London Today Bloomsbury Festival 2026
Bloomsbury, London · Organised by Bloomsbury Festival
- Dates
- 1 Oct 2026 – 31 Oct 2026
- Format
- In person
- Where
- Bloomsbury, London
- Tickets
- Free
- Organiser
- Bloomsbury Festival
Most London festivals take a weekend and a park. This one takes a month and a postcode: more than 150 events in the squares, churches, lecture halls and museums of Bloomsbury, and in 2026 it is the twentieth time it has done it.
Dates
1 to 31 October 2026, across Bloomsbury.
Arts, culture and science in the same programme
The mix is the point and it is not an accident of geography: the neighbourhood holds a university, a national museum and several hospitals within a few streets of each other, and the festival programmes all three as though they were one venue. A talk by a researcher and a concert in a church sit on the same page at the same price bracket.
A great deal of it is free
Ticketed events in the programme sit in the ten-to-twenty-pound range; a substantial part of the month, including the university's own talks series, costs nothing.
Programme
- UCL Firsts
- Free talks through the month, 6 to 30 October.
- Bloomsbury's Back Yard
- 10 and 11 October, GBP 10 to GBP 12, at The Music Room, 49 Great Ormond Street.
- PATIENT: SOLDIER
- Sunday 11 October, 6pm, GBP 20, at City Lit.
- Moments of Grace
- Free, Fridays to Sundays from 2 to 31 October, at Holy Cross Church.
- Nosferatu (1922), with live organ
- Friday 30 October, 9pm, GBP 15, at Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church.
- AKDC Diwali takeover
- Saturday 31 October, 2pm, free.
- British Museum treasure hunts
- 3, 9, 23 and 31 October.
A month-long festival in one neighbourhood rewards a different tactic from a weekend one: nothing needs to be crammed, and the thinly attended Tuesday version of an event is usually the better room. The two dates worth booking rather than wandering into are the silent film with live organ and the Diwali takeover, both because the buildings hold a fixed number of people and because both fall at the end of the month, when the rest of the programme has already sold whatever it is going to sell.
Bloomsbury Festival 2026: questions
When is the Bloomsbury Festival 2026?
It runs for the whole of October — 1 to 31 October 2026 — rather than over a single weekend.
Is the Bloomsbury Festival free?
Partly. A large share of the programme, including the UCL Firsts talks, is free; ticketed events are mostly GBP 10 to GBP 20.
Where does it take place?
Across Bloomsbury itself — churches, squares, the British Museum, City Lit and university buildings, all within walking distance of each other.
Source: Bloomsbury Festival checked against the source
