defenders with quick feet before unleashing a thunderous strike that flew beyond the goalkeeper and into the top corner. It was the sort of goal that announced him to the world, combining fearless dribbling with a finish that gave the keeper absolutely no chance.

Daizen Maeda vs Sweden (Group F, 25 June)

Not every great goal has to come from 30 yards. Japan's opener against Sweden (as found at the 4:30 mark above) was a reminder that slick teamwork can be just as breathtaking.

The move started with Ritsu Doan exchanging a clever one-two with Ayase Ueda before threading a perfectly weighted pass into the path of Daizen Maeda. Timing his run to perfection, Maeda burst in behind the Swedish defence and calmly slotted beyond the advancing goalkeeper.

Lionel Messi vs Algeria (Group J, 16 June)

Some players make the extraordinary look routine, and Lionel Messi did it again against Algeria. Collecting the ball on the half-turn just outside the penalty area, the Argentina captain took a couple of quick strides before unleashing one of his trademark left-footed efforts.

The shot bent away from Luca Zidane with the pace and whip that has defined so many of Messi's greatest goals, nestling into the corner before the goalkeeper could get close. At 39, the eight-time Ballon d'Or winner is still capable of producing moments that few others can, and this was yet another reminder that class really is permanent.

Eldor Shomurodov vs DR Congo (Group K, 28 June)

Uzbekistan's maiden World Cup campaign may have come to an end in the group stage, but it still produced one of the tournament's classiest finishes (at the 45-second point above). With the White Wolves searching for a memorable moment, captain Eldor Shomurodov delivered exactly that.

Spotting the goalkeeper off his line, the experienced forward produced a perfectly judged lob that sailed through the air before dropping into the net. It was a finish that demanded both vision and flawless execution, providing the standout moment of Uzbekistan's historic first appearance at the World Cup.

Wilson Isidor vs Morocco (Group C, 24 June)

Some goals leave goalkeepers flapping, and Wilson Isidor's effort, in the third minute of the video above against Morocco, was one of them. Collecting the ball just outside the area, the Haiti forward unleashed an unstoppable drive that rocketed across the goal and into the top corner.

Yassine Bounou barely had time to react as the strike flew past him, with its combination of pace, power and pinpoint accuracy making it one of the cleanest hits of the tournament so far.

Ismael Saibari vs Brazil (Group C, 13 June)

Few teams carve Brazil open with such ease, but Ismael Saibari did exactly that. Timing his run to perfection, the Morocco midfielder burst between the two centre-backs to latch onto a perfectly weighted through-ball before producing an ice-cool finish.

With Alisson rushing off his line, Saibari showed remarkable composure to lift the ball first time over the Brazilian goalkeeper and into the net.

Best World Cup goals of the Round of 32

The knockout rounds have already raised the bar. With the pressure cranked up and every mistake carrying the threat of elimination, the Round of 16 has produced plenty of goals worthy of a place on this list already.

Kylian Mbappe and Amad Diallo have both added stunning finishes to their World Cup highlight reels, although individual brilliance doesn't always guarantee progression.

For Diallo, even one of the tournament's best finishes has ended up as little more than a consolation prize, proving that at the business end of the World Cup, quality in front of goal only gets you so far.

Kaishū Sano vs Brazil (Round of 32, 29 June)

Scoring against Brazil is one thing. Doing it with this level of skill is something else entirely. Kaishū Sano gave Japan a dream start after producing one of the cleanest finishes of the tournament.

Driving through the heart of Brazil's defence, Sano refused to give up possession despite losing his footing on the edge of the area. As he tumbled to the deck, he somehow managed to fire a superb strike beyond the goalkeeper and into the net, giving Japan a shock 1-0 lead. Brazil eventually fought back to win, but Sano's combination of determination, balance and technique ensured his goal will be remembered long after the tournaments over.

Antonio Nusa vs Ivory Coast (Round of 32, 30 June)

Antonio Nusa has made a habit of cutting in from the left, but that didn't make his finish against Ivory Coast any easier to stop. Collecting Martin Ødegaard's pass out wide, the Norway winger drove directly at two defenders before shifting the ball onto his right foot.

What came next was pure class. Nusa curled a pinpoint effort beyond the goalkeeper and just inside the far post, leaving everyone watching with the feeling it was in the moment it left his boot. It was a finish full of confidence and technique, lighting up one of the standout ties of the Round of 32 and proving why the 21-year-old is regarded as one of Europe's brightest attacking talents.

Kylian Mbappé vs Sweden (Round of 32, 30 June)

Kylian Mbappé has made a career out of embarrassing defenders, and Sweden striker Viktor Gyökeres became the latest victim. Isolated one-on-one inside the penalty area, the France captain teased his marker with a trademark stepover before bursting past him in a flash.

With the hard work done, Mbappé still had plenty to do, but the finish was as composed as you'd expect. He rifled his shot beyond the goalkeeper to give France the lead, adding another spectacular strike to his growing World Cup collection.

Amad Diallo vs Norway (Round of 32, 30 June)

Amad Diallo has been one of the tournament's standout super-subs, and his equaliser against Norway was packed with quality from start to finish. Exchanging a slick one-two with Nicolas Pépé, the Manchester United winger burst through on goal with only Ørjan Nyland left to beat.

Just as it looked like the chance might get away from him, Diallo produced a wonderfully delicate touch to shift the ball back onto his favoured left foot before dinking it into the far corner. It was a finish that combined quick thinking with outstanding technique, even if it ultimately wasn't enough to keep Ivory Coast's World Cup dream alive.

Harry Kane vs DR Congo (Round of 32, 1 July)

England looked to be losing their grip on a tricky Round of 32 tie until Harry Kane reminded everyone why he's one of the game's great finishers. Receiving the ball with his back to goal on the edge of the area, the England captain spun in one fluid movement before unleashing a ferocious strike.

The shot screamed into the top corner, leaving the goalkeeper grabbing the air and sealing a dramatic 2-1 victory over a stubborn DR Congo side. It was a goal that arrived when England needed it most, combining Kane's trademark composure with sheer power to send the Three Lions into the last 16 in spectacular fashion.

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It’s always a bit of an eyebrow-raiser when movie and TV stars tread the boards in plays in London’s West End, but we have faith this one will end well: James Norton is set to star in the latest adaptation of Hamlet.

The show’s producers have announced the run will come to the West End in 2027, although we don’t yet have the name of the theatre it’s coming to.

Important details we do have: James Norton and director Thomas Ostermeier, who currently works in Berlin, are attached.

This is Ostermeier’s own take on Hamlet, and the German version of his production was first staged all the way back in 2008. It has toured all over the world, including a stint in London in December 2011.

But this will be the first time Ostermeier directs an English version of Shakespeare’s great play.

“It will be my first time directing Shakespeare in English, and I am excited to explore the original text in order to bring this new production to life. My first Hamlet has been touring the world for 18 years so I am honoured to have the opportunity to bring it here to London with James, who in my mind is a perfect Prince of Denmark,” says Ostermeier.

Norton can currently be seen in House of the Dragon, in which he plays Lord Hightower. But he’s not a complete stranger to theatre acting.

In 2023 he starred in the stage adaptation of A Little Life at the Harold Pinter theatre. It received somewhat mixed reviews for its sheer gruelling nature, but Norton’s performance was widely praised. He has, unsurprisingly, the chops.

The German version of Ostermeier’s Hamlet runs to around 165 minutes. It’s no lightweight take, and we expect the same of the English edition.

Other works of his that have come to London theatres include last year’s The Seagull, starring Cate Blanchett and Tom Burke, and his “bold reimagining” of Ibsen play An Enemy of the People, starring Matt Smith. Ostermeier is a director with star-gathering clout.

“It’s a privilege for anyone to take on the role of Hamlet. It’s also pretty terrifying. But with Thomas Ostermeier at the helm, I know I could not be in better hands,” says Norton.

His take on Hamlet is set to come to London theatres in Autumn 2027.

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Bar and music venue Old Street Records will get its own record store next month.

It may already sound like a record shop, but London's Old Street Records is calling on vinyl seller Cigarette Records to supply the wares for its in-house record shop. You can see what’s in store from 18th July, when the store opens.

It will offer around 5000 discs on day one, with plans to double the catalogue in time, with a collection that covers “disco, funk, soul, reggae, house, garage, jungle, rock and beyond.”

“Everything I do comes back to one idea: music with feeling. Record shops are about discovery, conversation and community as much as they are about the records themselves. This collaboration with Old Street Records just makes sense,” says Owain Jones, Cigarette Records founder.

Cigarette Records has existed in one form or another since 2013, and has previously had physical locations in Beckenham Place Park and Catford Mews — and recently opened up at 37 Deptford High Street, back in February 2026.

Old Street Records ordinarily opens its doors from 5pm most days, but the record store will see that brought forward drastically. It will open from 12-6pm Wednesday to Sunday, “throughout the summer,” before the venue takes on its usual identity as a place to see live music and late night DJ sets.

The bar is also playing host to World Cup match screenings.

On the day of the record store’s opening, 18th July, there’s an an unusual early doors DAYSESH event scheduled too. It starts at 4pm, with sets from DJ Batman, Dan Grey, DJ P and Kengo San taking the music on through to 2am.

Other upcoming events include Davinia Duo playing a set on 30th June and an Off The Record singer-songwriter night on 13th July.

• Bringing back the Barfly: Frank Turner and the Camden venue’s new owners on the importance of London’s grassroots music scene

A new London gallery opened this week, and it’s just a stroll away from the Tate Modern.

Hypha Studios’s new South Bank gallery opened its doors on 25th June for a private view, and is now open to the public.

You’ll find it at 42 Southwark Bridge Road, and there are three exhibitions on already.

Bridging the Gap is a sculpture show curated by Hermione Allsopp and Poppy Whatmore. It features works from upwards of 20 artists, made using “locally-sourced” materials.

According to the blurb they “explore themes of linkage, separation, and repair through innovative approaches to structure and materiality.”

Next up is All Capitals, an exhibition featuring works from 14 “early career” artists. There’s once again a lot of sculpture to see in this one, but video work is in there too.

All Capitals is centred around “themes of shifting value systems and changing attitudes,” which itself links with the exhibition space — transformed from offices into a gallery.

Finally, Resonant Fermentation Assemblages is an exhibition that uses water to explore ideas.

It’s “conceived as a research-creation laboratory where water, in its multiple states, acts as a co-author engaging its mnemonic capacities across atmospheric and liquid states that shape a device for deep listening to the living.”

There are vessels, storing and dripping the stuff. “The installation does not represent water: it is composed of water itself, allowing itself to be affected by its rhythms, densities, and drifts,” according to the description. Make of that what you will.

All three of these exhibitions are only on display for a month, until 26th July.

Hypha Gallery South Bank sees a space that was once occupied by offices reworked into a gallery — it’s Hypha’s whole deal.

Hypha Studios has been around since 2021 and since then has put on a frankly staggering number of exhibitions, including more than 140 in London alone.

The gallery is free to visit, and will be open from 12-6pm Thursday to Sunday. Other current London galleries operated by the charity include spots in Euston, Fenchurch Street and Liverpool Street.

• The best exhibitions in London this summer: From Escher to Bowie to Marilyn Monroe

Whilst Department Q may sound like some kind of offshoot of some Bond-esque section of the Government, it’s actually a pretty good hit Netflix show. Or both. So good in fact that season two is going to be hitting our screens before long, with some pretty impressive names already added to the cast list.

Matthew Goode stars in the leading role as surely detective DCO Carl Morck and leads a semi-reluctant team of oddballs. A somewhat cantankerous boss, his team of misfits includes Akram Salim, played by Alexej Manvelov, Leah Byrne as DC Rose Dickson and DS James Hardy, who is played by Jamie Sives. The first season followed the team as they dug into a cold case of a missing woman from years ago, and followed the trail of her abduction. The series itself is based on the best-selling crime novel series by Danish author Jussi Adler-Olsen, and the second season is expected to pick up on a second cold case. Mark Bonnar is set to return as Stephen Burns, as is Kate Dickie as Moira Jacbonson.

Season two has officially kicked off filming, and is set to welcome several new faces, including British actor Greg Wise (The Crown), Irish actor Aisling Franciosi (Game of Thrones), and Scottish actor Tony Curran (Outlander).

Also joining the ensemble is Hamish Clark (Monarch of the Glen) as Christopher Herron, Alex Ferns (Waiting for the Out) as Phil Allenbeck, Ross Anderson (Knight of the Seven Kingdoms) as Ricky Daddario, Rebecca Root (Heartstopper) as June Lovesay and Isla Johnston (The Queen's Gambit) as Agnes.

Dept. Q comes from writer-director Scott Frank (The Queen’s Gambit) and is exec produced by Frank, Rob Bullock and Charlotte Moore. The production company is Left Bank which TV swats will recognise as the same team behind The Crown, another of Netflix’s major hitters.

As for what season 2 is about, executive producer Rob Bullock said in a statement: “This season, Carl and his band of misfits tackle a terrible crime hidden in the highest echelons of Scottish society. It is a story for our times: rich and powerful people who believe they are above the law. Carl, of course, knows otherwise.”

We don’t know exactly when the second season will be landing, with no official release date from the streamer, but with production under way it hopefully won’t be long until we more mystery and Morck one liners on our screens.

• Olivia Rodrigo is bringing butterflies, break-ups and bangers to Fortnite

When Supergirl hits cinemas later this week (June 26th to be precise), it’ll represent the latest step in James Gunn’s exciting DC Universe reboot following the troubled Zack Snyder years.

For a certain vintage of movie fans, it’ll represent a rather different kind of cinematic redemption, though. This will mark the first standalone Supergirl movie since 1984, when Helen Slater and Faye Dunaway starred in a downright weird spinoff from the Christopher Reeve Superman films. Here's a trailer to get you up to speed:

It was a critical and commercial disaster, thanks to a nonsensical plot, clumsy editing, and terrible special effects. It didn’t help that Christopher Reeve turned down the request for a universe-building cameo as the Man of Steel, either.

Hopes are high that some 42 years later, the second Supergirl movie won’t make the same mistakes. It appears to be sticking far closer to its comic book source material for one thing, and has evidently been given a healthy budget. It even features a cameo from David Corenswet’s current Superman, for whatever that’s worth. Catch a glimpse of that one below:

But which other superhero movies are in need of a Supergirl-style reboot? We’re thinking of those genre movies that have been forgotten, overlooked, or critically panned.

We’ve generally avoided movie picks where there are solid signs that some form of cinematic reboot is already in the works – hence no X-Men, Blade, or Flash Gordon.

With all that said, let’s take to the skies...

1. Green Lantern

Yes, yes, we know. DC Studios is about to release a glossy series all about those ring-wielding space cops, the Green Lantern Corps, in Lanterns. But the fact that James Gunn hasn’t seen fit to grant the IP its own standalone movie (yet) speaks volumes to the colossal balls-up that they made of the 2011 movie.

Ryan Reynolds continues to bear the scars of that production with trademark grace and humour – and has worked through his humiliation with the deeply meta Deadpool movies – but we all know there’s only one way to truly exorcise those green-tinted ghosts.

2. The Flash

Admit it – you’d forgotten 2023’s The Flash even existed, hadn’t you? It was a bit of a bomb, to put it mildly. Executives might justifiably argue that’s a reason not to rush a reboot through production, but there are a few reasons for a quick turn-around.

The last film was heavily delayed and released into an uncertain post-COVID environment, by which point the James Gunn DC era had begun. It never stood a chance. Add in the unsavoury reports surrounding The Flash actor Ezra Miller, and it might be best for everyone if they sprinted towards a remake.

3. The Shadow

It might be a bit of a stretch to say that there’s a renewed demand for ‘superhero noir’, but the Spider-Noir Amazon Prime series has been an undoubted hit. If any executives were to go hunting for IP operating in the same ballpark, they could do worse than revisit The Shadow.

Part gumshoe detective, part mystical ninja, this 1930s comic book character appeared in a bunch of movies and TV series in the first half of the 20th century, before being resurrected in 1994 for a terrible movie starring Alec Baldwin. Worth another shot?

4. Green Hornet

It’s difficult to remember a time when everything Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg touched didn’t turn to gold, but that time was just 15 years ago. 2011’s Green Hornet was a weirdly misjudged reboot of a classic 1930s superhero, who perhaps most famously featured in the 1966 TV series that gave Bruce Lee his break.

We could imagine a modern take that treated this masked detective as a kind of period Batman – ideally the tongue-in-cheek Adam West version. Give it a healthy dash of self-aware humour, and we’d book our tickets tomorrow.

5. The Phantom

Billy Zane has played a whole host of creeps and psychos in his time, but back in 1996 his chiselled chin and baritone voice were deployed in the service of this turkey of a superhero movie. Dating back to the early years of the superhero comic strip business, The Phantom’s form-hugging head-to-toe purple costume was the first of its kind.

While any reboot would need to update some of the more problematic areas of the IP (he was originally a wealthy white hero operating in Africa), we could well imagine an ‘Indiana Jones in tights’ adventure that nods to the serials of old.

6. The League Of Extraordinary Gentleman

There was a report back in 2022 that Alan Moore’s The League Of Extraordinary Gentleman comic series was receiving another adaptation, but we haven’t heard anything since. And while the Watchmen creator won’t thank me for saying this, it really needs to be revisited – if only to make up for the abomination that was the initial 2003 attempt.

It’s an enticing concept when you lay it out, assembling a motley crew of literary heroes and villains (Allan Quatermain, Captain Nemo, Dr. Jekyll) into a bickering superhero group, like some kind of Victorian Avengers.

7. The Hulk

Given that we’ve had two Hulk movies in the past 20 years or so, and a whole stack of big green guest appearances in other Marvel movies and TV shows, you might think that we should give Bruce Banner a bit of a break.

We don’t want him getting stressed, after all. To that we would respond with two simple facts. Fact one: those two 21st century Hulk films weren’t very good. Fact two: this current Mark Ruffalo version of the Hulk that we’ve all come to know and love doesn’t yet have a movie of his own. Licensing woes between Sony and Disney / Marvel have thus far relegated the green giant to supporting roles. Fingers crossed they can one day be resolved.

8. The Rocketeer

Back in the ‘90s, movies such as The Phantom, The Shadow and Dick Tracy resurrected the comic strips of the 1930s – with generally terrible results. Bucking the 'bad movie' trend on this list, bit still criminally overlooked, was The Rocketeer. It managed to ace the formula, but didn’t get anywhere near the attention that it deserved.

This swashbuckling romp starred Billy Campbell as a down-on-his-luck test pilot who stumbles upon a high-tech jetpack and uses it to thwart a Nazi plot. This is the film that prompted Marvel to turn to Joe Johnston for Captain America: The First Avenger in 2011, and it’s past due a reboot.

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If you thought the second coming of Sam Ryder in a resurrected Jesus Christ Superstar was a miraculous booking for musical lovers in London's West End, count your blessings for this latest update on the revived show. Lloyd Webber’s legendary musical has announced possibly the most stacked lineup of guest stars for the role of King Herod.

It was previously announced that Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Richard Armitage, Boy George, Layton Williams and Julian Clary would be sharing the role of King Herod, but now a starry slew of guests have been confirmed as joining the cast too.

Star of White Collar Matt Bomer will be joining in the regal role on 16th of October, with this performance marking his West End debut.

He’ll pass the baton onto National Treasure Rob Brydon on 2nd November with BAFTA winning Comedian Reece Shearsmith taking over the following week until 14th November, with Michael Ball, Omid Djalili and Bob The Drag Queen also on the lineup for the run.

The musical, which was last performed in London’s West End in 2019, is kicking off its run on 22nd June at The London Palladium before transferring to Theatre Royal Drury Lane in October. The production first ran in Regent’s Open Air Theatre before transferring, with Sam Ryder in the titular role.

Written by legendary dramaturgs Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber, the show follows the events of the last days of the life of Jesus Christ, as seen through the eyes of Judas. Known as more of a rock opera than a traditional musical, the production includes generation defining hits like I Don’t Know How to Love Him, and Superstar.

Jesse Tyler Ferguson who will be kicking off the run is best known for starring in Modern Family, and has been the recipient of a Tony Award for his role in Take Me Out on Broadway. The collective awards cabinet for the cast doesn’t stop there though, with British actor Simon Russel Beale bringing his three Olivier Awards, two BAFTAs, and Tony Award to the production too. Michael Ball OBE is a double Olivier Award-winning singer and actor having scooped up Best Actor in a Musical for his performances as Edna Turnblad in Hairspray, and not forgetting Layton Williams' Olivier award too. Just to name a few.

Whether you’re a musicals nerd or someone who loves gawping at celebs in real life, the lineup is pretty glitzy, with some of the biggest names in the biz all on one billing. From Drag Race winning queens to actual Sirs and comedians, there is literally no bad night to go and see the musical.

Tickets are currently on sale starting at £28 for the binoculars-probably-required seats, although a front-row sweat-and-spit-receiving-distance seat will come with a slightly higher price tag, between £195 and £245.

The full list of Herods:

• Jesse Tyler Ferguson (20 Jun – 11 Jul) at The London Palladium
  Richard Armitage (13 Jul – 1 Aug & 8 Aug) at The London Palladium
  Boy George (3 – 15 Aug) at The London Palladium
  Layton Williams (17 – 29 Aug) at The London Palladium
  Julian Clary (31 Aug – 5 Sep) at The London Palladium
  Matt Bomer (16 – 31 Oct) at Theatre Royal Drury Lane
  Rob Brydon (2 – 7 Nov) at Theatre Royal Drury Lane
  Reece Shearsmith (9 – 14 Nov) at Theatre Royal Drury Lane
  Bob The Drag Queen (16 – 21 Nov) at Theatre Royal Drury Lane
  Michael Ball (23 Nov – 5 Dec) at Theatre Royal Drury Lane
  Simon Russell Beale (7 – 12 Dec) at Theatre Royal Drury Lane
  Omid Djalili (14 – 19 Dec) at Theatre Royal Drury Lane
  Layton Williams (21 Dec – 2 Jan) at Theatre Royal Drury Lane

You can browse and buy tickets for all performances via London Box Office's website .

• London's Madame Tussauds is getting a 4D Jumanji experience

London’s Madame Tussauds will offer a new attraction next month for those visiting during school holidays: a 4D Jumanji experience.

Only a handful of the most important Tussauds venues across the world are getting this one, including Hollywood, Las Vegas, London, New York, and Singapore.

But what is it exactly? The Jumanji: Safari Tours 4D Expedition is a seven minute experience in which a cinema-like presentation is given some extra oomph with 3D, seat motion and “wind, water and more” effects — that’s the fourth of your dimensions for this one.

It arrives ahead of a third Jumanji film in the rebooted Jack Black lineage, Jumanji: Open World, which lands in cinemas on 25th December, 2026. But exactly when it will open in the London Madame Tussauds is still to be confirmed.

“From July” is the wording for the roll-out of Jumanji: Safari Tours 4D Expedition globally, while the Singapore location will get it in “mid-August” for example. Madame Tussauds London is yet to confirm its date.

Welcome to the jungle

Jumanji: Safari Tours 4D Expedition features Jumanji actor Rhys Darby — because who can afford the Rock’s or Jack Black’s rates? — as he takes you on a wildlife tour that includes scenes with ostriches, anacondas and rhinos.

“Visitors will embark on an immersive jungle tour that quickly spirals into humorous chaos that can only be found in the universe of Jumanji,” reads the experience’s description.

“At Merlin, bringing iconic entertainment franchises to life is central to what we do. With this new Jumanji 4D cinematic experience, we’re bringing families together through play by taking them deeper into the jungle action than ever before,” says Paul Moreton, Chief Development Officer at Merlin Entertainments, which runs Madame Tussauds.

The Jumanji attraction will be offered as part of a standard Madame Tussauds ticket. Book online and these will cost you £32.38 per adult or £29.31 for kids in July — although prices vary slightly based on date and time.

Alternatively, Merlin annual passes start at £139 per person, and offer access to other sites including Alton Towers and Chessington World of Adventures too. There’s currently a summer sale on for the more expensive tiers of passes too, which provide less restricted access to Merlin’s locations.

• A historic ship is coming to London, and you can visit it this July

With the World Cup taking place across North America, millions of fans are adapting to disrupted routines, bleary-eyed mornings and alarm clocks set for the middle of the night. According to E.ON Next research, around eight million fans are expected to tune into late-night fixtures this summer, with many changing work schedules and daily habits to make sure they don't miss a moment.

It's why Defoe has teamed up with E.ON Next's Watch and Wash campaign, encouraging supporters to make use of cheaper off-peak electricity while watching matches. The idea is simple: if you're already staying up for football, you may as well put the washing machine on too.

While the campaign focuses on smart habits off the pitch, Defoe's attention is firmly on what could happen on it, how the summer will go and why E. ON Next’s campaign is so important.

Why the World Cup still stops the nation

For Defoe, there is still nothing quite like a World Cup. "It's just football," he says. "Football's got this thing of bringing people together. When football's on, especially the World Cup, it is the pinnacle of sport, and I feel like it brings everyone together."

The time difference may force fans to change their routines, but he believes that only adds to the occasion.

"It's different as well. People sort of complain about the kick-off times and stuff like that, but because it's different, because you're having to set your alarms and wake up, I'm excited for it, to be honest."

More than anything, he sees major tournaments as a rare moment of collective optimism. "As a nation, you come together and try to support this group of players and try to achieve something special. I'm looking forward to it."

Missing tournament football

Having represented England at multiple major tournaments, Defoe admits there are plenty of things he misses about international football.

"Just everything," he says. "Just the whole environment. Being amongst a group of players that potentially got a chance of creating history."

For him, the World Cup remains the pinnacle of the game. "You look over the course of World Cups over the years, even as a young kid growing up watching them, and you know how people just become legends overnight."

That opportunity is what makes the tournament so special for the players involved.

"If you represent your country at a World Cup, it's the biggest thing. For this group of players to have that opportunity to go and do it again, the ones that have been there before and the ones going to their first tournament, you've just got to embrace it because it goes quick."

Defoe believes England's opening matches could prove crucial. "I think it's important to start a tournament well and then hopefully you build a little bit of momentum, and you can go on and achieve something special."

The small margins that make the difference

The Watch and Wash campaign centres around the idea that small changes can make a big difference, something that resonates with Defoe's own experiences as a player.

"I've tried everything," he says. "You have to try and tick all the boxes and try and get an advantage." That mindset extended well beyond training sessions.

"You have to be able to do things that maybe you're thinking other people aren't willing to do in terms of your recovery, your diet, how you train, how you live. It's that 24-hour athlete."

Naturally, that attention to detail often drifted into superstition. "If I scored a goal or had a really good game, I'd want to wear the same boots. You want your preparations to be identical."

One particular example still makes him smile. "I remember scoring five goals against Wigan for Tottenham, and then the new boot colour came out. I was told I had to wear the new ones, but I was thinking, 'I can't change this boot at the minute.'" Footballers, it turns out, can be just as irrational as supporters when things are going well.

The pressure fans never see

One thing Defoe is keen to stress is that the pressure of playing for England is often underestimated from the outside. "I think people don't understand the pressure," he says. "You hear a lot of people speak like it's easy. You just couldn't imagine the pressure of playing for England."

That pressure has only intensified as England has edged closer to ending its long wait for major silverware. Reaching finals and semi-finals has raised expectations rather than easing them.

"When you play for England, there's an expectation and a demand to win football matches and a demand to win major tournaments." Because England has come so close in recent years, supporters now travel to tournaments with genuine belief.

"We've been in touching distance. We've been so close over the last few tournaments." At the same time, that belief inevitably creates another layer of pressure for the players themselves.

"Because we've come so close, and because it's been so long, it's almost like we're just so desperate as a nation to win a major tournament."

Still, Defoe believes that pressure is part of what makes international football special. "If we managed to do it, could you imagine the celebrations over here? For the country, it would just be something so special."

Jermain Defoe's World Cup predictions

• Winner: France
• Runner-up: England
• Dark horses: Japan, or "hopefully an African Nation"
• Player of the tournament: Bruno Fernandes or Michael Olise
• Top scorer: Harry Kane or Kylian Mbappé

• Drinks by the Dram just launched a Whisky Library – and it’s a book lover’s (boozy) dream

If you thought that themed parties and Strictly Come Dancing’s Movie week were the last you’d see of Austin Powers then think again. Although the last Austin Powers flick we got was way back in 2002, now the star of the series Mike Myers has said there will be another.

This week, Myers was asked by a fan on Trevor Noah’s World Cup Watch Party if there would be an Austin Powers 4, and he simply responded “yes”. It’s perhaps not entirely surprising as Myers has said for a long time that he’s be interested in doing another sequel, although there were queries over whether it would actually go ahead or not.

The last film, Austin Powers in Goldmember starred Michael Caine as Nigel Powers, and Beyonce as Foxxy Cleopatra. It followed the story of Powers as he chased Dr Evil, Mini-Me, and Goldmember through time when they kidnap his father. He stops in 1975 to seek the help of Foxxy Cleopatra, an ex-girlfriend, so he can track down the kidnappers. In keeping with the other two films, it also included a lot of star power cameos. Some famous faces that popped up include: the late Ozzy Osbourne and family, Tom Cruise, Danny DeVito, Nathan Lane, Britney Spears, Gwyneth Paltrow, Quincy Jones and others.

Myers has said if there is another film he’d like it to focus on the Dr Evil storyline.

Across the three Austin Powers films, the franchise has grossed over half a billion dollars globally and graced the fancy dress shindigs and vernaculars of hundreds of Brits. It’s also got some pretty famous fans of its own, and you know a film or series is pretty iconic when it has spawned plenty of imitations, parodies, sketches and spinoffs, like the recent Verizon advert with co-stars Seth Green, Mindy Sterling and Rob Lowe featuring alongside Myers.

The yes from Myers is pretty much the only information we have about a potential fourth film, with no word on who from the original cast (aside from Myers) might return, or what famous faces might be making a cameo.

• Picturehouse Cinema is opening up its biggest London venue for another legendary all-nighter

Ready to time warp back 500 years? You can do just that with a visit to the Nao Victoria in London next month.

The Nao Victoria is a replica of a real ship that sailed the seas back in the 1500s. It set sail from Seville in 1519, and spent a few years crossing the globe before returning to Seville in 1522.

This replica of that slice of history was constructed in 1991, and is set to arrive in St Katharine’s Docks on 30th June.

It will spend a couple of weeks there, and you can tour its decks while it’s there. With the current online discount you can pick up Adult tickets for 10.15 Euro, kids for 5.55 Euro and a family pass (up to five) for 23.95 Euro. You can book from 30th June to 12th July.

That currency pricing is a clue that the Nao Victoria spends its life touring around different ports and countries, rather than sticking to these shores. And it has done for a couple of decades now.

“This replica of the Nao Victoria started in 2004 another trip around the globe starting from Seville. Up to 26,894 miles were covered during 2004 to 2006 visiting 17 countries. The replica of the Nao Victoria was the first historical replica to circumnavigate the Earth,” writes Fundación Nao Victoria.

It is a proper globetrotter/paddler. What do you get with a ticket? A “self-guided” tour of the Neo Victoria’s three decks. And its arranged like a floating museum, with info panels that tell the story of the ship.

It’s not the only historical replica doing the rounds in the coming weeks either. You’ll find the Nao Santa Maria docked in Shoreham from 1st to 12th July, while El Galeon is currently bimbling around Northern Ireland — docking at Warrenpoint and Derry this month.

If you’re not going to be around for Nao Victoria’s stint, you can always check out London’s more permanent boaty residents — Greenwich’s Cutty Sark and the Golden Hinge nearby London Bridge. Both are well worth a visit.

• Christopher Columbus replica ship is touring the UK — and we climbed aboard

It’s almost hard to believe that David Nicholls’ heartbreaking love story One Day came out in 2009, given the numerous adaptations and cultural status it holds. The 2024 Netflix adaptation starring Leo Woodall and Ambika Mod caused the whole nation to collectively swoon, root for and cry over the mismatched but soul-destined couple. Now, the novel is heading for another adaptation, heading to London’s West End for a musical.

For anyone who hasn’t seen the film, series, read the book, or been subjected to a friend haphazardly attempt to recall the plot, One Day follows the lives of Dexter Mayhew and Emma Morley who meet and spend the night together as students on 5th July (St Swithin's Day) in 1988 and follows the ups and downs of their tangled lives across the next twenty years.

The musical is coming down from Edinburgh where it ran in the Lyceum Theatre. It had a pretty starry team behind it, with playwright David Greig wrote the book (he’s also the theatre’s artistic director), Amanda Sudano and Abner Ramirez responsible for the songs, and Max Webster – whose West End credits include Life of Pi and The Importance of being Ernest – directing.

Two bona-fide West End stars are in the leading the cast, with Jamie Muscato (current Emcee in Cabaret), and Sharon Rose (who you might recognise from Hamilton) taking on the roles of Dexter and Emma. The whole musical will be moving into the Garrick Theatre, starting its run on November 17th and currently has performances scheduled until March 14th.

One Day the musical will be taking over from the West End revival of Mel Brooks' The Producers, which will be wrapping up its run in September.

Anyone who is a fan of industry gossip (read: everyone) will be interested to know the lore behind this show; it drew some controversy in its early Edinburgh run as critics weren’t invited to the run, as the team wanted to keep the reviews (and presumably opinions) fresh for the London transfer. Whilst mysterious, it does mean there’s no real chatter about whether the adaptation is worth a watch, but given the creative team and cast behind it and the fact that the original run was extended by two weeks, it’s looking promising.

Tickets are already on sale, with prices starting at £30 and ranging up to £110 for the smack-bang-in-front-of-the-stage seats.

• Picturehouse Cinema is opening up its biggest London venue for another legendary all-nighter

If you thought Spider-Man: Brand New Day was shaping up to be a relatively grounded return to basics after No Way Home, the newly released trailer would like a word.

Marvel and Sony have dropped a hefty new look at Tom Holland's fourth solo outing as Peter Parker, and it suggests the poor lad is having an even worse time than usual. Not only is he still dealing with the fact that MJ and Ned have absolutely no idea who he is, but he's also undergoing some sort of bizarre spider-powered transformation.

The trailer opens with Peter expressing concern about changes happening to his body. Before long, we discover one of those changes is organic webbing. Much like Tobey Maguire's Spider-Man, Holland's version appears to be producing webs naturally rather than relying on gadgets. It's a fan theory that's been floating around for months, and Marvel has now made it official.

A visibly distressed Peter seeks advice from Bruce Banner, asking about suppressing mutating DNA. Banner appears to reveal he's using a device to help keep the Hulk under control, which feels like a detail that'll become extremely important later... as the trailer will go on to show.

Elsewhere, New York is under attack by an invisible threat that can freeze people in place and seemingly jump between minds. The trailer remains deliberately vague about who is behind it, though fans are once again convinced that Sadie Sink is playing X-Men favourite Jean Grey.

Sink appears only briefly in the footage, lurking in hooded shadows and looking suspiciously powerful. Given the telepathic abilities on display, the Jean Grey theories aren't exactly going away. Whether that's a genuine reveal or a massive misdirect remains to be seen.

The trailer also packs in an impressive villain roster. Michael Mando's Scorpion finally gets his long-awaited moment after first being teased nearly a decade ago, while The Hand appear to be causing serious trouble across New York. There's also every chance that Tombstone is lurking somewhere in the mix, even if Marvel is keeping that card close to its chest for now.

Then comes the Hulk. After what appears to be a loss of control involving Banner's suppression device, the jade giant emerges and finds himself on a collision course with Spider-Man. Judging by the trailer, Peter ends up trying to protect MJ while simultaneously avoiding being flattened by an extremely upset Hulk. Standard superhero stuff, really.

The emotional core of the film still seems to revolve around Peter's isolation following No Way Home. Several scenes show him watching videos of MJ and Ned, both of whom have moved on with their lives while remaining completely unaware of the role Peter once played in them. It's a surprisingly sad thread running through what otherwise looks like an all-out comic book spectacle.

By the trailer's closing moments, Peter appears to be embracing some darker new powers. His eyes black out, his organic webbing becomes significantly more aggressive, and he unleashes a huge web tornado while battling The Hand. Whether this transformation is linked to the movie's mystery villain or simply a side effect of being bitten by a radioactive spider all those years ago remains unclear.

One thing is certain: Brand New Day doesn't look remotely interested in playing it safe. Between Hulk fights, mutant rumours, ninja armies, organic webs and The Punisher showing up to help save the day, Spider-Man's latest adventure is shaping up to be one of Marvel's weirdest and most ambitious films in years.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day swings into UK cinemas on the 29th of July 2026.

• The Little Door Co opens up a new Shoreditch location which is all about the houseparty

Is cinema officially cool again? It may be 90% down to Letterboxd, but going to the cinema has once again risen through the ranks of glorified binge-watching to being a respected hobby with cultural cache. Speaking of cache, Picturehouse Cinema is cache-ing on this, hosting another huge event celebrating all things cinema. Picturehouse Central in Piccadilly is opening its doors all night long this weekend for seven unmissable movie marathons and film-fanatic-antics.

Dubbed The World’s Biggest All-Nighter, this is definitely a step up from the teenage days of trying to watch all eight Harry Potter films / every single LOTR movie at a sleepover fuelled solely by popcorn and Cadbury buttons. Kicking off on Saturday 20th, Picturehouse Central will be opening up all seven screens with a distinct programme of classics and favourites, as well as special hosts and some big surprises. But probably good surprises, unlike the sugar rush vomiting surprise of your teenage movie marathons.

Anyone who had wattpad downloaded in circa 2010 will know that no movie night marathon will be complete without a Twilight Saga marathon, and luckily Picturehouse knows it. Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse, Breaking Dawn: Part One, and Breaking Dawn: Part Two will be a key part of the lineup alongside Nouvelle Vague classics, horror, anime, and more.

The current programme lineup includes:

• Witching Hour Horror
• Anime All-Stars
• The Twilight Saga
• Transmission Presents Cult Classics and Genre Filmmaking
• Jacques Rivette’s Out 1: Noli Me Tangere in full
• Two potluck screenings – one dedicated to all-time classics, and one showing exclusive previews

Tickets cost £35.85 for the event, and tickets for any of the All Nighter screens include free tea and coffee all night to help you keep hooked all night, as well as giveaways and surprises. Each screen will have a host for the night who will introduce each film, and there will be plenty of breaks across the night.

You can get tickets via Picturehouse website.

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There are sequels, and then there are legendary franchises which you semi-groan at when you hear there’s going to be yet another release, before putting your faux-adult-standards behind you and fangirling with the rest of the nation.

Pixar’s latest flick falls firmly into this category with the beloved Woody, Buzz, and Jessie reuniting on our screens in Toy Story 5. In the latest instalment, the toys are facing their biggest threat yet: screens. Voiced by Greta Lee, Lilypad is the newest arrival in Bonnie’s life and poses the biggest threat to playtime. It’s arguably relatable stuff, making parents look up with guilty faces and silently promise they won’t just stick an iPad in front of their kids' faces when they’re throwing a tantrum in public anymore. Or maybe just on special occasions.

Bad Bunny, Taylor Swift, Tom Hanks: whilst it’s easy to focus on the frankly whopping names attached to the project, it’s the duo Andrew Stanton and Lindsey Collins who are the powerhouses behind the films, writing and directing, and producing respectively (and restoring our faith in love, being high school sweethearts as well as movie makers). We sat down with the pair in London to talk about sneaky jokes, whether there will be a Toy Story 6, and educating them on the universal experience for most British kids of watching Pixar films on a tiny screen in Russell and Bromley.

SL: You know, watching Toy Story 5 was actually the first Pixar film I’ve watched as an adult.

Andrew Stanton: Wow

SL: I don’t know if you guys are familiar with this as it’s a very cult British experience, but until now I’d only watched the films whilst getting your school shoes fitted? The two main shoe shops would have little TV screens in the corner which only ever showed Toy Story or Finding Nemo. You’d be glued to the screen not caring if your shoes actually fit or not…

AS: Oh my God I didn’t know this

Lindsey Collins: Did you feel like you needed new shoes watching Toy Story 5?

SL: Yes! It was like some kind of Pavlovian response, Where are my new shoes?

LC: You’ve got to get yourself some!

SL: One of the things I loved is how many jokes there are in the film, especially ones that I think would have gone over my head as a kid. Are there ever any jokes that don’t make the cut? Any that are too rude that you can’t get away with?

AS: Always. We throw so many at it so we make sure we’re as funny as we can be. Sometimes it’s because of the film and the story goes in another direction.

LC: And we throw in some that we know will get flagged and taken out so the ones we really want end up staying in

SL: Nice! Like a Trojan Horse?

LC: Yeah, some sacrificial lambs

SL: The cameos are insane in this film: Bad Bunny, Alan Cumming – we interviewed him on Monday and he didn’t let slip that he was in the film

AS: Oh good on him!

LC: He runs the Traitors, he know not to let slip

SL: If you do Toy Story 6, is there anyone you’re eyeing up who you’d love to make a cameo?

AS: Oh god the list is so long… But it tends to be the scenario – we weren’t thinking of Bad Bunny ahead of time, it was more the moment when we needed to fill in these one liners

LC: Bad Bunny came about because during the pandemic he made videos of his Toy Story toys so we knew he was a fan, so we were asking one another Do you think we can get Bad Bunny to do a voice??

AS: And we literally only had one line for Pizza with Sunglasses, but [once he was on board] we said let’s expand him, and we got him to record it in Spanish and English, so the character spoke in this Spanglish

LC: He had a blast, it was so much fun. He was awesome

AS: Did you stay to the very end of the credits?

SL: I did not…

AS: Ohh there is a little scene at the end – you’ll have to go and watch it again

SL: Oh, no worries there I will be. I asked my housemates who they’d pick to make a cameo and they all said Hugh Grant… What Toy do you think he’d be? What Toy would you envision he voice if he did come on board?

LC: [gasps] I love Hugh Grant

AS: Why do I wanna say, Calculator?

LC: I love that he’s been playing villains recently, I’d love him to voice a villain. A Dr. Facilier maybe?

SL: Maybe the Operations guy? Who always just yells when he gets buzzed

LC: Oh I like that

AS: Gonna write that in

SL: Andrew you’ve made a small cameo in a lot of your Pixar films, did you have one in this film?

AS: I did, I was Jimmy Queen

SL: Really?!

LC: [makes pig noises]

AS: Yeah, that’s all I did

SL: Where is your Oscar?!

AS: I know. I think I’ve just offended a whole nation there

LC: He makes us call him Jimmy Queen now around the house

SL: Is it good for when he’s being a diva?

LC: Yeah, exactly [to the side] Jimmy Queen just got here. If I was going to be a Toy, I don't know, I like Dolly, she’s pretty great, bit of a wise ass.

Toy Story 5 is now out in cinemas across the UK

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Toy Story 5 arrives in cinemas later this week (June 19th), marking the latest entry in a storied series of CGI movies.

Indeed, the original Toy Story film holds a very special place in cinematic history. When it arrived in 1995, it became the first ever feature length CGI film – that is, the first movie to be made entirely using computer animation techniques.

As such, Pixar’s landmark production did much more than kick off a franchise, or even a successful studio. It spawned an entire industry.

By way of a tribute to the decades-spanning Toy Story series and the entire form of cinema that it created, we thought now would be the ideal time to run through the best CGI movies ever made.

It’s a thorny subject for a list. Many of us have grown up with these films, so I’m quite aware that rating them (and omitting so many absolute bangers) is likely to provoke outrage.

I can only say that I’m sorry for the actual physical pain I’m about to inflict on you. Even if I am 100% right.

9. Sausage Party

Part of me wanted to include Sausage Party for the sake of variety, and perhaps just a little mischievous contrarianism amidst all this kiddie-focused fare. But when it comes down to it, this is a deft piece of work that goes to places most live action Hollywood movies dare not tread. It sets out its stall as a bawdy Seth Rogen comedy vehicle all about anthropomorphic sausages itching to get together with suggestively shaped buns in a quintessential supermarket, but soon expands into an unabashed statement about atheistic humanism. You don’t get that from Disney, God bless ‘em.

8. Big Hero 6

It would be a stretch to suggest that Big Hero 6 has flown under radar, but it rarely seems to be spoken about in the same terms as many of the other CGI films on this list. You can probably blame Frozen, which was released to billion-dollar-grossing success the previous year by the same studio. For my money, though, Big Hero 6 is the better film, with a stunning aesthetic that mashes together Japanese and American sci-fi culture. But it’s the heart-warming relationship between a young robotics nerd and his inflatable buddy (not like that) that forms the core of the movie’s appeal.

7. Shrek

If Toy Story paved the way for all computer animated movies to follow, then Shrek established the fact that this was indeed a CGI movie industry rather than a Pixar movie industry. It might have been DreamWorks Animation’s second computer animated feature, but it was the first to hit big with audiences, capturing the zeitgeist with its tongue-in-cheek send up of Disney’s hackneyed fairytale schtick. Which is truly amazing, when you read into the troubled nature of the production. Mike Myers brings the grouchy ogre to life, aided by a stellar supporting cast, an irreverent script, and a bracingly anachronistic soundtrack.

6. WALL·E

What really separates Pixar (at its best) from the rest of the family-oriented CGI movie crowd is that it has something to say. Arguably its grandest statement comes via WALL·E, which goes in strong on humanity’s complacency in the face of impending environmental disaster, with a side-order of disdain for consumerism. Don’t worry, though – it’s also got an adorable trash-scooping robot protagonist, who falls in love with a sleeker and deadlier model during a masterfully wordless opening stretch.

5. The Lego Movie

Warner Bros finally crashed the CGI movie space in 2014 with Phil Lord and Christopher Miller’s riotous riff on everyone’s favourite blocky toy brand. The Lego Movie represented a huge swing at the time, and its success surely paved the way for Barbie’s similarly irreverent cinematic treatment a decade later. Featuring a nigh-on perfect visual style that nods to stop motion animation and the sheer chaotic creativity of Lego itself, as well as a surprisingly meta storyline, it’s an absolute hoot with genuine cross-generational appeal.

4. Toy Story 2

This was a tricky one. As we’ve already discussed, the original Toy Story was foundational to this entire list, while Toy Story 3 reaches emotional depths and deals with the kind of weighty themes you simply don’t see too often from an ostensibly kiddie-focused film genre. But Toy Story 2 is sheer perfection, from its expressive animation to its razor-sharp script and impeccable characterisations. If there’s been a more joyful and thrilling exploration of mid-life crisis in all of cinema, I have yet to see it.

3. The Incredibles

Eight years before the first Avengers movie and more than two decades before Marvel’s so-so Fantastic Four reboot, Pixar aced the whole ‘quippy super-family’ thing with The Incredibles. Not only that, but they also produced one of the finest spy movies of the 21st century while they were at it. The Incredibles has it all, with a beautiful ‘60s sci-fi aesthetic, outrageously thrilling set pieces, and bags of heart, as our extraordinary nuclear family gets pulled back into the super-heroing business.

2. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

No-one, but no-one expected this. While the world was distracted by Tom Holland’s lovably dorky live action hero and his dalliances with the wider Marvel Cinematic Universe, Into the Spider-Verse quietly swung ahead with the best Spider-Man movie yet. The film’s successes are many and varied, but core to its appeal is that it does something genuinely new and daring in the field of computer animation. It’s impossible to describe Into the Spider-Verse’s aesthetic beyond made-up words like ‘comic-booky’, such is the vivid impression of ink-on-paper being given life and motion.

1. Ratatouille

Peak Pixar truly could do no wrong, as evidenced by this fact: its best ever film was about an aspiring Parisian chef fighting to work amidst wanton discrimination and corruption. The premise suggests ‘Ken Loach indie’ rather than ‘family-friendly box office smash’, but those Pixar magicians had it covered. They made the protagonist a gourmand rat named Remy, who finds that he can indulge his prodigious talent in the kitchen by hopping onto the head of a gormless kitchen assistant and controlling his movements. No other CGI film so expertly evokes childlike wonder in adults and kids alike.

• 10 more 1980s cartoons that should get a live action movie following Masters of the Universe

Cultural icon Judi Dench is to become part of the London landscape in plans to rename the Shaftesbury Theatre the Judi Dench Theatre.

The Shaftesbury Theatre is a core component of London’d West End theatre scene, sitting on Shaftesbury Avenue. But from February 2027 it will be known as the Judi Dench Theatre as a tribute to the 91-year-old actor.

The theatre currently stages performances of Avenue Q, a show that opened in March and is scheduled to run until January 2027. It’s not clear if the show will run on later into the year, or if plans are afoot to have a fresh production in to company the renaming.

Dench’s relationship with the place is a long-standing one, rooted in the 1980s when the Theatre of Comedy company leased the theatre. Dench was a founding member of the company, alongside stars like Maureen Lipman and Wendy Craig — while the whole thing was spearheaded by Ray Cooney.

The current owners of the Shaftesbury theatre, the Taffner family, were also involved with the Theatre of Comedy back in the 1980s. Donald Taffner, who died in 2011, also produced the As Time Goes By reunions — which some younger readers may not appreciate was Dench’s most memorable role to some for many years.

“The Shaftesbury Theatre has always held a special place in my heart. My relationship to the Theatre of Comedy and to the Taffner family goes back many years and to have this beautiful theatre renamed after me is truly overwhelming,” says Dench.

It’s an industry love-in that has spilled out onto the street of London. But we’re not complaining when it’s in celebration of a true UK icon.

“Aside from business, my parents would often talk about how much they enjoyed spending time with Judi and Michael in both NY and London. We are therefore delighted to recognise her extraordinary talent and extensive contribution to many in the renaming of our theatre,” says Donald Taffner Jnr., theatre chairman and son of Donald Taffner. Dench was married to actor Michael Williams until his death in 2001.

Judi Dench announced her plans to retire from acting in 2023, owing to her declining sight. She suffers from macular degeneration, for which there is limited treatment available.

However, she had continued to pick up roles, particularly as a voice actor. She is heard in The Magic Faraway Tree and Barry Cryer celebration film Joke.

Her more recent live action starring roles include the lead of Red Joan, Trevor Nunn’s KGB spy drama. It’s available to stream on Netflix in the UK (but not on ad-supported plans to due licensing restrictions).

• A major Haruki Murakami theatre adaptation is coming to the Barbican this autumn

If you’re reading this, congratulations! You’ve, presumably, missed out on a ticket to the World Cup that actively hates its attending fans. No matter, because you can watch every game of the tournament for free in the UK (as long as you’re prepared not to sleep for about 25 of the next 39 nights).

The bad news? The Three Lions' hurt has now stretched to 60 years - and confidence is in short supply ahead of England vs Croatia. But for the first time since 1998, the Tartan Army’s back in the big time!

Hosted by the U.S., Mexico and Canada – but mainly the U.S. – World Cup 2026 stands to be the ultimate summer hate-watch. Remember Brazil vs Germany in 2014? It’ll be just like that, only with football’s soul clad in yellow and blue, and the pummeling spread over five and a half weeks and 104 games.

That’s at least 62.5% more football than you’d have got at any previous editions, which technically makes this the biggest World Cup ever. And as any American would tell you, bigger is always better.

Yet football’s rose-tinted light has an annoying way of beautifying everything it touches. Behold Lamine Yamal, 18 years of age and already the most mesmerisingly assured footballer on the planet. Harry Kane, as pacey as a pensioner running for the bus with a cart full of groceries, yet deadly in the box. Kylian Mbappe, derided but far more effective on the international stage than Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo. The unknown who lifts the roof off with a wonder-strike and earns a £60m move to Chelsea on a 12-year contract.

Like Roger Milla’s dance, Roberto Baggio’s penalty and Zinedine Zidane’s headbutt, let’s hope the enduring image of this World Cup is something that happens on the pitch rather than off it.

The heat is literally on. Leave your refillable water bottles at home, beware of the ICE and things might be okay. FIFA was right about one thing, it turns out: football has united the world in some respects.

How to watch World Cup 2026 live streams in the UK

In the UK, every game of the World Cup is free-to-air courtesy of either the BBC or ITV. Scroll down to find out whch games are on which channels.

Each of the broadcasters will also live stream their coverage on BBC iPlayer and ITVX respectively.

It's not something to be taken for granted, seeing as virtually every game is locked behind a paywall in some places, such as the U.S..

Abroad right now? Can't get BBC or ITV? Don't panic. Tap into that free coverage with a good VPN, such as Norton VPN, which is fast, easy-to-use and comes with a nifty 60-day money-back guarantee.

Use a VPN to watch World Cup 2026 from anywhere

So, a VPN is basically an app that lets you access your usual (geo-restricted) streaming services from anywhere in the world, all while protecting your data. Well worth a few pounds a month – especially if you value your privacy.

We recommend Norton VPN for its speed and reliability. Give it a whirl risk-free for 60 days:

2026 World Cup fixtures

(All times BST)

GROUP STAGE

Thursday, June 11
8pm – Mexico vs South Africa | ITVX

Friday, June 12
3am – South Korea vs Czech Republic | ITVX
8pm – Canada vs Bosnia & Herzegovina | BBC iPlayer

Saturday, June 13
2am – USA vs Paraguay | BBC iPlayer
8pm – Qatar vs Switzerland | ITVX
11pm – Brazil vs Morocco | BBC iPlayer

Sunday, June 14
2am – Haiti vs Scotland | BBC iPlayer
5am – Australia vs Turkey | ITVX
6pm – Germany vs Curacao | ITVX
9pm – Netherlands vs Japan | ITVX

Monday, June 15
12am – Ivory Coast vs Ecuador | BBC iPlayer
3am – Sweden vs Tunisia | ITVX
5pm – Spain vs Cape Verde | ITVX
8pm – Belgium vs Egypt | BBC iPlayer
11pm – Saudi Arabia vs Uruguay | ITVX

Tuesday, June 16
2am – Iran vs New Zealand | BBC iPlayer
8pm – France vs Senegal | BBC iPlayer
11pm – Iraq vs Norway | BBC iPlayer

Wednesday, June 17
2am – Argentina vs Algeria | ITVX
5am – Austria vs Jordan | BBC iPlayer
6pm – Portugal vs DR Congo | BBC iPlayer
9pm – England vs Croatia | ITVX

Thursday, June 18
12am – Ghana vs Panama | ITVX
3am – Uzbekistan vs Colombia | BBC iPlayer
5pm – Czech Republic vs South Africa | BBC iPlayer
8pm – Switzerland vs Bosnia & Herzegovina | ITVX
11pm – Canada vs Qatar | ITVX

Friday, June 19
2am – Mexico vs South Korea | BBC iPlayer
8pm – USA vs Australia | BBC iPlayer
11pm – Scotland vs Morocco | ITVX

Saturday, June 20
2am – Brazil vs Haiti | ITVX
5am – Turkey vs Paraguay | ITVX
6pm – Netherlands vs Sweden | BBC iPlayer
9pm – Germany vs Ivory Coast | ITVX

Sunday, June 21
1am – Ecuador vs Curacao | BBC iPlayer
5am – Tunisia vs Japan | BBC iPlayer
5pm – Spain vs Saudi Arabia | BBC iPlayer
8pm – Belgium vs Iran | ITVX
11pm – Uruguay vs Cape Verde | BBC iPlayer

Monday, June 22
2am – New Zealand vs Egypt | ITVX
6pm – Argentina vs Austria | BBC iPlayer
10pm – France vs Iraq | BBC iPlayer

Tuesday, June 23
1am – Norway vs Senegal | ITVX
4am – Jordan vs Algeria | ITVX
6pm – Portugal vs Uzbekistan | ITVX
9pm – England vs Ghana | BBC iPlayer

Wednesday, June 24
12am – Panama vs Croatia | BBC iPlayer
3am – Colombia vs DR Congo | ITVX
8pm – Switzerland vs Canada | ITVX
8pm – Bosnia & Herzegovina vs Qatar | ITVX
11pm – Morocco vs Haiti | BBC iPlayer
11pm – Scotland vs Brazil | BBC iPlayer

Thursday, June 25
2am – South Africa vs South Korea | BBC iPlayer
2am – Czech Republic vs Mexico | BBC iPlayer
9pm – Curacao vs Ivory Coast | BBC iPlayer
9pm – Ecuador vs Germany | BBC iPlayer

Friday, June 26
12am – Tunisia vs Netherlands | BBC iPlayer
12am – Japan vs Sweden | BBC iPlayer
3am – Turkey vs USA | ITVX
3am – Paraguay vs Australia | ITVX
8pm – Norway vs France | ITVX
8pm – Senegal vs Iraq | ITVX

Saturday, June 27
1am – Cape Verde vs Saudi Arabia | ITVX
1am – Uruguay vs Spain | ITVX
4am – New Zealand vs Belgium | BBC iPlayer
4am – Egypt vs Iran | BBC iPlayer
10pm – Panama vs England | ITVX
10pm – Croatia vs Ghana | ITVX

Sunday, June 28
12.30am – Colombia vs Portugal | BBC iPlayer
12.30am – DR Congo vs Uzbekistan | BBC iPlayer
3am – Algeria vs Austria | BBC iPlayer
3am – Jordan vs Argentina | BBC iPlayer

KNOCKOUT STAGE

ROUND OF 32

Sunday, June 28
8pm – A2 vs B2

Monday, June 29
6pm – C1 vs F2
9.30pm – E1 vs A/B/C/D/F3

Tuesday, June 30
2am – F1 vs C2
6pm – E2 vs I2
10pm – I1 vs C/D/F/G/H3

Wednesday, July 1
2am – A1 vs C/E/F/H/I3
5pm – L1 vs E/H/I/J/K3
9pm – G1 vs A/E/H/I/J3

Thursday, July 2
1am – D1 vs B/E/F/I/J3
8pm – H1 vs J2

Friday, July 3
12am – K2 vs L2
4am – B1 vs E/F/G/I/J3
7pm – D2 vs G2
11pm – J1 vs H2

Saturday, July 4
2.30am – K1 vs D/E/I/J/L3

ROUND OF 16

Saturday, July 4
6pm – Round of 16 game 1
10pm – Round of 16 game 2

Sunday, July 5
9pm – Round of 16 game 3

Monday, July 6
1am – Round of 16 game 4
8pm – Round of 16 game 5

Tuesday, July 7
1am – Round of 16 game 6
5pm – Round of 16 game 7
9pm – Round of 16 game 8

QUARTER-FINALS

Thursday, July 9
9pm – Quarter-final 1

Friday, July 10
8pm – Quarter-final 2

Saturday, July 11
10pm – Quarter-final 3

Sunday, July 12
2am – Quarter-final 4

SEMI-FINALS

Tuesday, July 14
8pm – Semi-final 1

Wednesday, July 15
8pm – Semi-final 2

FINALS

Saturday, July 18
10pm – Third-place playoff

Sunday, July 19
8pm – 2026 FIFA World Cup final

• "I miss the team dearly": Sir Geoff Hurst on the pressures, memories and legacy of England's 1966 World Cup win — and whether the 2026 squad have a chance

Looking for a different kind of diversion in London this summer? A new VR experience is opening up this very week.

From 18th June you can try out Space Explorers: The ISS Experience. A ticket gets you access to 40-minute VR session, which takes place at Eclipso in Camden. It’s an immersive VR space nearby Camden Town Tube station.

“Travel 250 miles above Earth into the International Space Station (ISS) and discover what daily life in space is truly like. Walk alongside astronauts, admire breathtaking views of our planet and experience the vast immensity of the universe through spectacular footage filmed in space,” is the pitch.

It lasts around 40 minutes and — as the official description suggests — is a free-roaming experience. This is what’s tricky to recreate with at-home VR. Most of us just don’t have the living space to really do justice to these immersive experiences.

Tickets cost £34 for adults, plus a 50p booking fee. Kids’ tickets are £25 a pop. Or you can book as a family of four for £25 a ticket. And it’s suitable for children aged eight and up.

We will throw out a little warning here, though. While we fully expect Space Explorers: The ISS Experience to be an awesome thing to… experience, particularly if you don’t have all that many VR hours under your belt, you can actually try out something similar at home.

If you have a Meta Quest headset, Space Explorers Ultimate Edition offers similar content, also produced by Felix & Paul Studios. However, this stuff is regarded by many as some of the best content put out in VR.

You can currently book a slot for the Space Explorers: The ISS Experience up until September 2026. And it’s one of three experiences on offer at Eclipso London.

The others are Colosseum, the Legendary Arena, which renders the famous Roman arena in video game-like 3D. Or there’s Titanic, Echoes from the Past, which takes you aboard a rendered version of the ill-fated ship.

They are both a little cheaper than Space Explorers: The ISS Experience at £26 for an adult ticket. But they are a little shorter too, running to 30-35 minutes.

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Suffering from a spot of World Cup fever? Netflix now offers a way to keep it stoked, with a new football game for subscribers, FIFA World Cup.

It’s not played directly on your phone but on your TV, and is a surprisingly full-on game of footie.

You directly control players, similar to one of the classic console football games, in FIFA World Cup. And you do so using your phone as a virtual gamepad.

We’ve given it a quick go. You swipe with your right thumb to determine the force and style of your passes, and control player movement with a virtual left thumb stick.

Add full 3D visuals and FIFA World Cup starts to look and feel a bit like a simplified version of EA’s Sports FC — a series previously known as FIFA before EA lost the license.

You can play solo, or up to four people can get involved, each using their phone as a makeshift gamepad.

Is it a match for a AAA console game? Not quite, but it is labelled “Launch Edition” and there are plans to build the game up and make it richer and more rewarding. Netflix obviously wanted it out there as early in the World Cup season as possible.

“As the tournament progresses and the FIFA World Cup: Launch Edition community grows, Netflix will lay on depth, complexity, and technical refinements to updated versions,” says Netflix.

It’s worth a go if you don’t have a PC or console capable of playing the usual football gaming suspects — and we imagine there are plenty of those about given how much gaming hardware costs these days. At £569, a standard PlayStation 5 console costs £120 more than it did six years ago.

“We want to bring football back to its roots with something everyone can play with just the touch of a button,” says Alain Tascan, Netflix’s President of Games.

If you prefer the management side of football, Netflix subscribers can also play Football Manager 26 Mobile as part of their subscription.

Netflix’s FIFA World Cup is developed by Delphi Interactive, which also worked on the banging James Bond game 007 First Light, alongside IO Interactive.

Other Netflix games worth checking out include cinematic masterpiece Red Dead Redemption and the super-addictive Bloons TD 6, a tower defence title.

Netflix games are available to all tiers of subscriber, starting at the £5.99 ad-supported membership.

• The best Netflix games to play for free with your subscription

We have good news and bad news. London's William Morris Gallery is getting a revamp, but parts of the museum will be closed during works. And they begin on 22nd June.

From 22nd June to 19th July, the first floor galleries will be closed off to the public, although you’ll still be able to access the ground floor gallery areas.

It’s going to be a bit of a no-go zone for days out from 20th July all the way to September. A “gradual re-opening” of the space begins on 21st September.

If you want to be really sure you won’t turn up to see only the site's Deeney’s Café open when you visit, hold off until 3rd October.

That’s when the William Morris Gallery’s next major exhibition opens, Earthly Paradise. It focuses on people and places that have “helped shape art and activism across Britain” over the last 200 years.

If you don’t fancy waiting until then, get yourself over to the William Morris Gallery, stat.

The upcoming works are the second part of a refurb — the first happened in 2025 and focused on important but fairly unexciting things like the ventilation and cooling systems.

This next part will have more of impact on what the place actually looks like to visit. The permanent collection will be re-situated, re-hung, and new objects will be added too, in order to “introduce fresh perspectives on William Morris’s life and legacy.”

The aim is to include more context on wider social issues, including women’s history, the art of other cultures and Morris’s ongoing social, cultural and political impact.

“This is an opportunity to rethink how we present Morris’s work for today’s audiences, deepening engagement, broadening perspectives, and highlighting his continued relevance to contemporary social and environmental issues,” says Hadrian Garrard, director of the William Morris Gallery.

If you have the time to spare, there’s no reason not to nip in before the works begin proper as it’s free to visit. The William Morris Gallery is open 10am to 5pm, Tuesday to Sunday.

• The Science Museum is opening a mind-bending journey through space this summer

London’s Barbican venue is getting a bit of an eye-opening production later this year, one that combines Radiohead and Shakespeare.

And it’s co-created by Thom Yorke no less.

Hamlet Hail To the Thief is a version of Shakespeare’s Hamlet that infuses a reworked version of Radiohead’s sixth album, from 2003, Hail to the Thief.

It will run from 31st October to 23rd January, 2027, and is described as a “mesmerising live experience that fuses theatre, music and movement.”

We don’t have to rely entirely on what the show’s creators say, though, as Hamlet Hail to the Thief has already been performed in the UK. It played at Factory International in Manchester in 2025, before an almost month-long run at the RSC in June that year.

The Guardian gave Hamlet Hail to the Thief a 4-star review, calling it “a lucid, angsty revenge tragedy, played with clarity and verve.”

It’s still Hamlet, but one with a less traditional approach, and a soundtrack that is a re-arranged version of Hail to the Thief. The show’s own description puts it neatly, saying Hamlet Hail to the Thief “distils Shakespeare’s great tragedy to its dark and glittering emotional core.”

How do you get tickets? They go on sale later this month.

General sale is from 10am on 26th June. But there’s a presale for Barbican members from 24th June, while Patrons get access from 23rd June — all at 10am. Patrons memberships start at £1500, though, so the £59 standard membership may be a more attractive option if you want to get a top seat for one of these performances.

Tickets start at £34 plus fees, although the Barbican’s theatre performances’s prices tend to rise a lot higher than that — in the usual London theatre vein. For example, Death Note the Musical tickets start at £40 for peak Saturday dates, but rise to £165 for the best stalls seats.

A bunch of the actors from the earlier performances will return for this run, including Paul Hilton as Claudius, Ami Tredrea as Ophelia and Claudia Harrison as Gertrude – as will Samuel Blenkin as Hamlet.

“It is fascinating and very strange to me how this came to life and how it has worked. When it revealed itself to us over time I was shocked, having never had this kind of experience before. I am happy for it to be seen by a wider audience in such an intense space,” says Thom Yorke.

We recommend putting the on-sale dates in your calendar as the 2025 performances were, unsurprisingly, sell-outs.

• All the A-list celebrities starring in London’s West End theatres (and beyond) in 2026

Lenny Henry, Jo Brand, Talawa and a major new theatre programme are all part of the East London venue's biggest celebration yet.

Hackney Empire is turning 125 next year, but it's clearly not interested in a quiet birthday.

The iconic East London theatre has unveiled the first details of a huge 16-month anniversary programme, featuring comedy legends, acclaimed theatre productions, community events and ambitious new work, as it sets out a vision to become an even bigger force in London's cultural scene.

Rather than simply looking back, the venue is using the milestone to launch what chief executive Chris Sudworth is calling Hackney:Central. It's a plan designed to place the theatre at the heart of the borough while expanding its role across London's wider arts landscape.

The celebrations officially begin with a launch weekend on the 19th and 20th of September 2026. Expect an outdoor festival stage curated by the theatre's Young Producers, a new exhibition charting 125 years of Hackney Empire history, and even a new football kit for Hackney Women's FC created in collaboration with the London College of Fashion.

Sudworth said the anniversary is both "a moment of huge celebration" and an opportunity to imagine what comes next for one of London's most beloved venues.

Since opening in 1901, Hackney Empire has welcomed everyone from music hall performers to stand-up comics, theatre stars and local community groups through its doors. Now it's looking to build on that legacy with a programme that mixes big names, local talent and ambitious new productions.

October sees the theatre host the 10th anniversary tour of Theatre Re's acclaimed The Nature of Forgetting, while Talawa Theatre Company will celebrate its 40th anniversary with a special showcase on the 13th of October. The line-up is still under wraps, but the event promises a celebration of four decades of Black excellence in British theatre.

A new live series called Empire Nights launches later that month, reviving the venue's variety-show roots. The first edition will be hosted by comedian Jamali Maddix and feature appearances from Guz Khan, Michelle de Swarte, Kyrah Gray and Manga St Hilare, with more guests still to be announced.

Comedy remains a major part of the anniversary programme too. November will see alternative comedy pioneers and former Hackney Empire favourites Lenny Henryand Jo Brand return to the venue for special performances. Then, of course, there'll be panto.

The theatre's legendary Christmas production returns with Jack and the Beanstalk, featuring the return of Clive Rowe as Dame. Rowe will also direct the production following the success of last year's Cinderella.

The anniversary celebrations won't stop there. Looking ahead to 2027, Hackney Empire has already confirmed plans for the world premiere of Nanny of the Maroons, a major co-production with the Belgrade Theatre and tiata fahodzi. The new musical will arrive in Hackney in July 2027 following its premiere in Coventry.

Alongside the performances, the theatre has also secured support from the National Lottery Heritage Fund to help preserve and share its history. The funding will support research into the artists, audiences and communities that have shaped the venue over the past 125 years, while helping plan future improvements to the Grade II-listed building. You can find all of this and more on the Hackney Empire website.

• 10 places to watch the 2026 World Cup in London (even if you’re not an England fan...)

According to an initial report from Variety, Sony is moving forward with a third film in the Jump Street franchise, with Jonah Hill, Channing Tatum and Ice Cube all in talks to return.

Rodney Rothman, who worked on Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, is attached to direct from a script he co-wrote with Hill and Meghan Malloy. Franchise masterminds Phil Lord and Chris Miller are also returning as producers alongside long-time collaborator Neal H. Moritz.

It's been more than 12 years since 22 Jump Street landed in cinemas, which is either exciting news or a horrifying reminder of the passage of time, depending on your age. The original 21 Jump Street took a largely forgotten 1980s TV show and somehow turned it into one of the funniest studio comedies of the 2010s. Hill and Tatum played Schmidt and Jenko, two underachieving police officers sent undercover at a high school to investigate a drug ring, while Ice Cube stole scene after scene as their permanently furious boss Captain Dickson.

Against all odds, the sequel managed to pull off the rare feat of being every bit as good as the original. Shifting the action from high school to college, 22 Jump Street leaned even harder into the meta humour that made the first film such a hit, constantly poking fun at the idea that Hollywood was making an increasingly unnecessary sequel in the first place. Audiences clearly didn't mind. The first film grossed more than $200 million worldwide, while the sequel pushed that figure to $331 million.

The decision to jump straight to 24 Jump Street is actually part of a joke the franchise has been building towards for years. Fans will remember the now-iconic end credits sequence from 22 Jump Street, which imagined dozens of increasingly absurd future sequels. Schmidt and Jenko were shown going undercover at medical school, culinary school, dance school, flight school and eventually even in space. By the film's own logic, a version of 23 Jump Street has technically already happened.

For much of the last decade, a third film has felt like one of Hollywood's great "what ifs". There were plans for a crossover with Men in Black, while Tatum previously revealed that another abandoned version had what he called the best script he'd ever read for a third movie. None of those projects made it beyond development, leaving fans to assume the series had quietly run its course.

Now, though, it looks like Schmidt and Jenko could finally be heading back undercover. With Hill, Tatum and Ice Cube all reportedly in talks to return, and Lord and Miller back behind the scenes, 24 Jump Street has the ingredients to pull off something Hollywood rarely manages: a comedy sequel arriving more than a decade later that people are actually excited about.

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Haruki Murakami's cult 1985 novel, End of the World and Hard-Boiled Wonderland, jumps between parallel realities, blends cyberpunk sci-fi with dream logic and somehow finds room for strange creatures, existential dread and a meditation on consciousness. It's the sort of story that feels difficult enough to explain to a mate, let alone recreate in a theatre.

Which is exactly why the Barbican's latest announcement is so exciting.

This autumn, the venue will host the European premiere of End of the World and Hard-Boiled Wonderland, the first-ever stage adaptation of Murakami's acclaimed novel. Running from the 8th to the 11th of October, the production arrives in London following a successful run in Japan, with tickets starting from £29.

Directed by renowned French theatre-maker Philippe Decouflé and adapted by Ako Takahashi, the production follows Watashi, a human data processor whose brain is used to encrypt sensitive information for a shadowy organisation known as the System. As reality begins to fracture around him, he finds himself caught between competing worlds and hidden conspiracies that threaten everything he knows.

Leading the cast is Japanese screen star Tatsuya Fujiwara, best known for Battle Royale and the Death Note films. Fujiwara will also introduce a special screening of Battle Royale during the production's Barbican residency.

The show forms the centrepiece of a wider Murakami-focused programme at the venue. On the 11th of October, the author himself will make a rare London appearance for a conversation with theatre director Simon McBurney, alongside a reading from his latest novel, The City and Its Uncertain Walls. The event will also include a screening of Tony Takitani, the acclaimed film adaptation of one of Murakami's short stories.

The production is part of the Barbican's newly announced autumn theatre season, which also includes the UK premiere of Pam Tanowitz Dance's Pastoral and the London debut of Brazilian thriller Tom at the Farm.

It's Murakami's arrival that will likely attract the most attention. A novel long considered one of his most ambitious and surreal works is finally making the leap from page to stage, and London audiences will be among the first in Europe to see whether the impossible can actually be pulled off. Tickets go on sale on the 19th of June for the general public, whilst members can book from the 17th.

• Stranger Things: The First Shadow final London performance announced as theatre run comes to an end

Stranger Things ended on Netflix earlier this year, and now we know when its theatrical show will wind down in London, too.

Netflix has announced Stranger Things: The First Shadow will close in London’s West End on 27th December, 2026. It will have run for just over three years by that time. Its first public show was staged on November 17th, in 2023.

Not seen Stranger Things: The First Shadow yet? Tickets for most shows are plentiful, suggesting it may indeed be time for the theatrical run to come to an end, although you’re still looking at a hefty premium to get remotely decent tickets.

You’ll pay up to £275, plus fees, for the very best seats on weekend performances. As we crawl our way to December, and further from the Stranger Things finale, we wouldn’t be surprised to see a few more last-minute ticket deals appear for the show, though.

Stranger Things: The First Shadow is set decades before the events of the main show, but as it’s the origin story of the series’s key villain figure, you’ll want to have seen up to Stranger Things season four, for maximum impact.

Broadway run ends soon, too

This theatrical take on the Netflix property has received plaudits for its technical elements, and its blockbuster-grade use of sets. Many reviews were pretty positive about the more substantive aspects of the show too, although this side of its reception was a little more mixed.

Stranger Things: The First Shadow runs to around three hours, including an interval.

The show is also currently playing in the US, at New York’s Broadway Marquis Theatre. That run is ending too, on 3rd January 2027.

“When the legendary Stephen Daldry first came to us with the idea of making a Stranger Things play, we were stunned — both by the fact that Stephen wanted to do this, and that he believed it could work. And boy, did it work,” Stranger Things creators the Duffer brothers said in a statement.

More recently, they have put their name to The Boroughs, another supernatural thriller from Netflix — this time set in a retirement village. Jeffrey Addiss and Will Matthews are the show creators, though, with the Duffers acting as executive producers.

Last year we heard the duo had signed an exclusive deal with Paramount to produce new shows and movies, although we’re yet to hear what’s actually coming from that deal.

• Stranger Things is over — here are nine things to fill that Vecna-shaped abyss

• Wimmy Road Boyz author Sufiyaan Salam picks his 6 favourite road trip stories

By the power of Greyskull, they’ve gone and done it. A brand new live-action version of Masters of the Universe has hit cinemas, and a generation brought up on the chunky muscleman toys and Saturday morning cartoon will have their childhood dreams fulfilled.

We’ve been here before, of course, around the time of the original Mattel cartoon’s airing. Even a buff Dolph Lundgren couldn’t rescue that particular mess.

But with a little more distance, some GGI wizardry, and a smattering of self-aware humour, the second attempt has proved far more successful with critics and audiences.

Masters of the Universe isn’t the first ‘80s cartoon to receive the live action treatment, of course. Transformers, Inspector Gadget, and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (technically a comic book adaptation... but still) have all made their way to the silver screen.

Meanwhile, a live-action She-Ra television series is said to be in development.

But there’s a whole host of ‘80s animated favourites that have yet to make the same journey. Here are some of our favourites — and most deserving of a comeback.

1. Pole Position

As someone who was both watching a lot of TV and playing a lot of video games in the 1980s (plus ça change), I count it a major oversight that I was unaware of the link between Pole Position (the 1984 cartoon) and Pole Position (the Namco arcade game).

Perhaps I should cut myself some slack. Beyond a title and a loose automotive theme, the two really share very little in common. The cartoon features a pair of crime fighting siblings and their gadget-laden cars, which could skim over water and fly through the sky at the press of a button.

2. Defenders of the Earth

Perhaps we’ve all had our fill of heroic superteams Marvel's Avengers, but I suspect that a large cohort of 40-and-50-somethings (and their offspring) would place their genre weariness to one side for a live adaptation of Defenders of the Earth.

This was the 1986 cartoon that assembled a series of pre-existing comic book characters, including Flash Gordon, The Phantom, and, er, Mandrake the Magician. Just Google him. The combination of all these disparate talents into one crime-fighting crew felt like a huge deal at the time, even to kids who probably didn’t know any of their previous work.

3. Bananaman

American readers will likely find this inclusion baffling – as well as many British readers, to be fair. Bananaman did not have the cool swagger of the other cartoons on this list. Indeed, he didn’t take himself very seriously at all.

This send-up of Superman (though he’s technically more like Shazam/Captain Marvel) was a very British brand of superhero, as schoolboy Eric Twinge turned into a superpowered crime fighter at the chomp of a banana. For a live action treatment, we’re imagining something akin to a low-budget UK-set version of The Tick, sending up the superhero genre with affection.

4. The Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers

One of two space westerns on this list, The Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers felt way ahead of its time when it aired in the late ‘80s. As one of the first American cartoons to employ a Japanese anime studio in its production, it simply looked way better than the other shows of its time, and used early instances of CGI to good effect.

The series concerned a gang of wild west-inspired law enforcement agents policing humanity’s galactic frontier, and notably made the effort of maintaining narrative continuity between episodes.

5. Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors

Developed by Joseph Michael Straczynski (who would go on to create cult sci-fi show Babylon 5 and co-write the first Thor movie), Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors had a slightly different vibe to the other cartoons of the mid-‘80s.

Yes, it was essentially developed to sell action figures to kids, just like the rest of them. But it had an actual overarching plot (left sadly unresolved) and a distinct aesthetic, with its young hero engaging the show’s unique organic villains in vehicular combat.

6. BraveStarr

BraveStarr was the last ever animation from Filmation, the storied American animation studio behind He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. While nowhere near as successful, BraveStarr was notable for its combination of Western and sci-fi elements, as well for its deployment of a Native American protagonist.

Marshal BraveStarr could call upon a variety of “spirit animals", employing the Speed of the Puma or the Strength of the Bear in his efforts to preserve the peace. More importantly, he had a talking bipedal horse for a deputy – and who doesn’t want to see that given the live action treatment?

7. The Mysterious Cities of Gold

The Mysterious Cities of Gold (aka Esteban: Child of the Sun) was a wondrous French-Japanese collaboration that first aired in the early 1980s. It concerned a Spanish orphan (that’s Esteban) who became caught up in the rush to explore the Americas during the 16th century, and more specifically in a quest to find seven legendary cities.

Needless to say, this wasn’t your typical ‘80s Saturday morning effort, with a cohesive story arc and no muscular heroes or transforming robots to speak of – though it did manage to sprinkle in some anachronistic solar-powered mechanical wonders and a killer theme tune.

8. M.A.S.K.

In the cold light of 2026, it’s easy to look back on M.A.S.K. as a cynically calculated mash-up two hugely successful toy-driven cartoons of the time, splicing together G.I. Joe’s militarism with the transforming vehicles of Transformers.

For a year or two in the late ‘80s, however, Mobile Armored Strike Kommand was all the rage in the playgrounds of the UK. It had a cool title sequence of course – show me a hit ‘80s cartoon that didn’t – but it was the individual characters with their uniquely powered helmets and dual-purpose vehicles that really captured the imagination.

9. ThunderCats

Developed as a direct response to the success of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, ThunderCats adopted a similarly heady blend of high fantasy and sci-fi tropes, but stirred in a distinctive animalistic theme. The heroes here weren’t muscle-bound humans, but rather a gang of anthropomorphised feline warriors.

Every kid had their favourite, whether that was heroic Lion-O, speedy Cheetara, or brawny engineer Panthro. If nothing else, the cartoon gave us the most thrillingly urgent title sequence of any show ever – and I’ll set my claws to anyone who says any different.

10. Ulysses 31

Ulysses 31 was a striking space-age retelling of Homer's Odyssey. The story follows Ulysses as he angers the Gods of Olympus by destroying the Great Cyclops, a divine construct. This act leads to a perilous journey through the galaxy as he and his crew seek the Kingdom of Hades to find a way back to Earth.

The French-Japanese-Luxembourgian production stood out for its distinctive blend of Greek mythology and science fiction, as well as its incredibly memorable opening theme tune — and no doubt had a profound influence on the aesthetic of the Discovery-era Daft Punk.

• Every Steven Spielberg movie ever… ranked!

Live in London and can’t afford the fortune it costs to stay in Edinburgh during the festival? The Camden Fringe is the next best thing.

The Camden Fringe runs from 3rd August to the end of that month, and its full line-up of events was recently revealed.

More than 400 events make up The Camden Fringe, which touches on comedy, theatre, dance, magic and more. Its events also spill out way further than Camden, with featured venues across central London.

As Edinburgh festival, which also takes place during August, will have bogarted many of the biggest names in comedy, don’t dig into the line-up expecting to see many TV-bothering stand-ups. But there’s an awful lot of stuff here. Many of the shows are also on for just a day or two, rather than running throughout August.

Picking a few random events from the calendar, we came up with Most Rare’s production of King Lear at Clarence Hall, on 17/21st August at £15 a pop. Or there’s dark comedy theatre production Sorry I Can’t Come Into Work. My Cat Died. from KC Thomas at the Museum of Comedy on 21/22nd August, and £10.25 a ticket.

For something a bit lighter, head to Aces and Eights for A Dinner with the Sluts, a comedy night from Laura Moss & Amelia Fritz. It’s on a handful of times throughout the month and costs £7 a ticket.

You could easily spend a couple of hours rifling through the Camden Fringe’s shows, but the official site lets you filter by day and venue. That’ll save a bit of time.

The Camden Fringe takes place across 38 venues including Shortlist favourites like the Hen & Chickens Theatre, the Phoenix Arts Club and The Bill Murray. And as tickets are booked on a per-event basis, there’s zero pressure to dig in any more than your schedule allows.

The Camden Fringe has now been around for 20 years, its first run having taken place in 2006.

• All the A-list celebrities starring in London’s West End theatres (and beyond) in 2026

Sadie Sink is on a hot streak – and rightfully so. She's fresh off her West End run as Juliet in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, and set to star in the upcoming Spider-Man: Brand New Day. Now, she’s been confirmed to lead in the new adaptation of Pulitzer-Prize winning Jeffery Eugenides novel The Marriage Plot.

FX and Disney are on board the project, and have greenlit a limited series based on the 2011 novel. The series has been written by Will Arbery and is set to be directed by Hiro Murai.

The story focuses on three college friends from Brown University — Madeleine Hanna, Leonard Bankhead, and Mitchell Grammaticus — beginning in their senior year, 1982, and subsequently follows them during their first year post-graduation. They are caught in an all-consuming love triangle as they reconcile their youthful romantic aspirations with looming adulthood, and make life-altering choices about love and identity. And to think when we graduated the only all-consuming choice was whether to have a Pot Noodle or Beans on Toast.

We don’t have any further information on casting yet, with no clues as to who the other two in the aforementioned triangle would be, but fans of Luca Guadagnino's Challengers will no doubt be excited nonetheless. However, we do know Sink will on board as an executive producer, alongside Arbery and Murai. The series will stream on Hulu.

Speaking about the project, Gina Balian, president of FX Entertainment, described it as “ambitious, character-driven storytelling” in an official statement. According to her, “The Marriage Plot is a perfect fit for FX: ambitious, character-driven storytelling that offers another great opportunity to partner with exceptional artists. We look forward to building on our partnerships with Will and Hiro, both of whom are extraordinary talents with whom we are proud to work again.”

Sink is best known for playing Max Mayfield in Netflix's Stranger Things which concluded on December 2025 with the fifth season.

• Clint Eastwood Retires from Hollywood: 5 of his best movies you can watch on streaming

London is packed with festivals all year round, but everyone knows a summer festival has the edge – specifically, an edge of added sunburn, potentially dangerous levels dehydration, and people determinedly wearing outfits chosen and purchased when the weather was hypothetical (read: sunny and warm), rather than reality of thunderstorms and bursts of torrential rain. Adding to the lineup of cracking outdoor summer festivals in the Greenwich + Docklands International Festival (GDIF).

The outdoor festival is not your traditional pop stars and poppers, and more performance art. It boasts an impressive array of giant street theatre shows and stunning installations dotted across the borough. It stretches across a couple of weeks in late summer, essentially being London’s answer to the Edinburgh Fringe. Oh, and it's free to attend.

This year’s GDIF festival is running from 21st August until 6th September, with events happening across a range of venues, with plenty of free shows to catch. The theme for this year’s festival is ‘We Move’ which also sort of sums up how most people feel about the apocalyptic is-the-world-ending feeling of 2026 in general.

Kicking off with a performance titled 360, the show will help transform Woolwich’s General Gordon Square into a dance arena where, according to French choreographer Mehdi Kerkouche, “propulsive movement, immersive set design, and electronic music collide in an expression of the aspirations and challenges of a generation on the edge of change.”

The festival has been running for 30 years now, bringing hundreds of never-before-seen images, and performances to Londoners. Alongside the dance spectacular 360, this year’s lineup includes an immersive theatre-meets-film live evening set against the stunning Greenwich Peninsula, a visual effects show transforming Romford Square, and Thamesmead becoming the voice of nature itself.

There will be a son et lumiere show towards the end of the week, as artists use the darkening night skies to create a sound and light show with special effects to create a dazzling spectacle.

On Saturday 5th, deaf choreographer Chris Fonseca will be lifting the lid on toxic masculinity in a fusion of ‘visual vernacular, beatboxing, and hip hop’ in his production Man Down. Another exciting entry on the docket is The Aunties: The House of Masks, a dance-based performance blending different black cultural dance styles, and is the ultimate celebration of Afro dance, exploring resilience, identity, and the unspoken truths hiding behind the smiles at family gatherings.

Most of the performances are around 20 minutes each, and all completely free to attend. You can peruse the lineup and check out the details for each show here.

• “Crises of the imagination”: In Other Worlds at the Barbican is a sci-fi-fuelled blueprint for surviving the end of the world

Clint Eastwood has announced his Hollywood retirement at the age of 96. Through eight decades in the industry, he became not just one of movie-making’s most iconic actors but also a director who won multiple oscars (and countless other accolades) for his work behind the camera.

He’s directed 40 movies, and featured as an actor in many more than that.

And despite having entered his "old man" era as an actor decades ago, 2024 film Juror #2 proved he still had the juice well into his 90s.

If you fancy digging into the Clint Eastwood movie archive, here are five suggestions from across his career you can check out on streaming services.

Gran Torino

Eastwood is Walt Kowalski in Gran Torino, a seemingly racist war veteran who sneers at anyone who passes by. But when his neighbour attempts to steal his car, Kowalski decides to protect the kid from the gang that put him up to it. And the two are forever changed in the process. What could be mawkish is delivered with real substance thanks to great direction — not to mention a top performance — from Eastwood.

• Stream on Netflix or HBO Max

Mystic River

Considered by many to be Eastwood’s 2000s masterpiece, this film is about a murder of a young girl that reunites three old friends — played by Sean Penn, Tim Robbins and Kevin Bacon. But one of them is father to the murdered girl, and another is a key suspect. Eastwood doesn’t star in his one, but his unfussy direction works wonders for the movie.

• Stream on Prime Video or HBO Max

The Good, The Bad and the Ugly

A few years after Eastwood’s iconic “man with no name” character was established in Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars, we got The Good, The Bad and the Ugly. There’s an hours-long debate to be had about which of Leone’s spaghetti westerns with Eastwood was the best. But this time we’re picking this one. It takes place during the American Civil War, and is a real epic, spanning not just an epic journey, but also an epic runtime of up to 3 hours depending on the cut you watch.

• Stream on BBC iPlayer or MGM+

Juror #2

• Stream on HBO Max

Clint Eastwood’s last major film was Juror #2, an intriguing 2024 thriller with a central performance from the brilliant Nicholas Hoult. It was effectively buried by Warner Bros., given a very limited cinematic release, but is well worth a watch if you missed it first time around. Hoult’s Justin Kemp is enlisted to a jury on a local murder trial. But this is a much spicier mystery than a plain old courtroom drama, even if much of the film rolls out in the courthouse.

Million Dollar Baby 

Hilary Swank and Eastwood star in this most celebrated of boxing movies. She is an amateur boxer who is taken under the wing of Frankie Dunn, who trains her into professional shape. This is one of those sport movies you don’t have to have any appreciation of the subject matter to love. But prepare for an emotional punch. Million Dollar Baby won four Oscars including Best Picture and Best Director, as well as a Best Actress award for Hilary Swank.

• Stream on Prime Video 

• “Crises of the imagination”: In Other Worlds at the Barbican is a sci-fi-fuelled blueprint for surviving the end of the world

To call Steven Spielberg one of the greatest directors of all time would be to make a great understatement; his films are iconic and awe-inspiring, influencing popular culture and defining generations.

And we’re on the cusp of an all new adventure from the master film-maker. Spielberg is again turning his attention to the possibilities of extraterrestrial life, with the much-anticipated release of Disclosure Day, hitting cinemas on June 12th:

But which of his works stand out among his best? And which aren’t worth the celluloid they’re printed on? Here, we rank all of the films he has directed, from the rare misfires all the way through to the movies that best exemplify his genius…

34. Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull

Unfortunately, this was the era where over-reliance on CGI became a keymark of many films, and Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull would prove emblematic of this. Harrison Ford is still every inch Indie, and the likes of Ray Winstone and Cate Blanchett put in perfectly game performances, but they are badly let down by a script that judders from pratfall to pratfall.

33. Ready Player One

A book whose whole message seems to be ‘isn’t nostalgia great?’ should be tailor-made for Spielberg. While the film’s flaws are shared with the novel, some narrative choices, such as signposting every reference possible (“Look: the bike from Akira! There’s the Iron Giant!) and a bizarre re-run of The Shining don’t help its cause.

32. 1941

Spielberg is more than capable of comedy, but hasn’t centred a whole film around it since this one early on in his career. Considering the sub-standard results, you can understand why. The Jaws-aping opening promises much, but ultimately it fails to stick the landing.

31. Always

A rare misstep, this uncharacteristically schmaltzy romance about the spirit of a deceased pilot watching over his wife falls flat, despite an excellent cast, including the likes of Richard Dreyfuss, Holly Hunter and Audrey Hepburn (in her final film role).

30. War of the Worlds

This film has its fans, but we’re afraid that we’re not numbered among them. Transporting the location of a classic novel across the Atlantic generally isn’t a good sign, but even if you put that to one side, it all feels it has been put together as a Tom Cruise star vehicle rather than an earnest adaptation of HG Wells’ seminal sci-fi thriller.

29. The Terminal

Of the Spielberg canon, this one can be classified as… fine. Tom Hanks is watchable as ever, but while the director has never been afraid to embrace sentimentality, he generally avoids things becoming too twee. Here is one of the few cases where the mark is overstepped.

28. The BFG

Some films are victims of what came before them, despite not doing a lot wrong.Throughout the run time, one thought is inescapable: the original was better (we’re talking about Brian Cosgrove’s 1989 animated feature). While Mark Rylance is a decent enough BFG, it just feels like a re-tread of a better film made on a smaller budget.

27. The Colour Purple

Some films are easier to admire than enjoy – technically a great film, this isn’t a fun watch. Spielberg has never shied away from dark themes, but even by his standards, this is a lot: incest, rape and domestic abuse all heavily feature – and that’s even before we get to Danny Glover’s ‘Mister’, recipient of perhaps the most undeserved redemption arc in film history.

26. The Empire of the Sun

Another World War Two-set drama, despite a promising performance from a young Christian Bale, this is all a bit meandering and unfocused. Despite the positive reviews, it’s only the presence of its future star that stops this being forgettable.

25. Lincoln

Every film with Daniel Day-Lewis is an event. Yet, for all the commitment of its lead, and a supporting cast that includes the likes of Sally Field and Jared Harris (who Day-Lewis repeatedly questioned about Mad Men while in character), the final result is a bit flat. Such is the allure of Day-Lewis that the rest of the film seems a bit stilted as a consequence.

24. The Sugarland Express

Like Bonnie and Clyde, only with unsympathetic protagonists, this Goldie Hawn-starrer is one of Spielberg’s earlier outings. While there are clear rough edges (the chase goes on… and on…), there is clear promise for the filmmaker he would eventually become.

23. The Adventures of TinTin

A perfectly serviceable action flick that nonetheless never really seems to get talked about now. Why is that? Honestly, we’re not sure – it has two excellent leads (Jamie Bell and Andy Serkis deserve a bigger platform), a recognisable IP, and even more talent behind the camera (Peter Jackson and Joe Cornish joined forces with Spielberg for this).

22. The Post

Sometimes, letting actors act is as good as any direction that you’ll need. The Post follows this mantra avidly, giving Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks meaty roles as high-ranking publishing professionals determined to ensure that the truth gets out. In other hands, this could feel heavy-handed, but the two leads’ performances could sell snow to eskimos.

21. West Side Story

A remake of a cult original is always a risk, but there’s a case to be made for this surpassing the 1961 film production. From the music to the choreography, everything is on point (Rachel Zegler especially is a standout). It’s enough to make you wish that he’d tried his hands at musicals earlier.

20. The Lost World Jurassic Park

If this had been the first Jurassic Park movie, would people think of this more favourably? Possibly, but that doesn’t excuse all its flaws. Totally abandoning the deeper philosophical thoughts of the first movie, this throws absolutely everything at the wall, some of which sticks. In short: not as bad as the naysayers would have you think.

19. Amistad

Spielberg doesn’t gloss over the horrors of slavery in this moving legal drama about the captives on a slave ship gaining one over their captors. At times a difficult watch, it all builds up to an incredibly bittersweet ending.

18. War Horse

Spielberg has never shied away from depicting the horrors of war. Here, one horse experiences the full horror of the Western Front, hopping from owner to owner and one human encounter to another. Embraces something that’s too often forgotten about by today’s filmmakers: the wonder of cinema, and the possibilities it provides.

17. Bridge of Spies

Tom Hanks and Mark Rylance meet across the divide in this very competent Cold War-set spy drama. Few do ‘good men sticking to their principles despite excessive public pressure’ as well as Hanks, and he carries the day here once again.

16. Hook

The subject of a number of (very unfair) critical reappraisals in a number of recent Spielberg rankings. Essentially, it starts as a warning: adulthood comes for us all, even the Boy Who Never Grew Up. From there, the wonder it evokes is pure Amblin; Neverland is depicted perfectly here, and Robin Williams and Dustin Hoffman shine as Peter and Hook.

15. Minority Report

Tom Cruise displays his trademark focus as a man who has total faith in a morally dubious system – right up until the moment it turns against him. Philip K Dick’s work has long been mined for scientific cautionary tales, with mixed levels of success, but this is reaching up just behind Blade Runner as one of the highlights of his source material.

14. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

Okay, so Raiders Of The Lost Ark wasn’t exactly light or fluffy, but boy is Temple Of Doom bleak. Both Spielberg and writer George Lucas credit this as due to the breakdown of their relationships around the same time, and it doesn’t possess the same sense of fun as Raiders or Last Crusade, but it is still a better film than it often gets credit for.

13. Catch Me If You Can

Leonardo DiCaprio puts in one of his most underrated performances as Frank Abagnale Jr – a quick-witted conman who’s out for a good time. It’s testament to DiCaprio how hard he is to dislike, despite his inherent amorality. Spielberg’s comedies have generally been misfires, and while this isn’t exactly an out-and-out laugh-a-thon, it’s probably his funniest film.

12. Munich

Probably his darkest movie – and considering he also directed Schindler’s List, that’s quite a statement. Watching it afresh, it all seems depressingly prescient; it could have been made today (not that we imagine it would have been – think of the discourse). In fact, its relevance makes it an even tougher watch now than it was back then.

11. The Fabelmans

This seems almost tailor-made to be a career epitaph (thankfully it’s an intermission rather than a coda), with Spielberg trekking back in time for a fictional reminisce about his own childhood. It’s all reflected in his back catalogue: first love and lost; the family unit; light shining out of darkness, and most pivotally, the challenges and tribulations of growing up.

10. Duel

One advantage of a filmmaker gaining incredible popularity is that their earlier, overlooked works get critically reappraised. Duel has deservedly benefited from this. This 1971 thriller sees a meek salesman’s encounter with a massive truck escalate into an improbably terrifying game of cat-and-mouse that wastes no opportunity to up the ante.

9. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

Of all the films that followed Raiders Of The Lost Ark, this is the one that came closest to replicating its sense of adventure. Harrison Ford is his usual deadpan self – a performance only enhanced by a truly star turn from Sean Connery as his father. Stacked up against the high benchmark of the first film, it doesn’t quite match up, but it’s more than good enough.

8. Close Encounters of the Third Kind

AI is the one Spielberg inherited from Kubrick, but Close Encounters is both quintessentially Spielberg, and his film that bears the most similarities to 2001: A Space Odyssey. Things simply happen, and not a massive amount is explained – making it testament to Spielberg that none of this really matters; wonder takes over, and it remains gripping throughout.

7. AI

By rights, this should have been an all-time classic – and if Stanley Kubrick had directed it as planned, it might have been. Instead, we have one of the all-time ‘what might have been’s. Even so, Spielberg’s version has a lot going for it, encompassing themes of life and sentience that still bear plenty of relevance today.

6. Saving Private Ryan

The spectacular D-Day-set opener is one of the most viscerally horrifying openings to a war movie every commited to film. Centring around the hunt for a sole surviving brother on the French mainland, it’s a very human tale set amid total chaos. And through it all, Spielberg structures perhaps the defining war movie of the ’90s.

5. Schindler's List

Everything about this – the score, the cinematography, the performances – is tailored to brilliance. Liam Neeson and Ralph Fiennes put in arguably their best ever showings in this tale of flawed humanity amid the horrors of the Holocaust.

4. Raiders of the Lost Ark

Possibly the quintessential action movie: an unforgettable opener, the perfect protagonist, action set-pieces galore, and story-influencing tales from the set galore (yes, we know why Indy just shot the sword-wielding guy). It spawned a couple of perfectly serviceable sequels (and a couple more that weren’t), but it will forever remain the high point of the series.

3. Jaws

One film to have truly transcended the medium of cinema. People who’ve never seen this will hum the shark theme tune, and ‘Jaws’ has become many an affectionate nickname for an unhinged pet. And the film itself? Utterly terrifying. Even the things that went wrong behind the scenes only work in its favour. It’s lightning in a bottle; no more, no less.

2. Jurassic Park

A Frankenstein’s Monster of a story disguised as a dinosaur romp, arguing that this is far better than people give it credit for might seem strange, considering its impact on cinema, but it’s the truth. Its warning against unchained, irresponsible ambition is arguably more relevant today than it was when it was made.

1. ET

Some films are just… perfect, defying simple explanations as to exactly why. We can point to a number of contributing factors that define ET’s greatness: the perfection of the central character’s design; John Williams’ timeless score; the more believable than reality bond between Henry Thomas’s Elliot and the titular alien; the series of iconic cinematic images (who can forget the silhouette of the bicycle against the Moon), and the most bittersweet of happy endings (“I’ll be right here”). Many would-be imitators have tried and failed to replicate the greatness on show here – which is to say, timeless, zeitgeist-defining brilliance. It’s hard to imagine there ever being a film like this again.

• From YouTube to Hollywood: 6 of the greatest films from YouTuber directors

The Science Museum is about to become London's closest thing to a spaceport.

Opening on the 26th of June, Smithsonian Starstruck: An Immersive Experience promises to take visitors on a journey through the cosmos without ever leaving South Kensington. Developed in collaboration with the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, the free-roam virtual reality experience transforms decades of astronomical research into an interactive adventure that lets guests explore some of the most extraordinary corners of the universe.

Rather than simply looking at planets and stars on a screen, visitors will be able to walk through a fully immersive environment built using real astronomical data.

Over the course of the roughly 40-minute experience, guests will travel alongside some of humanity's most powerful observatories, including the Hubble Space Telescope, the James Webb Space Telescope and the Chandra X-ray Observatory, venturing deep into space to witness everything from the birth and death of stars to distant exoplanets and supermassive black holes.

The experience begins at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory's Whipple Observatory before launching participants into a vast 3D recreation of the universe. Along the way, visitors will drift through galaxies, race across the Milky Way, fly close to the Sun and come face-to-face with some of the most extreme phenomena known to science.

What makes Starstruck particularly interesting is the balance it strikes between education and spectacle. Fever, the company behind the project, has worked closely with scientists to ensure the experience remains grounded in real research while still delivering the kind of jaw-dropping visuals you'd expect from a blockbuster sci-fi film. It's essentially a space documentary you can walk through.

The arrival of Starstruck continues the Science Museum's recent run of ambitious immersive experiences and feels like a natural fit for a venue dedicated to making complex science accessible to wider audiences. For anyone who has ever wondered what it might feel like to stand at the edge of a black hole or gaze across thousands of galaxies, this might be the closest you'll get without a rocket.

Smithsonian Starstruck: An Immersive Experience opens at the Science Museum on the 26th of June. Tickets are available through Fever from the 9th of June, but you can join the waitlist now. Entry to the museum itself requires a separate free admission booking. The experience is recommended for ages 10 and above.

• Natural wines, old school vinyl, and Eastern European influences: Inside Notting Hill’s newest wine bar

For many football fans, tournament season comes with a familiar feeling: excitement mixed with the nagging fear that someone is about to ask them to explain the offside rule.

According to new research commissioned by Asda, 60% of Brits consider themselves "fair-weather fans", while almost half admit they feel out of their depth when football chat starts flying around.

But if you're worried about not knowing every tactical nuance or refereeing law, footballing legend and National Treasure Chris Kamara has a simple message: don't.

"You don't need to know all the rules," Kamara tells Shortlist. "Just talk about what you see and enjoy what you see."

It's a refreshingly uncomplicated view from one of football's most recognisable broadcasters, particularly at a time when the game often feels buried beneath statistics, tactical analysis and endless debates about VAR.

"Football is fun," he says. "Hopefully, I've reflected that over the years. It's a serious business, but you've got to enjoy yourself and have fun.

"Technical terms of football are important, and stats are important, but they're for the professionals. The bystanders like me who just want to enjoy the game, enjoy it."

It's this message that's led to Asda's Match Fit campaign in the hope of helping fans of any level enjoy the upcoming World Cup. So if you're in an Asda and see a badge reading ‘Football Fanatic’ or ‘Fair Weather Fan’ on a member of staff, it means they're game for a chat, just as we spoke with Chris. We covered VAR, the beautiful game and his predictions before the summer:

Football's biggest problem isn't VAR, it's the people using it

Modern football has become increasingly complicated, with rule changes and technological interventions creating fresh confusion for casual viewers.

Few topics divide supporters more than VAR, and Kamara admits his own relationship with the technology has changed over time.

"I was a massive campaigner for VAR," he says.

Having spent years analysing controversial incidents on television, Kamara initially believed the system would eliminate many of the game's most obvious mistakes.

Instead, he's become frustrated by the people operating it.

"It's not the technology. What they have to understand is it's the people using the technology who are not good enough," he says.

"They get some good calls right, but others they don't."

Kamara believes football authorities should bring former professionals into the decision-making process to provide additional context.

"Within a group of VAR people, they should have an ex-professional to give their point of view," he explains.

It's a criticism many supporters will recognise. While technology can provide the evidence, Kamara argues football still needs people who understand the realities of the game itself.

What makes a great pundit?

Few broadcasters are better placed to answer this question.

Kamara spent decades becoming one of football's most beloved television personalities, combining insight with warmth and humour. His infamous "unbelievable Jeff" moment remains one of the most iconic clips in British sports broadcasting.

So what separates the best pundits from the rest?

"Be honest," he says. "Say what you see. Don't try to make out what you see is anything different than what anybody else sees and explain it in a way that's comfortable for the viewer."

For Kamara, clarity matters more than showing off expertise.

"Don't try and hit them with science," he explains.

It's a philosophy that arguably explains his enduring popularity. While football coverage has become increasingly analytical, Kamara built his reputation on making the game accessible.

Unbelievable Jeff, even in Tanzania

Kamara spent decades becoming one of football's most beloved television personalities, combining insight with warmth and humour. His infamous "unbelievable Jeff" and the iconic moment he missed a red card remains one of the most iconic clips in British sports broadcasting.

The clip has followed him far beyond football, too.

"Me and my wife went on safari to Tanzania," he says. "We love travelling and even out in Tanzania people recognised me. Asking how I missed the red card"

"It's caught the imagination of everybody."

More than a decade on, it's still the moment most people bring up when they meet him.

"Every single day somebody will say, 'Unbelievable, Jeff'," he laughs.

Football's unique ability to bring people together

The theme running through Kamara's answers is accessibility.

Whether he's talking about fans, punditry or tournament football, he repeatedly returns to the idea that football should be open to everyone.

"Football is worldwide. It brings everybody together," he says.

Kamara points to his travels around the globe as evidence.

"Wherever you go, there is somebody wearing a football shirt. Whether it's a Premier League shirt or club colours, football brings the world together. It really does."

He argues that no other sport has quite the same universal reach.

"As far as football is concerned, it transcends everybody."

That collective spirit is what he hopes first-time viewers will take away from any major tournament this summer.

"The whole country would celebrate if we win that big tournament this year," he says.

Kammy's tournament predictions

Asked for his quickfire predictions ahead of the tournament, Kamara wasn't short of confidence when it came to England's chances.

• Winners: England
• Main challengers: Spain, France, Portugal, Argentina and Brazil
• Dark horses: Scotland ("I'd love to say Scotland. I'll be supporting them, of course.")
• Player of the tournament: Harry Kane
• Golden Boot winner: Harry Kane

Kamara believes Kane is primed for a much stronger tournament than his last major international outing.

"I was out in Germany for the Euros, and he didn't look fit at all," he says. "This season I've watched him, and he looks fit and in top form. His finishing has never ever been questioned.

"The Golden Boot and player of the tournament. Please." Chris went on to add that Kane should be one of the favourites for this year's Ballon d'Or.

For Kamara, though, the beauty of football isn't really about trophies, tactics or technology.

It's about enjoyment. "Football is fun," he says.

"It's a serious business, but you've got to enjoy yourself and have fun."

And for anyone worried they don't know enough to join the conversation this summer, his advice couldn't be simpler.

"You don't need to know all the rules. Just enjoy what you see."

• The Ballon d'Or is coming to London for the first time ever

It’s easy to take a dump on influencers and “content creators,” not least because quite a lot of them are absolutely awful. But the best of them are inspirational reminders of what creative people can do with some basic tools, a lot of imagination and a platform to show off their stuff.

We are now in an era when folks who grew up on YouTube are becoming actual film-makers. And where Marvel continues to spend hundreds of millions of dollars making movies, and continues to struggle making a profit doing so, these influencer projects are often made on a shoestring yet draw in massive audiences.

Guess what? Spending years effectively making your own mini movies does apparently make you pretty adept at doing so on a larger scale.

Not every YouTuber movie has been a hit, or is even worth watching. But here are six we don’t think you should miss.

Backrooms: Kane Parsons

The YouTuber movie of the moment is Backrooms, which is based on a series of shorts by Kane Parsons, owner of the Kane Pixels YouTube channel. It’s about the manager of a carpet store in the US who discovers a mysterious, and pretty dangerous, series of underground rooms underneath the business. This one’s all about liminal spaces, and is a drenched in creepy dream-like atmosphere. While it was made on the cheap by Hollywood standards, it also involved 30,000 square feet of real set. And that will make perfect sense when you watch it.

Eighth Grade: Bo Burnham

You may think of Bo Burnham for his comedy specials, but long before that he published comedy songs on YouTube, for years. He’s also one of the few YouTuber film-makers who didn’t dive straight into horror, or at least not in the conventional sense. There’s plenty of that horrifying sense of self-consciousness, shame and loneliness to Eighth Grade, which follows Kayla in her last week of middle school.

Iron Lung: Mark Fischbach (Markiplier)

Video game adaptation Iron Lung was not the most highly rated or top grossing of the recent YouTuber productions. But it is highly notable in just how much Mark Fischbach took on here. He reportedly funded the film’s $3 million production budget himself, and co-wrote the film with game developer David Szymanski. Oh, and he directed and stars in it too. His character explores the blood ocean of a moon in a submarine, the Iron Lung of the title.

Obsession: Curry Barker

Curry Barker was one half of comedy duo That’s A Bad Idea on YouTube before making a splash on the movie-making scene with low-budget horror Milk & Serial, which was published on YouTube. But Obsession is a few steps above. A young man is obsessed with his friend, and uses a One Wish Willow charm to wish she were in love with him. And then fairly swiftly ends up wishing he had never done so.

Talk to Me: Danny and Michael Philippou

The Philippou brothers have already made two successful, and highly rated, horror movies. Their first was 2022’s Talk To Me, which is about a mysterious embalmed hand that lets you commune with spirits. While it sounds like the stuff of a trashy, low-effort horror flick, the result was one of the better films of the year, regardless of genre. Its follow-up, 2025’s Bring Her Back, is also absolutely worth a watch.

Lights Out: David F. Sandberg (ponysmasher)

Here’s one you may have missed. Lights Out was the first feature film from David F. Sandberg, who for years posted short films on YouTube under his Ponysmasher account. It’s based on a 3-minute short of the same name, and is about an entity that can only get you in the dark. Since then, Sandberg has gone on to direct Annabelle: Creation, Until Dawn and — from outside of horror — the two Shazam movies.

• The 50 best horror books: The scariest books ever printed

Toy Story 5 is out in cinemas soon, on June 19th. As well as seeing Tom Hanks and Tim Allen play icons Woody and Buzz once more, the film features Taylor Swift, no less.

She’s not taking after Bad Bunny by having a cameo as one of the main roles, but is confirmed to be providing a song for the film, called I Knew It, I Knew You.

The song sees Taylor Swift return to her Country roots, in reference to Toy Story character Jessie, who is of course a cowgirl, played by Joan Cusack.

It’s “inspired by the rootin’ tootin’ cowgirl Jessie‘s ongoing journey in Toy Story 5 that began back in Toy Story 2,” says Disney.

“Her connection to Jessie and the immediate way she understood what the character was going through was undeniable,” says Toy Story 5 director Andrew Stanton.

“So much so that on first listen, it instantly felt like it had always belonged there, like a long-lost family member. It was kismet.”

And because Disney and Taylor Swift are in definite need of a few extra quid, you can buy the song on CD, up to three separate times.

There are three versions of the single, which are only on sale until 7pm on June 3rd. One has the standard version of the song while the others offer the acoustic and piano versions respectively. They cost £4.49 each.

The CDs will begin shipping on June 19th, when Toy Story 5 is out. But you can give Taylor Swift’s I Knew It, I Knew You long before that. It comes out on streaming platforms on June 5th.

“I’ve always dreamed of getting to write for these characters who I’ve adored since I was a 5 year old kid watching the first Toy Story movie,” says Taylor Swift.

“I fell instantly in love with Toy Story 5 when I was lucky enough to see it in its early stages, and I wrote this song as soon as I got home from the screening.”

Toy Story 5 addresses a topic parents — and anyone trying to find a job these days — can’t really avoid: technology.

The film also features a cameo role from another red hot music star, Bad Bunny, who plays a slice of pepperoni pizza wearing sunglasses. Who knew he had such range? Closer to home, radio favourites Sian Welby and Jordan North also have a cameo as a pink flamingo and a garden gnome respectively. There are a couple of other famous faces voices smattered throughout too, so if you're giving it a watch you'll inevitably be distracted from the (scarily relatable) story, furiously thinking where do I recognise that voice from?? Which is a perfect Pixar experience tbh.

• Best Pixar Movies: Top titles from Wall-E to Toy Story

Stranger Things is the thing we can’t quite let go, sort of being the Gen Z equivalent of Orlando Bloom in Pirates of the Caribbean or the flip phone. Luckily, there’s plenty of Stranger Things related entertainment news like the West End adaptation that’s still running, and cast alumni taking to the stage in new revivals. Now, there’s another entry to the multi-verse, with Maya Hawke and Nell Fisher set to reunite in a new Netflix adaptation.

The duo are set to star in the upcoming adaptation The God of the Woods, based on the novel of the same name. Written by Liz Moore, the show will see Hawke who played Robin Buckley in Stranger Things take on the role of Judy Luptack, an investigator tasked with looking into the disappearance of a 13 year old girl.

According to the synopsis: “The God of the Woods is a multigenerational drama series set in the Adirondacks. It explores the Van Laar family’s dark secrets, class tensions, and the mysterious disappearance of 13-year-old Barbara Van Laar from her family’s summer camp — in the wake of an earlier family tragedy that may be related.

“As the past and present collide, the Van Laars’ wealth and influence unravel, revealing the damaging consequences of privilege and the abuse of power.”

Nell Fisher will be playing the missing girl Barbara Van Laar, after starring as Holly Wheeler in the final season of the hit series.

Further casting has been announced, with Kerry Condon (The Banshees of Inisherin) starring as Barbara’s mother aliuce and Damon Gupton (Bates Motel) as Denny Hayes. Ella Rubin will be playing Luise Donnadieu, Susannah Perkins as T.J Hewitt, Benjamin Walker as Peter Van Laar III, and Autumn Molina as Tracy Jewell.

Liz Moore is onboard as a showrunner, writer, and executive producer, whilst Liz Hannah (Mindhunter) will also be attached to the project. Talking about the project, the pair said they “can’t wait” to bring the project to life, and “hope everyone falls in love (and hate) with these characters as much as [they] have”.

Stranger Things concluded on 31st December 2025 with the Chapter Eight: The Rightside Up, the eight episode in the fifth and final series.

• Karen Gillan is officially set to join the cast of Shrinking season four

For the first time in its 70-year history, the Ballon d'Or is heading to London.

France Football and UEFA have confirmed that the 2026 ceremony will take place in the capital on the 26th of October, marking a significant moment for one of the most famous awards in world sport. Since its creation in 1956, the Ballon d'Or has become football's ultimate individual honour, with winners ranging from Sir Stanley Matthews and Johan Cruyff to Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo.

The decision to bring the ceremony to London is a symbolic one. Sir Stanley Matthews, widely regarded as one of England's greatest ever footballers, was the first recipient of the award back in 1956, and organisers say the move is intended to celebrate both the award's 70th anniversary and its connection to English football history.

For decades, the Ballon d'Or has been almost synonymous with Paris, where the glitzy ceremony has traditionally been held. Since UEFA joined forces with France Football to co-organise the event in 2024, the awards have increasingly positioned themselves as a truly global celebration of the sport. Taking the ceremony to one of football's most iconic cities feels like the next step in that evolution.

The timing of the event also adds an extra layer of intrigue. Unlike recent years, the race for the 2026 Ballon d'Or is unlikely to be decided solely by club football. With the FIFA World Cup taking place across the United States, Canada and Mexico next summer, performances on the biggest international stage in the sport could end up defining the outcome.

World Cups have a long history of shaping the Ballon d'Or races. Fabio Cannavaro's triumph in 2006 was driven by Italy's World Cup success, while Luka Modrić's victory in 2018 came after inspiring Croatia to a surprise run to the final. Even in an era dominated by Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, major international tournaments have often proven decisive when margins are tight.

That means the leading contenders could change dramatically over the coming months. Players such as Harry Kane, Lamine Yamal and reigning holder Ousmane Dembélé are already being discussed among the favourites, but a standout World Cup campaign could propel an entirely different name into contention. History suggests football fans should expect at least one surprise candidate to emerge once the tournament gets underway.

There is also the tantalising prospect of an English winner collecting football's biggest individual prize in London itself. No English player has won the men's Ballon d'Or since Michael Owen in 2001, and with the national team still searching for a first major trophy since 1966, the World Cup presents a huge opportunity for England's stars to strengthen their claims.

The women's award is set to be equally competitive. Current holder Aitana Bonmatí will be aiming to retain her crown, but the women's game continues to grow in quality and visibility, making the race one of the most open in recent years.

As the football calendar moves towards another World Cup summer, the Ballon d'Or feels more unpredictable than it has in a long time. One thing is certain, though: on the 26th of October, the eyes of the football world will be fixed firmly on London as the sport gathers to crown its latest king and queen.

• Two London museums have been announced as finalists for the Museum of the Year prize

One of the most ambitious exhibitions landing in London this summer is set to explore a century of art, politics and cultural exchange through the lens of Pan-Africanism.

Opening on the 11th of June, at the Tate Modern, Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture of Panafrica brings together more than 300 works spanning painting, sculpture, installation, photography, film, journals, posters and archival material. The exhibition examines the influence of Pan-Africanism on artistic production from the 1920s to the present day, tracing connections across Africa, the Caribbean, Brazil, North America and Europe.

While Pan-Africanism is often discussed as a political movement centred on anti-colonial resistance, liberation and solidarity among people of African descent, this exhibition shifts the focus towards culture and creativity. It explores how artists didn't simply respond to Pan-African ideas but actively helped shape and expand them, imagining new possibilities for identity, community and collective futures.

Described as the first major exhibition to fully examine the relationship between Pan-Africanism and visual culture, the show presents Panafrica not as a geographical location but as a shared intellectual and creative space. Across the exhibition, visitors will encounter stories of resistance, migration, collaboration and imagination that have resonated across continents for more than a century.

The scale of the exhibition is reflected in its artist list, which includes some of the most important figures in contemporary and modern art. Featured artists include El Anatsui, Lubaina Himid, Chris Ofili, Claudette Johnson, William Kentridge, Simone Leigh, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye and Marlene Dumas among dozens of others.

The exhibition also serves as the centrepiece for a wider summer programme inspired by its themes. More than 50 events will take place alongside the show, including talks, screenings, live music performances and community-led projects, bringing together artists, writers and thinkers from across the African continent and its global diasporas.

For anyone interested in art, history or culture, this looks set to be one of London's standout exhibitions of the summer.

Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture of Panafrica runs from the 11th of June to the 6th of September at Tate Modern. Standard tickets cost £19.

• “Crises of the imagination”: In Other Worlds at the Barbican is a sci-fi-fuelled blueprint for surviving the end of the world

Hear the names Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman in a news title, and there are many projects that spring to mind as potential blockbusters. It’s Deadpool and Wolverine after all; they could pitch a show about paint drying and still get a greenlight from a production studio.

Reynolds proved there was some serious interest in a sports-based sports docuseries with his show Welcome to Wexham, following the ups and downs of the Welsh team’s season following his personal stake in the club. Now, he and Hugh Jackman will be fronting a new series all about sailing – Welcome to, erm, Water, anyone?

Disney+ has officially greenlit a docuseries following SailGP’s Australian team, Bonds Flying Roos, co-owned coincidentally by Reynolds and Jackman. The series will follow the Flying Roos across a global racing season defined by speed, pressure, and high stakes, according to the synopsis. The media release announced “a stadium style championship where identical 50-foot catamarans race in close-to-shore courses at speeds of up to 100 km/h.

If you’re not a banking nepo baby with a house in the Hamptons, nor raised in a small fishing village on the British coast and therefore not au fait with sailing, SailGP is basically the sailing racing league. Imagine Wimbledon or Silverstone but for sailing. SailGP - officially known as the Rolex SailGP Championship - is a yearly competition where national teams race identical high-performance catamarans (a type of boat).

The competition is a series that runs over 11-12 months, with multiple grands prix taking place across the world, with teams earning points at each event, contributing toward an overall season championship. The competition kicked off its inaugural season in 2019; currently, X-Men and almost X-Men Jackman and Reynolds’ team, the Bonds Flying Roos, hold the most titles with three wins, with the more local Emirates Great Britain SailGP Team being the most recent champions.

Jackman and Reynolds’ team is led by driver and CEO Tom Slingsby who also happens to be an Olympic gold medallist, America’s World Cup winner, and a three-time SailGP champion.

“This is our first collaboration since Deadpool & Wolverine and we once again anticipate action, comedy, heart but with a lot more water. And (fingers crossed) pirates. We hope there’s pirates inSailGP,” said Jackman and Reynolds, co-owners of the Bonds Flying Roos.

“Following Ryan, Hugh and the SailGP’s Bonds Flying Roos Australian team’s journey gives us a remarkable inside view of this thrilling sport and what it takes to compete at the highest level. We couldn’t be more excited to bring this story to Disney+ audiences around the world,” said EricSchrier, president, direct-to-consumer international originals, strategic programming, and emerging media.

Is the show essentially Welcome to Wrexham on the high seas? Quite possibly, yes. The docuseries will have Wrexham AFC co-chairman and exec producer Rob Mac on board as a producer.

We don’t have a date yet for when the series will be available, but we know it will stream exclusively on Disney+ internationally and on Disney+ and Hulu in the US.

• “Crises of the imagination”: In Other Worlds at the Barbican is a sci-fi-fuelled blueprint for surviving the end of the world

Hit TV show Shrinking has done anything but when it comes to infamy, audience, and levels of joy, it has delivered over its three seasons. It’s set to do the opposite of its namesake once again, as Hollywood star Karen Gillan joins the cast for season four.

The Apple TV+ comedy drama follows Jason Segel as Jimmy Laird, a grieving therapist who decides to become more actively involved in his patients’ lives, and by actively involved, we mean he breaks all ethical rules by telling his patients what they actually need to hear, rather than sticking to the whole therapist M.O of understanding nodding. The show co-stars Harrison Ford as Dr Paul Rhoades, Jimmy’s somewhat blunt mentor who is battling Parkinsons. So far, the show has been a huge hit, scooping up three Golden Globe nominations and eight Emmys so far.

According to Variety, Scottish actor and star of Guardians of the Galaxy Karen Gillan will be joining the show’s fourth season in a recurring role, although the exact details of her character is yet to be confirmed. It also looks as though season four will feature a significant time jump, catapulting the characters into a completely new storyline.

The show also stars Jessica Williams, Lukita Maxwell, Brett Goldstein (who also co-created the show), Michael Urie, Like Tennie, and Cobie Smulders. Season three wrapped pretty conclusively, with almost all of the main characters getting ready for new chapters; Alice, Jimmy’s daughter, heads off to college, Gaby proposes, and Jimmy and Paul reconcile after an argument.

Gillan has played the Marvel character Nebula in three Guardians Of The Galaxy films, two Avengers movies, and 2022’s Thor: Love and Thunder. She also starred in the rebooted Jumanji films as Martha / Ruby Roundhouse, and will appear opposite Henry Cavill in the forthcoming remake of Highlander.

Shrinking season 4 is currently in the works, with an expected premiere date around early-to-mid 2027. And in happy news, despite concerns that some of the cast members might not come back after season 3, co-creator Bill Lawrence says the full ensemble is returning—even Harrison Ford.

• Next Paddington movie to be written by The Thick of It creator Armando Iannucci

Impasto, impasto everywhere.

In the space of one month, we have Derek Jacobi playing Lucian Freud in James Lucas’ new film Moss & Freud (out in cinemas 29th May), which covers the making of his ‘Naked Portrait 2002’ of Kate Moss, and we have Ian McKellen as a fictional portrait painter named Julian Sklar in Steven Soderbergh’s The Christophers (in cinemas from 14th May). Ed Solomon, screenwriter of the latter, has said the story was partly inspired by famous London painters Lucian Freud and his friend Francis Bacon.

The thing about Freud was: he was very much alive and kicking around London until 2011. He was famously private and didn’t like to be approached in the street; he was also a cliched Bad Dad of Art History to his many children. But in between his own childhood in St John’s Wood and his burial in Highgate Cemetery, he was a man about town.

You could seek out Freud’s various home and studio addresses across the decades at 20 Delamere Terrace, Paddington, or 138 Kensington Church Street, Fitzroy Square, Maida Vale and Holland Park. As most long-time Londoners have been, Freud was evicted with his artist pal John Craxton from 14 Abercorn Place, NW8, in the mid-1940s. Their downstairs neighbour, a music critic, complained to the landlord of the incessant noise from the young painters walking on the cracked glass of picture frames, inexplicably covering their floors. You can see the surrealist stuffed zebra head, which resided there, in The Painter’s Room (1944).

Later, in the 1960s, he lived in a series of council properties, including at Clarendon Crescent and Gloucester Terrace, Paddington, which were so dilapidated they were designated for demolition. Interior at Paddington, painted at Delamere Terrace, won him an Arts Council prize at the 1951 Festival of Britain.

More fun than simply staring at the un-unusual exteriors of houses across London, though, is an unofficial tour of Lucian Freud’s preferred pubs, galleries, gambling dens, restaurants and breakfast spots, from Soho to Kensington to the South Bank. Some are still standing and serving; some have become legends themselves.

The Wolseley, Piccadilly

The restauranteur Jeremy King gave Lucian Freud a protected corner table at The Wolseley, where the painter ate five or six nights a week in his final years. The two had met in the 1980s, when Freud began eating at Le Caprice, King’s now-closed St James joint, but they became friends properly after The Wolseley, with its art deco ‘grand European cafe’ interiors, opened in 2003. There’s a very charming recurring bit in Alan Rickman’s diaries in which the actor silently pleads “paint me” across the room, while eating there himself, without ever approaching Freud, who was often dining alone.

In extremely iconic behaviour, Freud kept his own wine stash in the restaurant’s cellars, and liked to order the Atlantic prawns or the moules et frites. He sometimes ate there with friends like David Hockney, Kate Moss and even Jeremy King himself, who also sat for Freud: a copper plate etching of King was sold by Sotheby’s in 2022. When Lucian died, the Wolseley’s staff placed a black tablecloth on his usual table with a single candle.

• The Wolseley, Piccadilly

Clarke’s, Kensington

Opened in 1984 by chef Sally Clarke, this ‘farm-to-table’ restaurant is located at 124 Kensington Church Street, just down the road from Freud’s final home at 138. For fifteen years, the painter ate there almost everyday for breakfast with his studio assistant and model David Dawson: Earl Grey tea or a milky latte and hand-rolled pains aux raisins, Portuguese custard tarts, homemade nougat or scrambled eggs on toast, over a pile of newspapers. Sometimes he popped back for lunch too - to eat “whatever fish was on the menu” or perhaps a spot of game, you know - bringing people like Moss and performance artist Leigh Bowery in with him.

Clarke sat for Freud once or twice a week over a two year period around 2008, initially writing future menus in her head to pass the time before deciding to concentrate on the painting process. The garden room of her restaurant features a collection of his etchings, including Donegal Man (2007). In the main room, you can find work by artist Bridget Riley, another Kensington local who has lunched there, maps by Grayson Perry and a David Hockney portrait.

• Clarke’s Restaurant

The French House, Dean Street, Soho

Lucian Freud first met Francis Bacon in 1944 and soon he was drinking in Bacon’s regular Dean Street haunts, including Soho institution The French House, one corner of a “lethal triangle” of pubs favoured by artists, writers and actors. There’s a great fictionalised version of wartime Soho nightlife with Freud, Bacon, John Minton and the rest of that set in Damian Barr’s The Two Roberts, one of our favourite novels of last year. Just to give a sense of shenanigans, in the preface to the second of William Feaver’s ‘The Lives of Lucian Freud’ biography volumes, Freud tells him (in 1973) that he used to go down to the bar of the Ritz and other war-time haunts “in a fez and postman’s trousers” during WWII.

Originally named York Minster, but known as the ‘French pub’ or ‘French house’, it’s now run by landlady Lesley Lewis, who has been in charge since the 1970s. Tom Baker drank there; Dylan Thomas left a copy of Under Milk Wood under a chair there; Irish writer Brendan Behan wrote some of his first play there; singer Suggs has been known to serve pints there. This is the kind of place that calls itself a watering hole and gets away with it. Send friends to the signature blue and white awnings of The French House and they won’t be mad about it.

• The French House

The Coach & Horses, Greek Street, Soho

The second corner of Soho’s “lethal triangle” is a Grade II-listed 19th century pub, which has, in fact, been on the site for centuries with the current building dating back to 1840: it’s The Coach & Horses. On the corner of Greek Street and Romilly Street, drinkers at this establishment after Freud and Bacon’s 40s and 50s days include actor John Hurt and The Beatles. The staff of Private Eye magazine once had a tradition of fortnightly lunches here. It has even featured in a play by Keith Waterhouse, Jeffrey Bernard Is Unwell, about the hard-drinking Spectator columnist who was another regular at The Coach & Horses. I once experienced a bizarre, dream-like sing-a-long around a piano here, somewhere back in the mid 2010s. Magic.

• The Coach & Horses

The Colony Room Club/ Colony Room Green, Soho

OK, OK, the final corner of the “lethal triangle” is no longer with us. But the name and the spirit of The Colony Room may well live on in a new Soho bar within spitting distance, just across Regent Street. The original legendary club on Dean Street was founded by Muriel Belcher in 1948 and ran until 2008. Bacon walked in the day after it opened, was made a “founding member” and then got paid £10 a week to bring his artist friends in, including Lucian Freud. The list of members over the years is quite eye-popping: David Bowie, E.M. Forster, Isabella Blow, William Burroughs, Princess Margaret, Peter Blake and Henri Cartier-Bresson for fucks’ sake. This was back when members clubs were actually cool and not just wanky, bland places for rich people to eat.

In the 90s and 2000s, the YBA’s took it over - Damien Hirst, Sarah Lucas, Tracey Emin - with Kate Moss and Sam Taylor-Wood occasionally stunt-serving drinks behind the bar. Writer Will Self wrote The Colony Room’s epitaph when it finally closed, a moment which some saw as marking the end of the true Soho. But wait! A new ‘Colony Room Green’ opened back in 2023, underneath Ziggy Green on Heddon Street. It’s open to all but with a view to trying to reimagine the old space with live jazz music and exhibitions featuring Cecil Beaton photographs. To quote one eccentric aristocrat in the BBC’s Pursuit of Love, “some of us must protect bohemia”.

• Colony Room Green

National Gallery, Trafalgar Square

When Freud was cutting classes from the Central School of Art and Goldsmiths College as a student in the late 1930s, he’d go to study the Old Masters at the National Gallery directly, particularly the work of Hans Holbein and the Italian Renaissance paintings of Titian, now found in Room 6. The film Moss & Freud stays true to this art history, featuring Ellie Bamber, as Kate Moss, and Derek Jacobi, as Freud, standing in front of Titian’s Diana and Actaeon (1556-1559) in the gallery with Jacobi-as-Freud, perhaps sentimentally, saying: “Could you imagine anything more beautiful? I think a painting could be good.” The NG’s blockbuster exhibition this summer is 17th century Spanish painter Francisco de Zubarán.

• The National Gallery

Slade School of Fine Art, Bloomsbury

Freud taught painting at the Slade, part of University College London, in the 1950s alongside the painter and graphic artist Keith Vaughan. In 1958 he began an affair with one of his Slade pupils Suzy Boyt, the subject of 1959’s Woman Smiling, with whom he’d go on to have four children. Well, we say he taught painting but one of his most famous ‘students’ of that decade, Paula Rego, told visual artist Deanna Sirlin that she remembers it somewhat differently: “Lucian didn’t study at the Slade. He came in as a visiting lecturer. I think he was looking for girlfriends. He didn’t talk at all, he just looked. He said he taught by telepathy.” That said, Rego admired his work “very much”, especially “his precision” and recalled that her husband Victor Willing described Freud as “beautiful as a knife”. For anyone inspired, the Slade’s Summer School of short courses and classes currently includes Painting, Still Life, Life Drawing, Etching and an Introduction to Artists’ Pigments.

• Slade School of Fine Art

National Portrait Gallery

If you actually want to see a permanent collection of Lucian Freud paintings and drawings for yourself, head to the National Portrait Gallery. The NPG’s Primary Collection includes 28 of his works, including a 1963 self-portrait, a 1995 etching of his daughter, the fashion designer Bella Freud and a half-finished painting of Sally Clarke which he was working on when he died. They also have 69 portraits of him by other artists, including Bacon, Frank Auerbach, a pen and ink by Hockney, photographs by Lord Snowdon, Beaton and Cartier-Bresson and a bronze head by Jacob Epstein.

Room 26 of the gallery, on Floor 2, is dedicated to a rotating exhibition of pieces from the Lucian Freud Archive. This treasure trove is made up of 47 sketchbooks spanning from the 1930s to the 2000s, 150 childhood drawings, boxes of letters to and from Freud and his family and his artist’s palette, paints and etching tools. A recent Drawing Into Painting exhibition ran at the Portrait Gallery until May and is now touring to an art museum in Denmark.

• National Portrait Gallery

The Hayward Gallery, South Bank

According to William Feaver’s biography, Freud’s first major mid-career retrospective at the Hayward Gallery in 1974 came about because the Arts Council needed a stopgap: another artist’s exhibition had fallen through. At the time he wasn’t as celebrated as friends like Bacon, though he would go on to be featured alongside other School of London artists in influential group exhibitions including ‘The Human Clay’ at the Hayward in 1976 and ‘The New Spirit in Painting’ at the Royal Academy in 1981. Another retrospective at the Hayward Gallery followed in 1988.

That’s not Freud’s only connection to the South Bank: much earlier in his career, his breakthrough painting, Interior at Paddington, was exhibited as part of the Festival of Britain in 1951, with the main purpose-built festival site right around where the Southbank Centre sits today. Coming up at the Hayward in 2026: the sculptures and paintings of Anish Kapoor (18th June to 18th October) and Kulpreet Singh’s film installations and abstract climate-focused paintings in Indelible Black Marks (16th June to 2nd August).

• The Hayward Gallery

Tate Britain, Millbank

We’re not going to include every London gallery that has ever hung a Lucian Freud here but one retrospective that’s contemporary to the events in the Moss & Freud film is the big Tate Britain exhibition, which ran from June to September 2002, to mark the artist’s 80th birthday. Around the same time, a then 28-year-old Kate Moss posed nude for an almost life-size Freud painting, Naked Portrait 2002, over a period of nine months, while she was pregnant with her daughter Lila Grace. He also famously tattooed a flock of swallows into her thigh.

The Tate show featured over 140 paintings, etchings and drawings and was curated by his biographer, the art critic and painter William Feaver, with an afterword essay by Auerbach in the exhibition catalogue. Currently at Tate Britain, there’s British painter Hurvin Anderson’s first major solo show (until 28th August) alongside the American 19th/20th century artist James McNeill Whistler (until 27th September) and Chris Ofili’s Requiem for the victims of Grenfell in the gallery’s North Staircase.

• Tate Britain

Freud Museum, NW3

A quick word on London’s Freud Museum. It’s dedicated to the founding father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, who was Lucian’s paternal grandfather, and Sigmund’s daughter, psychoanalyst Anna Freud, Lucian’s aunt. It was their final home and Lucian visited the house as a child. In 2022-2023, the Freud Museum ran a retrospective titled ‘The Painter and His Family’ for Lucian’s centenary, curated by the art critic Martin Gayford, who sat for the painter between 2003 and 2005. He turned this unique experience into his book Man With a Blue Scarf: On Sitting For Lucian Freud, which includes their conversations on the work of Van Gogh and Titian.

The current exhibition running at the Freud Museum is Leonora Carrington: The Symptomatic Surreal (until 10th August), which reveals another connection to Lucian. Gayford, talking with Freud’s longtime assistant David Dawson on a Frieze Masters podcast, recorded as part of the Freud Museum retrospective, noted that Freud and his onetime flatmate John Craxton were courted by the London Surrealists in the 1940s and invited to dinners at a Spanish restaurant on Charlotte Street, Fitzrovia. Freud is said to have found the movement too regimented and quoted “nothing is more surreal than two eyes and a noise”.

• Freud Museum

Lost To Time: Clubs, Casinos, Galleries & Seafood Spots

• Wheeler’s, Soho: This fish restaurant at 19-21 Old Compton Street was a favourite of Bacon’s for oysters and champagne. Freud met his gentleman racing bookie Victor Chandler at Wheeler’s: he painted him in Man in a String Chair (1988/ 1989). Earlier, in 1963, John Deakin took an excellent photograph of Freud, Bacon, Auerbach, Timothy Behrens and Michael Andrews eating and drinking there. The spot is now Cecconi’s Pizza Bar.
• Lefevre Gallery, Marlborough Fine Art & Hanover Gallery: Freud’s first solo show was in 1944 at Lefevre Gallery in Bruton Street, Mayfair [which closed in 2002]. Between the 1940s and 1970s, Freud also showed at galleries including the London Gallery (those Surrealists again), Marlborough Fine Art [which shut in 2024] and Anthony d’Offay near Bond Street [which closed up shop in 2001]. The Hanover Gallery on St George Street, Mayfair, closed in 1973 but still features on the National Portrait Gallery’s art walking tour of the neighbourhood.
• The Gargoyle Club, Soho: Another of Freud and Bacon’s Soho haunts in the 1950s and 1960s. It was a private members club on the upper floors of 69 Dean Street and, after the Colony Room, the drinkers would head to the Gargoyle for post-midnight drinks. The original decor included designs by Henri Matisse (with a fountain on the dance floor and yes, wooden hanging gargoyles) and famous members included: Somerset Maugham, Noel Coward, Virginia Woolf, Fred Astaire, Lee Miller and Graham Greene. These days you’ll find Dean Street Townhouse in its place.
• Cafe de Paris, West End & Galicia, Notting Hill: Hannah Rothschild, the art-doc maker and former chair of the National Gallery, remembers that “you could be guaranteed that if you went out clubbing that Lucian would be there, I remember going to the Cafe de Paris [which closed in 2020]; he’d be there, you’d go to Greens, he’d be there; you’d go to that Spanish place down on Portobello, Galicia, really late at night. I don’t know when he slept…” Ed Sheeran now owns Notting Hill gastropub/tapas place Bertie Blossoms where Galicia once was.
• Taboo, Leicester Square: Taboo was performance artist (and friend of Freud’s) Leigh Bowery’s nightclub in the 1980s and 90s: the party was in the basement of Maximus club in Leicester Square. The club’s cashier, Sue Tilley, was the subject of a number of Freud’s paintings, including the famous Benefits Supervisor Sleeping, painted in the early 1990s: she also worked at the Charing Cross Job Centre. Taboo/Maximus is now a studio space for film and TV.
• Esmeralda’s Barn, Knightsbridge: Freud and Bacon would try their luck at this casino in Wilton Place, which was run by the Kray Twins in the early 1960s. The celebrity gangsters Ronnie and Reggie put on private sex shows and extorted regular gamblers who couldn’t pay their debts. The original mid-1950s interiors featured murals by Pietro Annigoni, Cy Grant was the resident singer and the basement was a lesbian bar named Cellar Club. Deadpan voice: Esmeralda’s Barn is now the five-star Berkeley Hotel.

• “Crises of the imagination”: In Other Worlds at the Barbican is a sci-fi-fuelled blueprint for surviving the end of the world

Just weeks before helping Harry Styles conquer Wembley Stadium for 12 nights, Shania Twain is doing something arguably even more intimidating: playing a tiny pub venue in East London.

The country-pop icon has announced a one-off show at The Shacklewell Arms on the 6th of June, giving fans the chance to see one of the biggest stars on the planet in a venue small enough that somebody will almost certainly spill a pint on their trainers during the encore.

This is a woman who headlined BST Hyde Park last summer, smashed Glastonbury’s legends slot and has spent the last few decades operating almost exclusively at “massive field full of screaming people” level. And now she’s rocking up to a 250-capacity venue in Dalston where people usually discover bands three years before everyone else starts pretending they liked them first.

The show comes ahead of Twain joining Harry Styles for his enormous Wembley run later this summer, as well as her own huge headline date at Thomond Park in Ireland. It’ll also act as a warm-up for her upcoming seventh album, Little Miss Twain, which lands on July 24 and follows 2023’s Queen Of Me.

Fans hoping to get in will need a combination of luck, speed and probably divine intervention. Tickets are being allocated through a ballot system, with successful applicants getting the chance to buy tickets via Dice for £25. Considering some people would probably pay triple that just to hear “Man! I Feel Like A Woman!” shouted in a room above a pub, demand is likely to be absolutely ridiculous.

Anyone who misses out in the ballot will get a second chance through Twain’s social channels later the same day, though realistically this has all the ingredients of one of those London gigs people talk about for years afterwards in increasingly exaggerated terms.

There’s something very fun about massive artists suddenly deciding they want to terrorise tiny venues again. Now it’s Shania Twain’s turn to descend on East London and create the sort of ticket scramble that’ll have group chats moving like Oasis reunion announcements.

The best part is how genuinely small The Shacklewell Arms feels for somebody of Twain’s stature. This isn’t one of those “intimate” shows that still somehow takes place in a 5,000-capacity theatre. This is properly intimate. The sort of gig where you can actually see facial expressions instead of relying on giant screens and blind optimism.

With a new album on the way, there’s every chance fans will get a mix of fresh material alongside the kind of all-timer hits that basically transformed 90s and 2000s pop culture. Which means somebody is almost certainly going to lose their mind the second the opening notes of That Don’t Impress Me Much kick in.

Shania Twain plays The Shacklewell Arms on June 6.

• Next Paddington movie to be written by The Thick of It creator Armando Iannucci

South by South West arrived with a bang in 2025, and by bang we mean a seriously starry lineup of speakers, actors, and creatives who took to London’s Southbank for the inaugural festival. 2026 - aka the second UK iteration of the festival - is already shaping up to rival its debut season, already packed with big names including Sharon Horgan, Russell T. Davies, and Sophia Bush, who are all set to speak. The second wave of newly confirmed speakers is just as if not more starry.

The festival itself will be kicking off in Shoreditch in East London in the first week of June, with guests enjoying talks across a range of categories including Innovation & Transformation, Society Rewired, Technology & AI, Marketing & Advertising, Creator Economy, Game & Interactive Worlds, and Venture, amongst others.

On Wednesday, it was announced that former first lady and current feminist icon Michelle Obama would be speaking at the festival, along with her brother Craig Robinson. The pair will be recording a live episode of their podcast IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson.

Also announced were London Mayor Sadiq Khan, actress Claire Foy, and host Piers Morgan. Alongside them will be Miquita Olivia of hit podcast Miss Me, Max Whitlock OBE, and political and cultural strategist Zara Rahim. There’s also plenty for film nerds and cinephiles, as Amelia Brown, CEO of Fremantle, Ryan Condal, House of the Dragon showrunner and co-creator, actors Steve Toussaint, Harry Collett, Abubakar Salim, Jefferson Hall, Abigail Thorn and production designer Jim Clay are all on the docket.

Other notable names previously confirmed on the seemingly endless list include: actress Sophia Bush, the iconic Ruby Wax, podcaster Jamie Lang, internet personality Sam Thompson, Ben and Jerry’s founder Ben Cohen, GK Barry, Hinge CEO Jackie Jantos, DJ AG, Lioness Jill Scott, broadcaster Roman Kemp, and writer Yomi Adegoke.

Katarina Sherling, Head of Conference at SXSW London, said in a statement: “With less than a week to go until this year’s festival opens, we are very excited to welcome this latest group of speakers. It truly reflects the range of conversations we’re bringing to SXSW London in 2026. It’s about platforming different perspectives, converging in one unique space. These additions reflect that promise, and are what makes SXSW London such a powerful change agent.”

• Next Paddington movie to be written by The Thick of It creator Armando Iannucci

X-Men '97 is officially returning this summer, with Marvel Studios finally dropping the first trailer for season two alongside a 1st of July release date on Disney+. And honestly, we can't wait.

The first season ended up being comfortably one of the best things Marvel has released in years. At a time when a lot of the MCU has felt increasingly bloated and directionless, X-Men ’97 somehow reminded everyone exactly why people fell in love with these characters in the first place.

Rather than turning into “The Wolverine Show featuring occasional other mutants”, the series brilliantly balanced its huge ensemble cast, giving Cyclops, Rogue, Storm, Magneto, Jean Grey, Gambit and Nightcrawler all proper moments to shine while still delivering massive comic-book spectacle, emotional storytelling and some genuinely brilliant action sequences. It also helps that it might have the best theme song currently on television. Hearing that opening riff kick in every week somehow made the whole thing feel even bigger.

Season two looks set to double down on all of that chaos, too. Picking up directly after the events of the hugely acclaimed first season, the new trailer confirms the X-Men are now scattered across multiple timelines after their battle against Bastion. Some are trapped in the ancient past, others in a dystopian future ruled by Apocalypse, while the 1990s timeline descends further into anti-mutant paranoia in their absence.

The trailer above looks fantastic as well. Wolverine’s slashing things again, Magneto looks permanently seconds away from crashing out, Cyclops is barking orders at everyone, and Apocalypse is looming over the whole thing, ready to deliver on his supervillain status.

There’s also a strong chance season two gets even darker and more emotionally devastating than the first, which is slightly terrifying considering season one already emotionally flattened viewers on multiple occasions.

The returning voice cast includes Ross Marquand as Professor X, Jennifer Hale as Jean Grey, Cal Dodd as Wolverine and Lenore Zann as Rogue, alongside the rest of the revival’s core cast. Marvel has confirmed the new season will run for nine episodes.

While there’s still a fair amount of uncertainty surrounding Marvel’s wider future right now, X-Men ’97 genuinely feels like one of the few projects the studio has absolute confidence in.

The first season became one of Disney+’s biggest animated successes and currently sits at a ridiculous 99% on Rotten Tomatoes, with fans almost universally agreeing it captured the spirit of the comics better than most live-action X-Men adaptations ever managed. At this point, X-Men ’97 doesn’t just feel like a nostalgic revival anymore. It feels like Marvel accidentally rediscovered the blueprint for how to make people care about superheroes again.

The 1st of July can't come soon enough.

• "Between us and Paw Patrol, it’s going to be a better world": Peter Capaldi and Cush Jumbo talk fighting the far-right in season two of Criminal Record