The full Open House 2025 programme have been announced, including open days, guided tours and balloted tickets.
The annual festival is a huge deal for architecture fans — or anyone who likes to go behind the scenes in places which are usually off-limits to the public. In the past we've found ourselves inside the St Pancras clock tower, climbing church spires, and on the roof of TfL's former HQ at 55 Broadway.
This year's festival takes place 13-21 September, and the full programme has now been announced.
Balloted tickets: Most of the 700+ buildings are un-ticketed... you just turn up. The more popular ones, however, need booking in advance. These include a handful for which places will be awarded by ballot. This year's selection is mouthwatering, and includes 10 Downing Street, BBC Broadcasting House, Canada House, the new London Museum site and the BT Tower (soon to be converted to a hotel). You can enter right now, and the ballot for these will close and be drawn on 18 August.
General bookings: Beside balloted tickets, some of the more attractive options will need to be booked in advance (always a bit of a bun-fight). Booking for these opens — and will mostly fill up — on 20 August. All places are free, but will be in high demand.
What's new?: Each year brings dozens of new buildings to the programme, and this year's is no exception. Here are a few highlights according to Open House:
Studio AVC’s offices, based in a historic 1929 shop which was once Liberty’s printing workshop and part of William Morris’s Arts & Crafts legacy, The King's Foundation in Hackney, set in a refurbished factory warehouse, and London Film School, which used to be a banana warehouse!
Other highlighted 'newbies' include various venues on the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, many architectural practices, the east end of Westminster Abbey, the Museum of Homelessness and the Museum of Transology. You can also take a look around a number of private residences...
Including RIBA House of the Year 2024, Six Columns, Station Lodge, a triple-height home of exposed steel and timber, Hebron House, a Victorian home with retrofitted sustainable credentials, the Grade II listed, Modernist Pioneer Centre, Pine Heath, a 1960s house in the Hampstead conservation area, originally designed by Ted Levy, Benjamin & Partners, and the eye-catching New Fauconberg Cottage, which this year replaced a building on the tiny site of an original 1930s home.
What's returning?: LOTS. The programme includes over 700 buildings and tours. Many old stalwarts are on the map, including livery halls, City churches, Senate House, the Guildhall, Temple Bar, Royal Courts of Justice, the Reform Club (prebook) and most of the societies in Burlington House... and that's just a handful from the centre of town.
The festival claims to be "bigger and bolder than ever". Happily, you can browse the map of locations well ahead of time, and start planning for the Londonophile's answer to Christmas.
The full Open House 2025 programme and non-ballot bookings will be available on 20 August. Previously, Open House took place over a single weekend, but it's grown in recent years. Open House 2025 takes place 13-21 September, and we're promised 700 open days and events across all 32 London boroughs (plus the City). Magnificent.
