London Sculpture Week 2026

19 to 27 September 2026

London Sculpture Week, the capital’s annual celebration of public sculpture, returned this autumn for its fifth edition, transforming London into an open-air gallery.

Launched in 2022, London Sculpture Week brings together five leading London cultural initiatives — East Bank, Frieze Sculpture, Fourth Plinth, Sculpture in the City and The Line — for a citywide celebration of public art.

Each year in late September, the nine-day programme brings together tours, performances, talks and other events, exploring how sculpture connects people, place and public life — how it speaks, remembers, protests, plays and dreams.

Across the city, London Sculpture Week offers new ways to encounter sculpture – encouraging audiences to move through London, look more closely at their surroundings and experience familiar places differently.

East Bank is the UK’s newest culture and education quarter at the heart of Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. It brings together five partner institutions — BBC Music Studios, London College of Fashion, UAL, Sadler’s Wells East, UCL East and V&A East — alongside local communities to create a new cultural destination in east London. East Bank is the largest ever cultural investment by the Mayor of London, and marks a commitment to long-term, world-class culture and education in east London. 

Frieze Sculpture brings contemporary sculpture into the open air of Regent’s Park, presenting works by internationally renowned and emerging artists within the park’s landscape.

Fourth Plinth is one of the world’s most important contemporary art commissions. Located in Trafalgar Square, it invites leading artists to create ambitious new works for one of London’s most recognisable public spaces.

Sculpture in the City transforms the City of London into an open-air sculpture park, placing contemporary artworks among its distinctive architecture and inviting audiences to discover sculpture in unexpected corners of the city.

The Line is East London’s public art trail, connecting Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in Stratford with The O2 in North Greenwich. Following the waterways and the line of the Greenwich Meridian, its free outdoor exhibition programme connects art, nature and heritage.

Programme highlights included A Taste of Sculpture in the City where attendees joined Sculpture in the City’s Artistic Director and LACUNA Founding Director, Stella Ioannou, for a guided tour and tasting session with special guest,Co-Founder of Bompas & Parr, Sam Bompas. Guests explored Sculpture in the City before heading to Bar Fogo for complimentary canapés inspired by a selection of the sculptures.

For The Sculpture Switch, The Line and Sculpture in the City came together for an exchange of artist-led tours. The week started with Sculpture in the City artist, Andrew Sabin, leading a tour of The Line.

Abigail Fallis, led the Sculpture Switch: Tour of Sculpture in the City at the end of the week, sharing her personal responses to a selection of works and considering the different ways sculpture inhabits and responds to the urban environment.

See full programme here.

The Sculpture in the City event programme is supported by Activations & Promotions Partner, Eastern City BID – the Business Improvement District for the Eastern City.

Bloomberg Connects returned as London Sculpture Week's Official Digital Guide.
Explore now on Bloomberg Connects.

London Sculpture Week Symposium / Friday 25 September 2026
Reframing Monumentality: Contemporary Sculptural Practices in the Public Realm

Now in its third edition, the London Sculpture Week Symposium, Reframing Monumentality: Contemporary Sculptural Practices in the Public Realm, brought together artists, curators and cultural partners to explore the evolving meaning of monumentality in the 21st century. Moving beyond associations with scale, permanence and authority, speakers considered how contemporary sculpture responds to contested histories, shifting civic identities, ecological pressures and digitally mediated experience.

Presentation themes included:
Unmonumental Sculpture - Ozlem Gunyol and Mustafa Kunt with Fatoş Ustek, Curator, Frieze Sculpture.
Monument as Representation - Tamsin Ace, Director, East Bank, with Jo Baxendale, Fourth Plinth.
Monument as Relation - Mahtab Hussain with Sarah Carrington, Director, The Line.
Monument as Affect - Hannah Starkey with Stella Ioannou, Artistic Director, Sculpture in the City and Founding Director, LACUNA.

The afternoon closed with a keynote from Jo Baring, art historian, curator and Director of the Ingram Collection of Modern British & Contemporary Art.

The sessions were moderated by Jacek Ludwig Scarso (CREATURE [Research Centre for Creative Arts, Cultures and Engagement] at London Metropolitan University)

Organised by London Sculpture Week partners East Bank, Fourth Plinth, Frieze Sculpture, Sculpture in the City and The Line, and hosted by The Warburg Institute in collaboration with CREATURE at London Metropolitan University.

Sculpture in the City 's contribution to London Sculpture Week, is supported by Activation Partner, Eastern City BID – the Business Improvement District for the Eastern City.