Every July, we hand-pick the best of London for the design leaders joining us for the first module of our Executive Programme for Design Leaders. July is when the city at its most alive. We've pulled together the highlights from Harry Styles curating Meltdown at the Southbank, Frida Kahlo's first major London show in eight years, Anish Kapoor taking over the Hayward to Garth Brooks opening BST Hyde Park.
When: 25 Jun 2026 – 3 Jan 2027
Where: Tate Modern
Ticket Price: £25
The first major UK retrospective of Frida Kahlo in over twenty years, bringing together more than 130 works including paintings, photographs, personal objects and archive material. Alongside her self-portraits, visitors encounter Tehuana dresses, statement jewellery and accessories that became integral to her carefully constructed public image, plus works by Kiki Smith, Judy Chicago and Ana Mendieta showing how her radical approach continues to resonate. The show culminates in a section on 'Fridamania' – her transformation into a global brand – featuring 200+ commercial objects. Blockbuster status, but genuinely worth it for the visual identity and iconography alone.
When: 11 Jun 2026 – 3 May 2027
Where: Tate Modern
Ticket Price: £25
An exhibition celebrating the visionary immersive works of Julio Le Parc, featuring his interactive installations and striking sculptures, grounded in his large-scale Op Art paintings. Seven decades of joyful works by the Argentinian artist that turn visitors into active participants. Essential for any designer interested in systems thinking, kinetics and the mechanics of visual perception.
When: 28 Mar – 8 Nov 2026
Where: V&A South Kensington
Ticket Price: From £28 (weekdays), £30 (weekends)
The first UK exhibition ever dedicated to Maison Schiaparelli, spanning from the 1920s to the present day under the creative direction of Daniel Roseberry, featuring more than 200 objects including garments, accessories, jewellery, paintings, photographs, sculpture, furniture and perfumes. The exhibition pairs the work of founder Elsa and Roseberry together, showing the value of shocking style in a moment of conservatism. Surrealism, visual wit and the intersection of art and commerce — essential viewing.
When: Until 26 July 2026
Where: Design Museum
Ticket Price: Adult tickets from £19.69
The director's first-ever retrospective, featuring more than 600 items from his back catalogue: costumes, storyboards, sketches, props, motion puppets, handwritten notebooks and the three-metre wide Grand Budapest Hotel model. Unprecedented access to Anderson's personal archives charting his extraordinary evolution from early film experiments in the 1990s to recent productions. Closes 26 July — if you haven't been, go this month.
When: 1 May – 4 Oct 2026
Where: Design Museum
Ticket Price: From £16
The first major retrospective dedicated to NIGO outside Japan, looking back on more than three decades of work across fashion, music and design. Tracing his journey from Tokyo to Paris, the exhibition brings together more than 700 objects from his personal archives including garments, collectibles, furniture, design pieces and previously unseen works. He invented the 'scarcity by design' streetwear model — a marketing genius with a meticulous eye for detail.
When: 16 June – 18 October 2026
Where: Hayward Gallery, Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, London SE1 8XX
Ticket Price: £22
Nearly 30 years after the Hayward hosted his first major UK show, Anish Kapoor returns with his largest UK exhibition to date — part of the Southbank Centre's 75th anniversary celebrations. Monumental mirror sculptures, void-like pigment works and mind-bending installations using Vantablack-like nanotechnology fill the entire gallery and its terraces. A spectacular and disorientating experience not to be missed.
When: 15 May – 31 July 2026
Where: Barbican Sculpture Court
Ticket Price: Free
Colombian artist Delcy Morelos explores our relationship with the earth in a monumental, site-specific installation made of soil, clay and fragrant spices. Visitors are invited to step inside origo, roam its tunnels, experience its shifting light, rest within its central patio and become a part of its ecosystem. A 24-metre-wide commission marking the return of major public art to the Sculpture Court for the first time in a decade — constructed from soil, clay and fragrant spices. Closes at the end of July — don't miss it.
When: 5 Jun – 8 Sep 2026
Where: Saatchi Gallery
Ticket Price: From £13
Over 100 artists examining the enduring influence of the sun and moon across art history and contemporary practice, spanning mythology, science, human imagination and the natural world. Artists include Leonora Carrington, William Hogarth, Barbara Hepworth, Joan Miró, Paula Rego and Bridget Riley, alongside contemporary practitioners like teamLab and Yinka Ilori.
When: 4 July 2026
Where: Parade route through Regent Street, Oxford Street, Soho
Tickets: Free
London's biggest LGBTQ+ celebration returns with its famous parade, live performances and parties across the West End. The Soho neighbourhood parties run all day and into the night – and the crowd design in this city on this day is extraordinarily amazing.
When: 21 May— 6 Sep 2026
Where: Barbican, The Curve
Tickets: £20.5
The first UK solo exhibition by BAFTA-nominated filmmaker and speculative architect Liam Young, harnessing films, costumes, props, movie miniature models, comics, tapestries and soundscapes to galvanise ideas about what the future could be, in a way that is radically hopeful. Spanning three locations within the Barbican Centre, the exhibition unfolds as a sequence of cinematic installations where world-building, fiction, design and climate science collide. It features the world premiere of World Machine (2026), a newly commissioned film combining real-life footage and CGI that visualises a near-future scenario in which a planetary supercomputer emerges and all of Earth's surfaces are woven into circuits of power and calculation.
When: 4 June – 6 September 2026
Where: National Portrait Gallery, St Martin's Place, London WC2H 0HE
Ticket Price: £25
Marking what would have been Marilyn Monroe's 100th birthday, this exhibition explores her life, career and legacy through works by Andy Warhol, Cecil Beaton, Eve Arnold, Richard Avedon and more. Personal belongings — books, scripts and clothes — reveal the woman behind the image, tracing her trajectory from her earliest modelling photographs to her final sessions in Malibu in 1962.
When: 20 Jun – 12 Sep 2026
Where: Duke of York's Theatre
Ticket Price: From £24
The Old Vic's sell-out production of Stoppard's masterpiece transfers to the West End — a dazzling collision of science and romance, exploring the beauty of curiosity and the timeless thrill of discovery. The Duke of York's Theatre has been reconfigured in-the-round especially for this production, with Isis Hainsworth (Olivier-nominated as Thomasina), Nikki Amuka-Bird and Oliver Chris. Widely called one of the greatest modern plays — and the design team is exceptional.
When: 18–19 July 2026
Where: Barbican Hall
Ticket Price: Check barbican.org.uk
The acclaimed jazz guitarist returns with the latest evolution of his celebrated project Side-Eye III+, joined by a new generation of players in a project that keeps evolving every time it hits the stage. A weekend takeover — three shows across two days from Pat Metheny, closing out the Barbican's summer jazz run. One of the most technically inventive guitarists alive, in a room built for it.
When: From 3 June 2026; booking open to April 2027
Where: Aldwych Theatre, 49 Aldwych, London WC2B 4DF
Ticket Price: From £30
This West End premiere brings Frank Sinatra's extraordinary life to the stage — charting his meteoric rise from a New York club stage in 1942, a scandalous affair with Ava Gardner, and one of the greatest comebacks in showbusiness history. Joel Harper-Jackson stars as Ol' Blue Eyes, featuring over 20 classic hits including That's Life, Come Fly With Me and The Best Is Yet to Come, directed by three-time Tony Award winner Kathleen Marshall.
When: Every Monday from 8 June – 2 November 2026
Where: Duchess Theatre
Ticket Price: £25–£40
Celebrating its 15th anniversary, this internationally acclaimed theatrical experiment sees a different star open a sealed envelope on stage each Monday, performing a script they have never seen before — with no rehearsal and no director. June dates feature David Tennant (8 Jun), Sharon Horgan (15 Jun), Riz Ahmed (22 Jun) and Adjoa Andoh (29 Jun). Every Monday night is a completely unrepeatable one-off event.
Our Executive Programme for Design Leaders brings its first module to London in July every year. 9 weeks of business, strategy and leadership taught by CEOs, CFOs and Creative Directors from the world's best design companies. If you want to spend time in London alongside 30 of the world's best creative leaders, apply here: bauhaus.futurelondonacademy.co.uk
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