From dawn walks through the Tate Modern to Yoshitomo Nara’s defiant dreamers at the Hayward, London’s art world is in full bloom this summer.
Whether you’re seeking blockbuster retrospectives, free gallery gems, or a rare chance to see masterpieces without the crowds, here’s your guide to the best exhibitions across the capital in summer 2025.
Alone at the Tate: GetYourGuide’s dawn tours
Craving a Tate Modern visit without dodging selfie sticks? GetYourGuide’s new Alone At experience offers early morning entry before doors open to the public, with intimate tours led by art historians.
It’s part of the platform’s All Art. No Crowd. initiative, addressing rising frustration with overcrowding at cultural sites.
The tours run monthly (£50) and promise a meditative, personal encounter with major works - plus, it’s launching at MoMA in New York and the Vatican Museums if you want to take your crowd-free art habit global.
Gey your tickets up until September at GetYourGuide
Kiefer/Van Gogh, Royal Academy (until 26 Oct)
Pairing Anselm Kiefer’s monumental materiality with Van Gogh’s emotional turbulence, this ambitious exhibition explores shared themes of nature, memory, and transformation through heavy textures, luminous colours and layered symbolism.
It’s one of the season’s most talked-about shows and rightly so.
Yoshitomo Nara, Hayward Gallery (until 31 Aug)
Expect Nara’s wide-eyed figures, luminous paintings, and large-scale installations to greet you with defiance and quiet melancholy.
This career-spanning retrospective explores innocence, alienation, and protest with humour and heart, capturing the contradictions of our times.
Book here
Grayson Perry: Delusions of Grandeur, Wallace Collection (until 26 Oct)
The Wallace’s largest contemporary exhibition sees Grayson Perry’s tapestries, ceramics and wry humour meet the museum’s historic treasures in a lively, subversive dialogue about taste, collecting and class.
Jenny Saville: The Anatomy of Painting, National Portrait Gallery (until 7 Sept)Charting three decades of Saville’s monumental explorations of the human form, this major survey delves into bodies, identity, and painterly experimentation. Expect raw, visceral canvases that confront beauty standards and abstraction alike.
Arpita Singh, Serpentine North (until 27 July)
This vibrant exhibition is the artist’s first solo show outside India, spanning over 60 years of watercolours, drawings, and bold oils exploring gender, memory and personal histories through dreamlike figuration.
Giuseppe Penone, Serpentine South (until 7 Sept)Arte Povera master Penone invites you into an immersive world of tree-like sculptures, bronze casts and laurel-scented installations reflecting on nature, memory and the passage of time both indoors and spilling into Kensington Gardens.
Rachel Jones: Gated Canyons, Dulwich Picture Gallery (until 19 Oct)
The Gallery’s first contemporary solo exhibition features Jones’s vivid, abstract works, creating a dialogue with the historic collection while exploring identity and emotional expression through saturated colours and gestural mark-making.
Francesca Mollett, Modern Art, Old Street
Catch Mollett’s deftly layered, light-soaked abstract paintings in a focused solo presentation that cements her place as one of the most promising young British painters working today.
Diamond Stingily, Cabinet Gallery
The cult New York-based artist brings a powerful exploration of thresholds and materiality in an experimental solo show south of the river. Expect to leave with your mind buzzing.
London’s summer art scene is packed with options, from blockbuster retrospectives that demand an afternoon to free shows offering moments of surprise and quiet reflection.
Whether it’s dawn walks through an empty Tate Modern, the grandeur of Kiefer at the RA, or a hidden gem in a Shoreditch project space, the city’s galleries are ready to keep your weekends inspired all season long.
