The V&A closing dates worth putting in a diary

Museums announce openings loudly and closings quietly, which is exactly backwards from the visitor’s point of view. An opening is an invitation with no deadline attached; a closing date is the only piece of information that ever makes anybody actually go.

So here are the V&A’s, in the order they run out.

8 November — Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art

Closing Sunday 8 November 2026 at V&A South Kensington. Tickets are £28 on weekdays and £30 at weekends.

This is the first British exhibition devoted to Elsa Schiaparelli, and the scale of it is the reason it is worth the deadline: over 400 objects, including 100 ensembles, alongside some 50 artworks by Dalí, Picasso and Man Ray.

That mix is the whole argument of the show. Schiaparelli worked with the Surrealists rather than borrowing from them — the lobster, the shoe worn as a hat, the trompe-l’œil knits are collaborations, not references. Hanging the paintings beside the clothes is the only way to make that case, and it is the reason this is a fashion exhibition that people who do not go to fashion exhibitions tend to come out of talking.

15 November — Inside Aardman

Inside Aardman: Wallace & Gromit and Friends closes 15 November 2026 at Young V&A in Bethnal Green. Tickets £12.50.

Worth knowing which building this is in: Young V&A is a different site from South Kensington, and a family planning a single day out cannot do this one and Schiaparelli without crossing London in between.

10 January — two shows, two buildings

The Music is Black: A British Story closes 10 January 2027 at V&A East, £22.50. Rising Voices: Contemporary Art from Asia, Australia and the Pacific closes the same day at South Kensington, £17.

Sharing a closing date across two sites is a scheduling detail with a practical consequence: the first weekend of January will be the busy one at both, and the quiet weeks are the ones before Christmas.

7 November — the one that opens

Constantinople to Istanbul: One City, Two Empires opens Saturday 7 November 2026 at South Kensington — the day before Schiaparelli closes.

Which makes that weekend the only one where both are on. If there is a single date in this piece to write down, it is Saturday 7 or Sunday 8 November.

What is not here

Opening dates for the other shows are not listed above because the museum has not published them all, and a guide that guesses at one is worse than a guide that leaves it out. What is printed here is what the V&A itself has stated, checked on the day this was written.