Last Updated on July 7, 2026
The Very Best of Dance to Look Forward To
From Summer specials all the way to Christmas staples, the coming semester brings an abundance of dance, both national and international, to London. What follows is not an exhaustive list, but rather a selection of highlights – the shows that stand out from the crowd.
Contents
Royal Opera House Main Stage
The Royal Ballet’s luminous principal Marianela Núñez presents a very personal project: Marianela: Timeless, celebrating her illustrious 28-year career with The Royal Ballet.
Núñez will be joined by ten Royal Ballet colleagues in a programme consisting of short divertissements plus the full-length Marguerite et Armand, Ashton’s poignant distillation of La Dame aux Camélias, which she will dance with fellow principal William Bracewell.
29 July to 2 August at 7.30 pm. Tickets: £9-£207. Full info and tickets here
Hot on Núñez’s heels, her former Royal Ballet stage partner, the Cuban superstar Carlos Acosta, brings his own personal project to Covent Garden. Now in his early 50s, and with full-time jobs as director of Birmingham Royal Ballet and Acosta Danza, the lure of the stage still proves irresistible. Dancers from both companies will join Acosta in a varied programme entitled Myths and Modern Masters.
5 to 9 August at 7.30 pm. Tickets £9-£207. Full info and tickets here
The 2026/27 season proper starts with a celebration of the Royal Ballet School’s centenary, in a mixed programme showcasing works by founder Ninette de Valois and choreographer Frederick Ashton, as well as other landmark works by choreographers associated with the company and the school. It will feature dancers from The Royal Ballet and Birmingham Royal Ballet, alongside students from the Royal Ballet School
8 October at 7.30 pm, 10 Oct at 1 pm and 7 pm. Tickets £9-£173. Full info and tickets here
The first full-length ballet of the season is Kenneth MacMillan’s harrowing Manon, the story of the titular young woman whose innocence is easily corrupted by a very rich patron in 18th-century Paris, leading to her downfall and that of her faithful lover.
13 October to 25 November at 7.30 pm. Sat mats at 1 pm. Tickets: £9-£173. Full info and tickets here
Visionaries, which comes next, is a double bill celebrating two great choreographers: the American Jerome Robbins and Britain’s Kenneth MacMillan with two seminal works, respectively Dances at a Gathering and Song of the Earth.
9 to 28 November at 7.30 pm. Sat mat at 1 pm. Tickets: £7-£128. Full info and tickets here
The year draws to a close with the ballet without which Christmas wouldn’t be the same: The Nutcracker, in Sir Peter Wright’s glorious, sumptuous, magical production, a treat for all the family.
3 December to 13 January 2027. Eves at 7.30 pm, various matinee times through the run. Tickets: £10-£199. Full info and tickets here
The Linbury Theatre
The RBO intimate second stage opens the season with a personal project by Royal Ballet principal Steven McRae, who’s twice overcome potentially career-ending injuries, including a ruptured Achilles tendon. McRae joins forces with virtuoso violinist Vasko Vassiliev in a new piece inspired by Paganini, titled The MacRae/Vassiliev Project.
11 to 19 September at 7.15 pm. Tickets: £8-£65. Full info and tickets here
Leeds-based Northern Ballet makes a brief foray into London with a truly enticing triple bill that includes Dutch master Hans van Manen’s 5 Tangos, Mthuthuzeli November’s Fools, which transposes the Romeo and Juliet story to a South African township, and a brand-new work by New York City Ballet star Tyler Peck.
30 September to 2 October at 7.30 pm. Thurs mat at 2 pm. Tickets £6-£60. Full info and tickets here
The contemporary Danish company Kammerballetten makes its Linbury debut with Stay Tuned, a programme of short works by Léon and Lightfoot, the choreographic duo whose first work for The Royal Ballet was one of the highlights of the previous season.
11 to 19 December at 7.45 pm, Sun at 3 pm. Tickets: £8-£80. Full info and tickets here
RBO
Bow Street
London WC2E 9DD
English National Ballet
A bold triple bill, Rhythm Riot, opens the London season for English National Ballet at Sadler’s Wells. It includes two world premieres by Korean dance maker Jae Man Joo and LA-based Micaela Taylor, alongside Balanchine’s Symphony in Three Movements, which strips dance down to its thrilling essentials.
24 September to 3 October at 7.30 pm. Sat mats at 2.30 pm. Tickets: £15-£85. Full info and tickets here
ENB’s very own Nutcracker takes its rightful place at The Coliseum for the festive season. Brand-new a couple of years ago, it’s a delightful spectacle, fresh and full of magic, love, and sweets.
17 December – 10 January. Eves at 7.30 pm, mat times vary. Tickets: £27.25-£147.25. Full info and tickets here
London Coliseum
The State Ballet of Georgia returns to the Coliseum two years after its London debut with its own very traditional production of Swan Lake. The company is under the artistic direction of the former Bolshoi star Nina Ananiashvili. Tchaikovsky’s famous score will be played live.
17 to 26 July at 7.30 pm, mats Sat, Sun and Thurs at 2.30 pm. Tickets £35 to £115. Full info and tickets here
London Coliseum
St Martin’s Lane
London WC2N 4ES
Sadler’s Wells Angel
In what’s become something of a summer tradition, Matthew Bourne’s New Adventures company takes over Sadler’s Wells Angel for the whole of August, this time with a revival of The Car Man, Bourne’s cinematic take on the story of Carmen, mixed with The Postman Always Rings Twice. It’s a full-on, hugely enjoyable show.
28 July to 29 August at 7.30 pm. Thursday & Saturday matinees at 2.30 pm. Sun at 2 pm. Tickets:£15-£125. Full info and tickets here
The 2026/27 season proper kicks off with a major event: a visit by San Francisco Ballet, now run by Tamara Rojo, well known to British audiences, first as a principal with The Royal Ballet, and subsequently as the artistic director of English National Ballet.
The prestigious American company brings Mere Mortals, Rojo’s commission for her first season at the helm, with choreography by the Canadian Aszure Barton. It’s billed as a fusion of electronic music, festival culture and contemporary ballet. Critical reaction at home was unanimous in declaring it a ‘love it or hate it’ work.
9 to 12 September at 7.30 pm. Thurs & Sat mats at 2.30 pm. Tickets: £15-£110. Full info and tickets here
Another important September visitor is the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. The vibrant New York-based company, predominantly, but not exclusively, Black, returns with two programmes: New Works and Legacy. As is traditional, both end with Alvin Ailey’s own gospel-inspired and inspirational Revelations.
15 to 19 September at 7.30 pm, Thurs & Sat mats at 2.30 pm. Tickets: £15-£110. Full info & tickets here
Acosta Danza, at just over 10 years old, already a well-established force in contemporary dance, presents its new programme, Cuban Baroque. Curated by Carlos Acosta, it blends the vital energy of these wonderful Cuban dancers with the artistry of the Baroque period in two pieces: a premiere from choreographer Andonis Foniadakis, and a Carlos Acosta favourite, Goyo Montero’s Chacona.
7 to 10 October at 7.30 pm. Tickets: £15-£75. Full info and tickets here
Ballet Black continues its 25th-anniversary celebrations with Ballet Black at 25, a double bill that has been touring widely since its first outing at the Linbury last March. Should you have missed it then – and it’s worth seeing – here’s your chance.
14 to 17 October at 7.30 pm. Tickets: £15-£65. Full info and tickets here
London City Ballet, one of the very best things to have happened to ballet in the UK in the past three years, goes from strength to strength and will certainly charm audiences with its new double bill. It’s entitled Firebird, after one of its component pieces, Glenn Tetley’s gothic remaking of the Russian fairy tale, lovingly restored by LCB for this, Tetley’s centenary year. The other piece in the programme is John Neumeier’s Ghost Light, to be performed for the first time outside Neumeier’s former home of Hamburg, and starring the wonderful Alina Cojocaru.
22 to 24 October at 7.30 pm. Sat mat at 2.30 pm. Tickets: £15-£90. Full info and tickets here
No season is complete without at least one Swan Lake. Birmingham Royal Ballet’s, in Sir Peter Wright’s meticulous production, has a short run at Sadler’s Wells this autumn. An opportunity, perhaps, to compare and contrast with the State Ballet of Georgia’s production? (see above)
28 to 31 October at 7.30 pm. Thurs & Sat mats at 2 pm. Tickets: £15-£110. Full info and tickets here
Germán Cornejo’s tango spectacular, Tango After Dark, has been away from our stages for a few years, but now it returns to bring us the rhythms and dances of Buenos Aires. An often acrobatic, sometimes erotic, occasionally kitsch show for five couples, driven by Cornejo and his partner and co-choreographer Gisella Galeassi, it’s danced entirely to Astor Piazzolla music, performed live on stage by a five-piece band and two singers.
5 to 9 November at 7.30 pm. Sat & Sun at 2 pm. Tickets: £15-£65. Full info and tickets here
Following their return to the stage last May with Still Pointless, which scrolled through the company’s 25 years, BalletBoyz return with a brand-new, very ambitious piece titled Six Lethargies. Set to a composition for string orchestra from BalletBoyz regular collaborator Keaton Henson and choreographed by Iván Pérez and Seirian Griffiths, it’s a deeply immersive piece that asks, ‘how do trauma, memory, anxiety, and empathy live together in the body and the mind?
18 to 21 November at 7.30 pm. Sat mat at 2.30 pm. Tickets: £15-£65. Full info and tickets here
As in previous seasons, Sadler’s Wells opts for non-seasonal fare during the Christmas period, this year with a revival of Matthew Bourne’s Cinderella.
Set in 1940 London, impressively evoked in Lez Brotherston’s designs, Bourne’s reinvention of the classical ballet has at its heart the wartime romance between the titular girl and a dashing RAF pilot. It is set to Prokofiev’s score, augmented by Paul Groothuis’s skilful sound design. It’s a great alternative to The Nutcracker.
1 December to 17 January 2027 at 7.30 pm. Thurs & Sat mats at 2.30 pm. Sun at 2 pm only. Tickets: £15-£135. Full info and tickets here
Sadler’s Wells Angel
Rosebery Avenue
London EC1R 4TN
Sadler’s Wells East
Jess and Morgs – the collective name of award-winning choreographers, directors and film-makers Jessica Wright and Morgann Runacre-Temple – never fail to capture audiences with their intelligent explorations of the possibilities of dance and human endeavour. Their new work, Deepfake, looks at how fakes are increasingly invading our reality by following two central characters: a modern-day politician and a political journalist, in a high-stakes interview situation.
1 to 3 October at 7.30 pm. Tickets £15 to £45. Full info and tickets here
The Herd/Less, from South African artist Mamela Nyamza, opens this year’s Dance Umbrella Festival. Fresh from winning the 2026 Venice Biennale Silver Lion, Nyamza returns to London with an immersive show inspired by the behaviour of the herd.
8 to 10 October at 7.30 pm. Tickets £15-£30. Full info and tickets here
Olivier-award winner Dickson Mbi is a truly mesmerising dancer, so his new show, Tellus, danced by his own company, is very much something to look forward to. A plea for the restoration of the balance between humanity and nature, Mbi’s Tellus was co-written with poet Nick Drake and mentored by theatre guru Simon McBurney.
21 to 25 October at 7.30 pm. Tickets £15 to £45. Full info and tickets here
Any work that emerges from the prodigious imagination of Ben Duke for his company Lost Dog is worth investing time and attention into. His latest piece, which premiered at the Avignon Festival, is The Last Hamlet, and a sneaky look at early rehearsals tells me it is a characteristically zany, thoughtful and unmissable work.
4 to 7 November at 7.30 pm. Tickets: £15-£45. Full info and tickets here
For the Christmas season, Sadler’s Wells East goes hip-hop with a revival of Ebony Scrooge, ZooNation’s reworking of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. Choreographed by Danielle ‘Rhimes’ Lecointe, it features original music by Michael ‘Mikey J’ Asante, of Boy Blue fame.
It’s a lively, colourful, bouncing show with a seasonal message, and some of the problems of its debut performance will surely have been corrected by now.
23 November to 3 January 2027 at 7.30. Mat times vary. Tickets: £15 to £65. Full info and tickets here
Sadler’s Wells East
Stratford Walk
Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park
London E20 2AR
Peacock Theatre
Stories – The Tap Dance Sensation is an ebullient show that blends contemporary tap dance, urban jazz and percussion to tell the story of an artist whose freedom is stifled by a dictatorial director. It’s a flimsy plot, but it doesn’t matter – the dancing and atmospheric staging make for an exciting show, or at least so did audiences think when Stories had its first sell-out show at the Peacock a couple of years ago.
14 to 31 October at 7.30 pm. Sat and Sun mats at 2.30 pm. Tickets: £18-£75. Full info and tickets here
The Snowman, Birmingham Repertory Theatre’s endearing stage adaptation of Raymond Briggs’s much-loved children’s book, has been charming audiences at Christmas for almost three decades, but this year it comes to the Peacock in a brand-new production directed by Olivier Award-winning Will Tuckett, with set and costume design by Anna Fleischle. It’s a treat for all the family and appropriate for very young children, too.
21 November to 3 January 2027. Early shows at 11 am and 2.30 pm. Eves at 7 pm. Tickets: £18-£50. Full info and tickets here
Peacock Theatre
Portugal Street
London WC2A 2HT
Southbank Centre
Hofesh Shechter: In The Brain is the latest full-length work by the maverick choreographer for his junior company, Shechter II. It’ll be a characteristically loud, pulsating piece, billed as “part rave, part ritual”, and it will surely be forcefully performed by the wonderful young dancers of Shechter II.
Queen Elizabeth Hall, 22 to 25 July at 7.30 pm. Tickets: £22-£46. Full info and tickets here
Kevin Peter He: Vestige is a multimedia show that rests on an intriguing proposition: two performers search for contact across stage and screen in a magnetic live dance-theatre work about presence, absence and touch. As an immersive addition to the actual show, outside of performance times, the motion capture studio used by the performers becomes an interactive installation for you to explore.
Purcell Room, 12 September at 8.15 pm, £13.25-£22. Full info and tickets here
Personal favourites Thick & Tight bring their fabulous and unique mix of dance, drag, mime, lip sync and satire to the festive season with their show Camp as Christmas.
It’s impossible to guess what these two, aka Daniel Hay-Gordon and El Perry, will come up with, such is their seemingly inexhaustible inventiveness, but we’re promised a classic nativity cast, including the Virgin Mary, Reform UK, Judy Garland, Sarah Ferguson…. you get the gist of it. If you’re easily offended, maybe give it a miss; if not, go and have fun!
Purcell Room 10 December to 3 January 2027 at 7.45 pm. Sun at 6 pm. No performance on Mon. Tickets: £17.75-£34. Full info and tickets here
Southbank Centre
Belvedere Road
London SE1 8XX
Barbican Centre
If you see nothing else this autumn, please don’t miss Pastoral by Pam Tanowitz Dance. The New York-based choreographer has become a firm favourite with London audiences, either through a growing body of commissions by The Royal Ballet, or through her work with her own company, shown at the Barbican Theatre. Here she reimagines Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony “Pastoral” with her characteristic, but always fresh, deconstruction and harmonious reassembly of traditional choreographic languages, in an evocative dance performance developed in collaboration with composer Caroline Shaw and painter Sarah Crowner.
Barbican Theatre 1 to 3 October at 7.45 pm. Sat mat at 2.30 pm. Tickets: £18-£45. Full info and tickets here
Barbican Centre
Silk Street
London EC2Y 8DS
The Place
Home to the London Contemporary Dance School, The Place has a full programme of one-off, experimental shows, of interest to those who like to be at the cutting edge of contemporary choreography. It’s very much a case of pot luck, but one show we’re happy to recommend is Femina, by the very interesting young duo, Ekleido, the stage name of Hannah Ekholm and Faye Stoeser.
Regular performers at Ballet Nights, Ekleido now bring their exploration of femininity throughout the ages to The Place. A work for six dancers, it’s set to an original score by world-renowned musicians Floating Points (Mercury Prize nominee), Ela Minus and Stella Mozgawa,
5 to 7 November at 7.30 pm. Tickets: £22 (concessions available). Full info and tickets here
The Place
17 Duke’s Road
London WC1H 9PY
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