Free Things to Do
Free Things to Do picks in London.
- Free Things to Do
David Hockney Art Without a Spend: Tate Modern as a Free London Loop
A no-ticket London plan built around color, river air, and the pleasure of leaving before you are tired.
- Free Things to Do
Barbican Conservatory: London's Second-Biggest Greenhouse Hiding Inside Brutalist Concrete
Every Sunday, a concrete tower on level three opens to reveal two thousand square metres of tropical canopy, koi ponds, and desert cacti. You just need to remember to book your slot.
- Free Things to Do
Tate Modern and the Turbine Hall — The 152-Metre Free Cathedral of Contemporary Art on Bankside, London
Tate Modern, the converted Bankside Power Station on the South Bank of the Thames, has been Britain's national museum of modern and contemporary art since 2000. The Turbine Hall — the building's central space, where the original station's electrical turbines once stood — is 152 metres long, 23 metres wide, 35 metres high, and free to enter. The permanent collection is free. The view from Level 10 is free.
- Free Things to Do
Eurovision Week on the Southbank — The Free BFI Mediatheque Booth That Plays the Whole Eurovision Archive
Eurovision 2026 is in Vienna May 12 to 16. London does not host this year. The closest free London substitute for the entire week is two minutes off Waterloo Bridge — the BFI Mediatheque on the Southbank, a free walk-in archive booth room where you can sit at a private screen with headphones and watch every Eurovision entry the BBC has ever broadcast since 1956.
- Free Things to Do
Pop Mart Covent Garden at 32-34 Long Acre — The Free Labubu Window Walk-In That Functions Like a Mini Design Exhibition
Labubu has been in the U.S. and U.K. search top ten for three consecutive weeks. The free version of going to Covent Garden during Labubu fever is to skip the weekend queue, walk into the Pop Mart flagship at 32-34 Long Acre on a Tuesday or Wednesday afternoon, treat the store like a free designer toy gallery, and leave without buying anything. The blind-box wall is a contemporary design exhibition. The store is open. Entry is free.
- Free Things to Do
The Free London Gallery That's Been Thinking About AI and Bodies Since 2019
The week "ai" is back in Google's U.S. top-ten search trend, the most considered free permanent gallery in London for thinking about machines and bodies has already been on Euston Road for seven years. The Wellcome Collection's "Being Human" gallery opened in autumn 2019 with around fifty works on genetics, infection, mental health, and environmental breakdown — algorithmic medicine before "algorithmic medicine" was a phrase you could put in a headline.
- Free Things to Do
The Townhouse Off Oxford Street That Has Been Free Since 1900
The Wallace Collection at Hertford House on Manchester Square has been free to enter since it opened to the public in 1900. Lady Wallace bequeathed it to the British nation in 1897 with one condition: it must never charge admission and must never be mixed with other collections. The result is one of the most intact private collections in the world, two minutes from Oxford Street, permanently and freely available.
- Free Things to Do
A Dead Architect's House Where Every Room Is a Different Century
Sir John Soane's Museum has been free since 1837, by Act of Parliament. He left it exactly as it was — thirteen thousand objects, hinged painting walls, and a pharaoh's sarcophagus in the basement.
- Free Things to Do
BFI Southbank: The Best Thing in London That Costs Nothing to Walk Into
BFI Southbank's Mediatheque lets you watch from a 180,000-title archive, free. The riverside walk outside costs nothing either. The programme itself is a curated map. Here is a three-hour route: pick a film, walk along the Thames, end at a dinner that isn't expensive.
