What’s on: European artists and cultural events to look out for in London and the UK
From the visual arts to music and theatre, London and the UK host a wealth of European culture. November sees the opening of major exhibitions on the Italian Renaissance, on Picasso’s life, on Michelangelo, Leonardo and Raphael, as well as Voila!, the biggest transnational theatre festival in London. Here is a guide to the events planned in the coming weeks.
1 November – 9 March 2025 – Drawing the Italian Renaissance at The King’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace. The exhibition displays the widest range of drawings from this revolutionary artistic period (1450-1600) ever shown in the UK, featuring around 160 works by over 80 artists such as Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael and Titian.
4 – 24 November – Voila! Theatre Festival 2024. London’s transnational theatrical conversation celebrates the best of British and European emerging artists, playing with big ideas, forms of expression and world languages in unexpected ways. Voila! began as a French and English bilingual fringe festival produced by The Cockpit and, in response to the Brexit referendum, in 2017 it expanded to include all European languages.
6 November – 12 December – 32nd French Film Festival UK. Over 200 screenings of 60 movies in more than 25 venues throughout the UK and online. The selection showcases a broad spectrum of French language movies, from major hits to creations by cutting edge directors, and includes Q&A sessions with film-makers and actors.
7 November – 30 March 2025 – Picasso printmaker at the British Museum. In addition to his many paintings, sculptures and drawings, Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) made over 2,400 prints during his career. This exhibition offers insights into the life of the Málaga-born artist, from his early years in Paris to his old age in the South of France, including his complex relationships with women and his partnerships with printers, publishers and other artists.
9 November 2024 – 16 February 2025 – Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael: Florence, c. 1504 at the Royal Academy of Arts, London. On 25 January 1504, Florence’s most prominent artists gathered to advise on an appropriate location for Michelangelo’s nearly finished David sculpture. Among them was Leonardo, who – like Michelangelo – had only recently returned to his native Florence. The exhibition explores the rivalry between Michelangelo and Leonardo, and the influence both had on the young Raphael.
16 November – 14th London All Souls’ Jazz Festival, a tribute to the late jazz masters and friends. In November, Polish jazz musicians get together and play having in mind those who they love, admire and miss. The tradition originated in Krakow and this year for the first time extends to Slough, at Curve Venue.
16 November – Paddington in Peru – Paddington Bear is a beloved British icon, and a refugee. Join The Conversation UK and experts from UK universities for a screening of the movie at Genesis cinema in London, followed by discussion about migration, citizenship and belonging.
16 November – Così Fan Tutte (So Do They All!) at The Shaw Theatre in London, an opportunity to immerse in the captivating Mozart’s opera during 18th-century Naples.
20 November – Scandimania! Nordic Noir in the UK since 2008. Exploring the transnational success of Nordic crime fiction and television drama over the past two decades, Professor Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen’s inaugural lecture at University College London (UCL) is free and open to all.
From 20 to 27 November – London Migration Film Festival, organised by the Migration Collective at various venues. Alongside film screenings, there are workshops, storytelling events, cemetery tours, recipe writing workshops, live performances, drag shows and more.
22-23 November – Sharing is caring: the European Dream, by Big Sister Theatre at Theatre Deli in London. Part of the Voila festival, a brand new play on the housing crisis, Europe and its political legacy, and the complexities of conflict resolution today. Set in a multicultural squat under attack, it doubles up as a metaphor on Europe and raises topical questions on citizenship, politics and society.
23 November – Italian Christmas market at Chelsea Town Hall in London, a fundraising event by charity Il Circolo, which funds cultural activities and students’ projects.
23 November – 4 January 2025 – Pinocchio, at Theatre Royal Stratford East. From the pen of Italian author Carlo Collodi (1826-1890), wooden puppet Pinocchio and his poor toy maker father Geppetto get to London this Christmas. Will Blue Rinse Fairy and Krik Krak the cricket be able to keep Pinocchio off the crooked path, as he battles the trials and tribulations of becoming a “real boy”?
27 November – 1 December – Low Countries Film Festival (LCFF), the UK’s only Dutch-language cinema festival, at the Dutch Centre in London. The event showcases the best and newest Dutch and Flemish shorts, documentaries and feature films, all subtitled in English.
27 – 30 November – NOBODADDY at Sadler’s Wells theatre in London, a brand-new work by award-winning choreographer Michael Keegan-Dolan and his dance and theatre company Teaċ Daṁsa based in Ireland’s West Kerry Gaeltacht. NOBODADDY is a moving, multi-disciplinary dance and theatre ritual for an international company of nine dancers and seven musicians including folk singer and musician Sam Amidon. The show is funded by Culture Ireland, Ireland’s Arts Council, and is a co-production of An Droichead for Belfast 2024, Dublin Theatre Festival, Abbey Theatre, and Sadler’s Wells.
27 November – 4 June 2025 – Once upon a time… For European History Wednesdays the French Association of Historians (L’Association des Historiens) offers a series of lectures on the Roman civilization, with a renowned French academic discussing each month the story of the peoples that preceded us in Europe.
Until 30 November – 28th Made in Prague Festival, a celebration of Czech culture organised by the Czech Centre at various locations in London. The festival marks 100 years since the death of Franz Kafka, one of the most influential literary figures of the 20th century, and 35 years since the Velvet Revolution, the protest movement that ended more than 40 years of communist rule in Czechoslovakia.
30 November – The Time of Crises, the largest festival of contemporary Greek theatre in the UK returns for a second year at London’s Hellenic Centre with nine plays directed by Anastasia Revi. During their lives, humans encounter various crises. Do these cause fluctuations and deviations from our own path? How do our heroes navigate personal crises amidst the insatiable modern life? Despite the scientific and technological evolution, have we become better attuned in understanding human needs? The questions reflect the theme of the festival this year.
Until 22 December – Antonio Calderara: A Certain Light, at the Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art in London. Beginning his career during the 1920s, Antonio Calderara (1903-1978) moved from an expressive figurative style to that heightened or ‘magic’ form of realism explored by many artists in Italy during the inter-war years, while his paintings of the 1930s already hinted at the subsequent direction his art would take in their precision and fascination with atmospheric effects. By the late 1950s, he had refined and distilled his depictions of the landscape to essential, geometric forms, creating images pervaded by silence and suffused with light that teetered on the brink of abstraction. From 1959, his works eliminated all references to the objective world, yet continued to explore the same harmonious formal relationships as before.
Until 5 January 2025 – Małgorzata Mirga-Tas at Tate St. Ives, Cornwall. Born in 1978, Małgorzata Mirga-Tas is a Romani visual artist, educator and activist who lives and works in Czarna Góra, in southern Poland. Mirga-Tas is known for her textile collages created with materials and fabrics that are mainly gathered from family and friends. Often working in collaboration with other women, she sews pieces of clothing, handkerchiefs, tablecloths, curtains and sheets to create vivid portraits and scenes from everyday life. Mirga-Tas was the official Polish representative at the 59th Venice Biennale in 2022, the first Roma artist to represent any country.
Until 5 January 2025 – Paula Rego – Visions of English Literature, at Lakeside Arts, the University of Nottingham’s public arts centre. Paula Rego was a Portuguese-British visual artist, widely considered the pre-eminent woman artist of the late 20th and early 21st century. She is known particularly for her paintings and prints based on storybooks. This exhibition casts a spotlight on the British literary influences that inspired her most ambitious bodies of works in printmaking: Nursery Rhymes, Peter Pan and Jane Eyre.
Until 11 January 2025 – Sonia Boué and Ashokkumar D Mistry exhibition ‘Las Gemelas (the twins): arrival (a lexicon of unmaking)’, at the John Hansard Gallery in Southampton. On 23 May 1937, the SS Habana docked in Southampton with almost 4,000 Basque child refugees on board. The British government pursued a policy of ‘neutrality’ regarding the Spanish Civil War, but as the children took flight from the aerial bombardments, the people of Southampton improvised their shelter. The Special Collections at the University of Southampton holds the archives relating to this event.
Until 19 January 2025 – Monet and London – views of the Thames, at the Courtauld Gallery in London. Claude Monet (1840-1926) is the leading figure of French Impressionism, the movement that changed the course of modern art. Less known is the fact that some of Monet’s most remarkable paintings were made in London. They depict extraordinary views of the Thames, full of evocative atmosphere, mysterious light and radiant colour. Begun during three stays in the capital between 1899 and 1901, the series — depicting Charing Cross Bridge, Waterloo Bridge and the Houses of Parliament — was unveiled in Paris in 1904. The exhibition realises Monet’s unfulfilled ambition of showing these paintings in London, and just 300 metres from the Savoy Hotel where many of them were painted.
Until 19 January 2025 – Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers, at the National Gallery in London. Over just two years in the south of France, Dutch artist Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890) revolutionised his style in a symphony of poetic colour and texture. This exhibition looks at this time in Arles and Saint-Rémy as a decisive period in his career. Inspired by poets, writers and artists, his desire to tell stories produced a landscape of poetic imagination and romantic love on an ambitious scale.
Until 23 February 2025 – Letizia Battaglia: life, love and death in Sicily, at the Photographers’ Gallery in London. Born in Palermo, Sicily in 1935, Battaglia began her photographic career in the early 1970s. She reported for the daily newspaper L’Ora documenting everyday life, alongside the brutal reality of the Mafia and their victims during the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s. Her images are some of the best-known records of life in the shadow of the Mafia.
Until 2 March 2025 – Medieval Women: In Their Own Words, an exhibition at the British Library on the rich and complex lives of women in medieval Europe, with over 140 extraordinary items that reveal their artistry, resourcefulness, courage and struggles. They include The Book of the Queen by Christine de Pizan, the first professional woman author in Europe; the 12th-century ivory cross of Sibylle, countess of Flanders, who went on Crusade to the Holy Land; and a silk textile made in al-Andalus (Islamic Spain), where Muslim women labourers were fundamental to the silk industry. A series of events accompany the exhibition.
Until 30 March 2025 – Franciszka Themerson – Walking Backwards at Tate Britain in London. Films, drawings and paintings mingle tragedy and humour to explore the turbulent years before and after the Second World War. Born in Poland in 1907, Franciszka Themerson trained as a musician, graphic designer and painter in Warsaw. There, she met her husband, Stefan Themerson. At a time of rising fascism in Europe, the Themersons’ work challenged social conformity and revealed their belief in individual freedoms. In 1938, the pair moved to Paris to continue their work. They volunteered for the Polish army in France but were separated during the war. Following the Nazi invasion in 1940, Franciszka was able to leave for London while Stefan remained in hiding, fearing persecution. The couple were reunited in 1942, but only one member of their families survived the Holocaust. Franciszka and Stefan remained in London for the rest of their lives, where she continued to work across multiple disciplines: drawing, painting, illustration, theatre and book design.
Until 26 April 2025 – A Polish Heart Beats Here, exhibition at the National Civil War Centre, Newark-on-Trent. Co-produced with members of the local Polish community, the exhibition explores Newark’s ties to Poland, from the Polish Armed Forces’ historical presence to the twin town of Sandomierz, and the vibrant Polish community that now call Newark home.
Until 15 May 2025 – Women & Freud: patients, pioneers, artists, an exhibition at the Freud Museum in London about the women who helped Freud invent psychoanalysis, and their legacy in its practice. The Freud family moved to England as refugees, having escaped Austria following the Nazi annexation in March 1938. The museum is Sigmund Freud (1856-1839) family home, with his study and famous psychoanalytic couch. Here is where he spent his final days, and where his daughter, psychoanalyst Anna Freud, also lived, worked and died.
Ongoing – ABBA Voyage, at the ABBA Arena in London. The concert features the Swedish band, one of the biggest pop acts of all time, as digital versions of themselves backed by live musicians playing their most popular hits.
Ongoing – ‘Lost & Found: a European literary map of London’, by University College London (UCL). An online map to explore London through the eyes of European writers and reflect on the city as a place where people and cultures meet and are transformed. You can also submit new entries via the website.
For more events check the following organisations:
- Austrian Cultural Forum
- Battersea Spanish
- British Czech and Slovak Association
- CinemaItaliaUK
- Cyprus Culture in the UK
- Czech Centrę London
- Dutch Centre
- Finnish Institute
- Goethe Institut
- Hellenic Centre
- Institut Français
- Irish Cultural Centre
- Italian Cultural Institute
- London Irish Centre
- Polish Jazz Café POSK
- Polish Cultural Institute London
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Photo: The Bloomsbury Room at The Courtauld Gallery. Photo © Jim Winslet, courtesy The Courtauld’s online
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