Best Easter Events in London 2026

Good Friday, 3 April • 12pm & 3:15pm • Trafalgar Square, WC2N • Free

The Wintershall Players do this with 100 cast members, horses, donkeys, and doves. Two 90-minute performances across the afternoon. This is its 15th anniversary year, and it remains the most extraordinary piece of public theatre you’ll see in London all year. Full stop. BSL interpreted. Free. In the middle of one of the most iconic public spaces on earth.

Twenty thousand people typically watch from the Square. The equestrian scenes alone are worth showing up for. This is the Good Friday event. If you’re bringing people to London this Easter, this is what you put in the diary first.

Arrive at least 40 minutes before each performance. The Square fills fast and the views from closer in are dramatically better. The 12pm show tends to be slightly less crowded.

Good Friday, 3 April • 3pm • 36 Wigmore Street, Marylebone, W1U • From £15

Haydn’s Seven Last Words paired with contemporary poetry by Ruth Padel. Wigmore Hall is London’s most intimate serious concert venue: 550 seats, acoustics that make you feel like the musicians are playing directly to you, and absolutely no dress code required. The snobbery-free alternative to a grand Good Friday orchestral event.

If you’ve never been to Wigmore, Good Friday afternoon is the right first time. The room itself will convert you.

3. Handel’s Messiah, Royal Albert Hall

Good Friday, 3 April • Kensington Gore, SW7 • Check RAH website for pricing

The Royal Choral Society first performed Handel’s Messiah at the Royal Albert Hall on 14 April 1876. They have done it every Good Friday since. That’s 150 years of consecutive Good Friday Messiahs in the same venue, and this year marks the anniversary of that tradition. The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Five thousand seats. One of the great rooms in the world.

This is genuinely historic. It also sells out well in advance. Book immediately if you haven’t already.

4. Borough Market Easter Weekend

Good Friday 10am–5pm, Saturday open, Easter Sunday CLOSED, Easter Monday open • Southwark Street, Borough, SE1 • Free entry

Borough Market is always good. Easter weekend is when it’s great. Bread Ahead’s hot cross buns sell out by mid-morning on Good Friday, so if you want them, go before 10am. The full 100-plus traders run on Saturday. Spring lamb from the meat counters, artisan cheese, fresh pasta, pastries from producers who only show up for big market weekends.

One thing to burn into your calendar: Borough Market is closed on Easter Sunday. Friday, Saturday, and Monday are your windows. Plan accordingly.

Borough Market is CLOSED on Easter Sunday (5 April). Open Good Friday 10am–5pm, Saturday normal hours, Easter Monday 10am–5pm.

Good Friday, 3 April • From 12pm • The Cause, Canning Town, E16 • Advance tickets (sells out)

The Cause’s Good Friday party has become one of London’s most anticipated annual traditions, full stop. Festival scale: multiple stages, food vendors, twelve hours of dancing in the concrete playground by the Royal Docks. It pulls the kind of crowd that actually knows what it’s going for: not people who wandered in, but people who planned this three months ago.

It has sold out in previous years. This is the one nightlife event of Easter that you book in advance or miss entirely.

Easter Saturday, 4 April • Women’s Race 2:21pm, Men’s Race 3:21pm • River Thames, Putney to Chiswick Bridge, SW15 • Free (riverbank)

171st Men’s Race. 80th Women’s Race. 4.25 miles on an incoming flood tide, from Putney to Chiswick Bridge. The boats move faster than most people expect, and if you’re near the finish line, the drama is sudden and close-up.

Skip the official Hammersmith Fan Zone. Crowded, expensive drinks, you can barely see anything. Instead: find a spot near The Ship pub in Mortlake, or stake out the towpath between Barnes Bridge and Chiswick Bridge. Proper local crowd, room to breathe, actually good views. Arrive an hour before the Women’s Race to get your spot sorted.

Barnes Bridge to Chiswick is where you want to be for the finish. Walk from Chiswick or come in via Barnes station (District line to Gunnersbury, then bus, or Overground to Barnes Bridge).

4–5 April • 1pm–5pm • Hawley Wharf, Camden Market, NW1 • Free

Cheeky Meeky Family Rave (parents absolutely included), Blossom the Lion giant puppet, aerial circus, a 3D Easter art trail, craft workshops, and face painting. Canal-side at Hawley Wharf, which means the Waterside Food Hall is immediately adjacent when someone needs feeding.

This is Camden Market with structure. Two hours of planned entertainment before you inevitably wander into a vintage stall. Runs Saturday and Sunday, free both days.

Easter Saturday, 4 April • 12pm–10:30pm • Wapping Lane, Wapping, E1W • Advance tickets essential

The world’s largest online drum and bass community brings its multi-arena indoor festival to Tobacco Dock. The venue is a Grade I listed 1811 warehouse: exposed brick arches, outdoor courtyards, multiple levels, the kind of space that makes you feel like you’re inside a film set. Multiple stages cover every DnB subgenre. 3,000-plus capacity.

Previous years sold out. If you’re even considering this, buy tickets now.

Easter Saturday, 4 April • Mount Kimbie 4pm–10pm; Y U QT 10pm–4am • 418 Brixton Road, Brixton, SW2 • Advance tickets

A six-hour uninterrupted Mount Kimbie set at Phonox. Phonox is Brixton’s finest club: small room, exceptional sound system, a crowd that came to dance rather than be seen. Mount Kimbie doing a residency-style set (not a 90-minute appearance, six full hours) is an event within an event. They don’t do this often.

Y U QT takes the room from 10pm for a further six hours if you’re going all the way through. Bank holiday logic applies.

Easter Saturday, 4 April • From 10pm • 1A Camden High Street, NW1 • Check KOKO website

Neapolitan DJ Joseph Capriati, who first played at 11 years old (not a typo), takes over KOKO’s recently renovated Victorian theatre for a bank holiday techno all-nighter. The room is worth visiting purely on its own terms: ornate balconies, a history of legendary performances, now paired with serious sound engineering.

Camden pre-drinks are self-evident. You know what you’re doing.

Easter Sunday, 5 April • From 10:30am • St Paul’s Church, Covent Garden Piazza, WC2E • Free

London’s answer to the New York Easter Parade, and genuinely charming for it. Meet at St Paul’s Church (the actors’ church, on the western side of the Piazza) at 10:30am. Group photo at 11am. Then a stroll down the Strand with pub stops along the way.

The deal is: come in a hat. An extravagant hat. A hat that communicates effort. This is one of those London events that sounds slightly ridiculous on paper and turns out to be completely wonderful in person. Free, theatrical, informal. The NYC version draws tens of thousands; the London version is smaller and better for it.

Wear a hat. This is not optional. A bonnet, a fascinator, a top hat, something with flowers on it. The more commitment, the better. It’s genuinely encouraged.

2–12 April • Easter Sunday shows at 11am, 2:30pm, 5:30pm • Revel Puck Big Top, Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, Stratford, E20 • From £2 (community tickets); standard from website

East London’s own circus company, critically acclaimed, in a big top in the Olympic Park. Artists from Argentina, USA, Ethiopia, and Canada. The show is about hope and arrival, which fits the venue: a park that was itself a kind of arrival. £2 community tickets are available, because Revel Puck takes accessible arts seriously rather than as a PR exercise.

The Olympic Park in April is genuinely beautiful. Three shows on Easter Sunday. Worth it for the park walk alone, and the circus is genuinely excellent on top of that.

Easter Sunday, 5 April • From midday • 261 Stockwell Road, SW9 • From £16.50 (includes one hour bottomless rum punch)

Five hours of reggae, dancehall, and soca. Bottomless rum punch for the first hour. Caribbean food, giveaways, games. Brixton Jamm has one of the best sound systems in South London: the bass is physical, the way it’s meant to be. £16.50 for five hours of music and a free hour of rum punch is not a typo.

This is Easter Sunday done properly.

Easter Sunday, 5 April • From 2pm • Pergola Brixton, SW2 • Free

Free entry. Rum punch deals. DJs playing bashment, dancehall, Afrobeats, and hip-hop from 2pm. Wray & Nephew are involved, which tells you what kind of afternoon it is. Brixton outdoor venue in April, and if the sun cooperates, it’s one of the best free afternoons of the Easter weekend.

The most relaxed, zero-commitment option on Easter Sunday. You can drift in at 3pm with no plan and have a great time.

Easter Sunday, 5 April • 10pm to 6am Monday • FOLD, Canning Town, E16 • Advance tickets

FOLD is a 600-capacity warehouse in E16 that is consistently rated among the best clubs in the world. Not in London. The world. tINI and DJ Sweet6teen headline the main room. Francesco Farfa and Matteo Manzini take the Steam Room. tINI is one of the most respected names on the European techno circuit, and this is the kind of booking that makes people fly in from Berlin.

Bank holiday Monday starts at dawn. That’s the point of going to an Easter Sunday all-nighter at FOLD.

FOLD is in Canning Town (E16), a 10-minute Uber or a short walk from Canning Town station. Night tube runs on the Jubilee line. Get your advance tickets early; FOLD sells out.

Easter Monday, 6 April • 12pm–4pm • Greenwich Town Centre, SE10 • Free

The Blackheath Morris Men tour Greenwich town centre on Easter Monday, lifting a beautifully decorated chair (and whoever happens to be sitting in it) above their heads between dances. This has happened every Easter Monday for longer than most people can remember. Nobody outside SE10 knows it exists. It is proper London folklore, the kind that doesn’t get featured in tourism campaigns precisely because it doesn’t need to.

Pair it: Cutty Sark visit, the weekend market in Greenwich, a pub lunch, then the park. A perfect Easter Monday without spending much of anything.

Easter Monday, 6 April • From 9am • Regent’s Park, NW1 • Entry fee

10k competitive run, adult fun run, and children’s races. Fancy dress strongly encouraged: Easter outfits, bunny ears, full egg costumes. One of London’s friendlier road races: more fun than serious, more participation than performance. Regent’s Park in April is at its absolute best. Good penance after four days of hot cross buns and chocolate.

11–19 April (school holidays extension) • 100 London Road, Forest Hill, SE23 • From £6

Technically just after Easter Monday, but if you’ve got kids in school holidays, the Horniman Spring Fair runs across the second week of April. Live music, craft workshops, an Easter Bonnet Parade competition, bouncy castle, giant games, and face painting. The Horniman Plant Fair runs alongside it: specialist growers, not garden centre stock, the kind of plant fair that people travel for.

The Horniman Museum gardens have the best London skyline view you’ve probably never seen. The best museum in South London that most Londoners haven’t actually been to yet. Use this as the excuse.

3–6 April (all four days) • Fire Nightclub, 39–41 Parry Street, Vauxhall, SE11 • Event-specific tickets

The Vauxhall LGBTQ+ scene goes into full festival mode for Easter. Fire Nightclub is the anchor: London’s premier LGBTQ+ superclub under the railway arches in SE11, with multiple dance rooms and a sound system built to last all weekend. Ten-plus events across the four days, drawing thousands from across Europe and beyond.

One of London’s most reliably joyful annual traditions. The energy across the whole Vauxhall strip for Easter weekend is unlike anywhere else in the city.

Easter Weekend, 3–6 April • 10am–5pm • King William Walk, Greenwich, SE10 • From £8 (adults); children included with adult admission

The Cutty Sark Easter egg trail is one of the best family events in London this Easter. The ship itself is a spectacular backdrop: a Victorian tea clipper suspended in a dry dock in Greenwich town centre, and the trail is designed to take in the ship properly rather than just handing out eggs at the gate. Kids get an activity trail; everyone gets a good excuse to explore one of London’s most underrated museums.

Combine with the Greenwich market, a walk up to the Royal Observatory for the skyline views, and lunch at one of the riverside pubs. A full day without needing to plan it.

This one is not just a kids’ thing. Luminarium Myriad is an inflatable walk-through sculpture: a cathedral of light and colour that adults find as extraordinary as children do. Soaring domes, winding tunnels, chambers saturated in coloured light. Created by Architects of Air, Luminarium has toured 52 countries; this is a rare chance to walk inside it in London.

At Woolwich Arsenal, which is itself worth getting to know (Elizabeth line, easy from central London). If you do one “egg hunt” event that isn’t quite what you expected, make it this one.

Easter Weekend, 3–6 April • Multiple sessions daily • County Hall, Westminster Bridge Road, SE1 • Check website for ticket prices

Paddington Bear at County Hall on the South Bank: Easter activities, storytelling, and the kind of event that earns you serious credits with under-sevens. County Hall is on the riverbank directly opposite the Houses of Parliament, one of those London spots that impresses every time. Arrive early for the first session of the day; weekend sessions fill up quickly and there’s no standing room.

The South Bank walk from Waterloo takes about ten minutes and is one of the best stretches in London in April. Combine with the Southbank Centre’s Easter programme, the free National Theatre foyer, or lunch at one of the riverside spots. This is a half-day plan, not just an hour. The location rewards the effort.

Easter Weekend, 3–6 April • 11am–4pm • Bishop’s Avenue, Fulham, SW6 • Trail from £5 per child; grounds free to enter

Fulham Palace is one of London’s best-kept secrets: the former residence of the Bishops of London, surrounded by walled gardens and beautiful grounds right on the Thames at Fulham. The Easter trail runs through the gardens, which are worth visiting in their own right at this time of year. The walled kitchen garden, the moat walk, the spring planting along the formal borders: even if you’ve done this trail before, the gardens look different in April.

Arrive before noon to beat the post-lunch crowd. The Palace museum is free and genuinely interesting; the cafe does decent coffee. It’s a far less crowded alternative to the big-name NT venues, and the riverside setting along this stretch of the Thames is properly lovely. Putney Bridge is a five-minute walk.

The grounds at Fulham Palace are free to enter even if you don’t buy the Easter trail. The garden alone is worth the trip in April.

Easter Weekend, 3–6 April • 10am–4pm • Morden Hall Road, Morden, SM4 • Trail from £4 per child; NT members free; park entry free

National Trust Easter egg hunts have a formula that works: well-maintained grounds, a proper trail with clues, a chocolate reward at the end. Morden Hall Park is a hidden patch of green in outer South London (rose garden, river meadows, a working mill) that most people in Zone 2 have never visited. The working mill is a particular draw for kids who’ve never seen a watermill up close. The river Wandle runs through the estate, which makes for a genuinely pleasant walk between trail stages.

This is one of the least-crowded NT Easter events in London precisely because nobody from north of the river thinks to come here. If you’re in Wimbledon, Sutton, or Carshalton, this is your closest NT egg hunt and it’s the right choice. NT members get the trail free. Morden tube station is a fifteen-minute walk.

Easter Weekend, 3–6 April • 10am–5pm • Jersey Road, Isleworth, TW7 • Trail from £4 per child; NT members free; parking on site

A Robert Adam-designed Georgian mansion surrounded by parkland, close to the M4 corridor. The National Trust Easter adventure here runs through the estate grounds properly, the house itself as the backdrop, with enough space that it doesn’t feel like a crowded car park event. Osterley is one of the better-preserved Georgian estates accessible from London, and Easter is a good reason to finally go.

The Piccadilly line stops at Osterley station, a fifteen-minute walk to the park entrance. Drive if you can: the estate has good parking and the surrounding area is calm in a way that central London isn’t. Best combined with a full morning in the park before the trail, especially if you haven’t seen the formal gardens. This is one of the quieter NT Easter options.

Easter Weekend, 3–6 April • 10am–4pm • The Broadway, Rainham, RM13 • Trail from £4 per child; NT members free

The furthest-flung option on this list: Rainham Hall is a Georgian merchant’s house out in RM13, right on the edge of the city, and most Londoners have never even heard of it. Built in 1729, the house is one of the best-preserved early Georgian buildings in Greater London. The Easter trail is small, calm, and genuinely well done. Afterwards, Rainham Marshes RSPB reserve is ten minutes by car or a 25-minute walk, making this a rare Easter combination of heritage and nature in one afternoon.

This is the pick for east and northeast London families who don’t want to fight the crowds at the better-known venues. Rainham station (c2c from Fenchurch Street) takes under 30 minutes from central London, which makes it more accessible than it sounds. Go in the morning, do the trail, walk to the marshes for the birds on the estuary. That’s a proper day out.

Easter Weekend, 3–6 April • From 12pm • Brixton, SW9 • Entry from £5; session tickets available

Independent breweries, properly curated selection, the kind of festival that’s built around the beer rather than the branding. Brixton in Easter weekend has a particular energy: the market traders are out, the weather is ambiguously hopeful, and there’s always someone playing music somewhere. Expect around 50-plus independent UK breweries, food traders, and a crowd that’s there for the tasting rather than the Instagram.

Buy session tickets in advance if you can, because walk-up prices go up and the afternoon sessions sell out. The best move is to do this in the early afternoon and stay into the evening, when Brixton properly comes alive. The Reggae Brunch (event 13) is close enough to combine if you plan the day right.

Easter Weekend, 3–6 April • From 5pm • Farringdon, EC1 • Cocktails from £12

Chocolate-themed cocktails in EC1, which is more sophisticated than it sounds. The menu runs across the Easter weekend with limited-edition drinks that use chocolate in ways you’d actually want to drink: think dark chocolate Negronis and cacao-washed spirits, not Easter egg liqueur. Farringdon is genuinely underrated for an Easter drink: Exmouth Market is immediately adjacent, full of proper independent restaurants, and the whole Clerkenwell area is busy enough to feel alive without being overrun.

This is the pre-dinner plan for Good Friday or Saturday evening. Book a table at one of the Exmouth Market restaurants after your cocktails and you have a proper night sorted without having to think too hard. Less touristic than Shoreditch; easier to get to than the riverbank bars.

Easter Saturday, 4 April • From 9pm • Secret venue (revealed on ticket purchase) • Advance tickets essential

The London disco institution does its Easter Saturday special in a secret venue, revealed only after you buy tickets. Don’t F*ck With Disco has been running since 2012 and the formula hasn’t changed: classic disco, soul and funk records played properly loud, a crowd that actually knows the music. No irony. No cheese. Just disco done well.

The secret venue reveal usually lands a few days before the event by email. Past venues have included arches spaces and converted warehouses in east and south London. Dress up: the crowd here puts in effort, and you’ll feel underdressed in trainers. Buy early; this typically sells out within days of going on sale and does not put more tickets out later.

Easter Weekend, 3–6 April • Self-guided, any time • Central London landmarks • Free

Giant decorated eggs hidden in plain sight across central London landmarks. The Big Egg Hunt city trail is free, takes you to corners of the city you might not walk through otherwise, and is genuinely enjoyable even without children in tow. London’s version of a public art trail: low commitment, high reward, completely self-directed.

This is the one Easter event on this list that works for everyone regardless of what else they have planned. Do it between other things. It’s a good reason to walk somewhere you wouldn’t otherwise go.