If You’re Looking For Some Arts And Culture In London This May, Here Are 7 Events Not To Miss

WePresent Spring Show – 9th-10th May

Queer East Festival – 10th-28th May

Location: Across London.

Queer East is a cross-disciplinary festival that showcases boundary-pushing LGBTQ+ cinema, live arts, and moving image work from East and Southeast Asia and its diaspora communities. The festival runs from Sunday 10th May to Thursday 28th May in venues across London, exploring notions of what it means to be queer and Asian today.

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Whodunnit [Unrehearsed] 4 – 11th May to 27th June

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Rising Voices: Contemporary Art from Asia, Australia and the Pacific – Opens 16th May

Holy Pop! – 21st May-9th August

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FAREWELL FESTIVAL by Banana Cabaret – 1st-30th May

Location: The Bedford, Balham

Banana Cabaret is having its final act and retiring from the stage. They are celebrating the close of their 43 year residency at The Bedford in Balham with a FAREWELL FESTIVAL running from Friday, 1st to Saturday, 30th May.

Opening in 1983, Banana Cabaret comedy club was at the forefront of the alternative comedy movement, welcoming all the greats over the years. Lee Evans, Michael McIntyre, Jo Brand, Catherine Tate, Jack Dee, Rob Brydon, Sarah Millican and all your favourite household name comedians, cut their standup teeth there.

The Fleet Street Quarter Festival of Words – 12th-16th May

Location: Fleet Street

Fleet Street Quarter’s Festival of Words returns from 12th -16th May 2026, bringing five days of enriching and diverse conversations to this historic western side of the City of London. Featuring an array of authors, journalists, and thinkers across multiple genres, the Festival of Words celebrates Fleet Street Quarter as the place where stories have always been born.

The theme this year takes inspiration from the famous opening lines of Charles Dickens’s novel, A Tale of Two Cities: ‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness’.

There are over 40 events examining and celebrating what drives this ‘Age of Wisdom and Foolishness’, the ideas right or wrong that challenge what has gone before and seek to predict what will come next.

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