Stage times in London: when the headliner actually comes on

The single most asked question about any big London gig is what time the headliner actually walks on, and the answer is almost never the time printed on the ticket. That is the doors time. What follows is how the three venues that host most of London’s biggest shows actually run their evenings.

Wembley Stadium

Doors at five, or half past four on a Sunday. The first support is usually on at about a quarter past six, the second at about seven, and the headliner at around ten past eight. Everything shifts half an hour earlier on Sundays.

The curfew is the thing that fixes all of it: ten at night on Sundays, half past ten on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and a quarter to eleven on Fridays and Saturdays. Wembley is in a residential area and the curfew is enforced, which is why headline sets there are shorter than on the rest of a tour.

The O2

Doors at half past six. The main act is usually on around half past eight, although plenty of tours have drifted closer to nine. Sets normally finish by eleven.

North Greenwich is a Jubilee line station and the Jubilee runs all night on Friday and Saturday, so the O2 is the easiest of the three to leave. On any other night, leaving during the encore saves you twenty minutes on the platform.

BST Hyde Park

Gates at two in the afternoon, last entry at half past eight, and the headliner on at about twenty past eight. It is a full day rather than an evening: support acts play across the afternoon and the site has its own bars and food.

The park has a hard curfew and the sound is cut on time. Hyde Park Corner, Marble Arch and Green Park all serve it and all are crushed at the end, so walk to Lancaster Gate or Victoria instead.

How to find the real times

Stage times for a specific show are usually published by the venue two or three days before, sometimes on the day. The venue’s own page and its social accounts are the source; everything else is repeating them. If a tour has already played other cities, the times from those nights are a reliable guide, because production schedules rarely change mid-tour.

Our rule for this page

The doors and curfew times here are the venues’ standard patterns, checked in September 2026. Individual shows vary, and a support act being dropped can move a headliner forward by half an hour. Where we list a specific gig, the listing carries that night’s own times.