ListingsUpdated Sat 24 Oct
Free events in London right now
Everything on this site that costs nothing, from museum late openings to cemetery open days and the free half of the big festivals. Free does not always mean unticketed: where a free event still needs a booked slot, the listing says so.
Showing today. Clear
Saturday
24 October-
Sport Free
Dogs on Hampstead Heath
Eight hundred acres, off lead almost everywhere, and the one swimming pond dogs are allowed in is not one of the bathing ponds. Busiest at the Parliament Hill end on a weekend morning.
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Sport Free
Dogs in Richmond Park
The largest of the royal parks and the one with the deer, which is why dogs must be on a lead in May and June and in September and October. The gates open and close with the light.
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Sport Free
Dogs in Battersea Park
Flat, walled, and small enough to do a full circuit in half an hour, with the river along one side and a cafe at each end. The one park on this list you can reach on foot from a station.
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Free
Stargazing on Hampstead Heath
As dark as central London gets, which is not very, but Parliament Hill has the horizon and the local society runs public evenings on the hill through the winter. Take a torch and a coat.
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Free
Stargazing in Richmond Park
Until 31 Oct
The darkest sky inside London, far enough from the centre that the Milky Way is occasionally there. The park closes at dusk in winter, so this is a late summer and autumn thing.
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Free
A walk through Hampstead village
Lanes that were a hill village before London reached them, and still read like one above the high street. Flask Walk and Holly Mount are the two to take if you only take two.
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Free
Hippodrome Casino
A Victorian theatre off Leicester Square turned casino, free to walk into at any hour, with a working cabaret room upstairs.
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Free
Changing the Guard at Buckingham Palace
Free, and busier than anything else on this list. It does not run every day and it is called off in bad weather, so check the Household Division calendar the morning you go.
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Free
The Rolling Bridge at Merchant Square
Thomas Heatherwick's footbridge curls up into an octagon instead of lifting. It runs to a published timetable posted at the square, and the whole thing takes about three minutes.
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Exhibitions Free
The Fitzrovia Chapel, open to visitors
All that survives of the Middlesex Hospital: a gold mosaic chapel standing on its own in a new square. Free, and open on set days in the middle of the week rather than daily, so check before crossing town.
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Exhibitions Free
Frieze Sculpture 2026 in Regent’s Park
Until 1 Nov
Eleven international artists across the English Gardens, curated for a fourth year by Fatoş Üstek. Free and outdoors until 1 November, so go on a weekday morning and have it to yourself.
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Gigs Free
Bar Jams
Until 27 Oct
Live music in the bar at Underbelly Boulevard, on Walker's Court in Soho. It is a run rather than one night, so there is more than one chance at it. Start time is on the venue's page.
