This article was originally published in 2019.
This year's Covent Garden Rent Ceremony takes place on 2 July 2026, from 4.30pm. It's a public event so anyone on the piazza by St Paul's Church at that time can join in or just watch.
"Hear ye! Hear ye!"
The cry rings out around Covent Garden on a balmy Thursday afternoon, alerting people it's time for one of London's strangest annual traditions: the Covent Garden Rent Ceremony.
The historical ceremony is held each summer, as a merry band of misfits — that is, the Lord Mayor of Westminster, the Deputy Mayor of Camden, Covent Garden Area trustees, musicians, street entertainers and a town crier — march around Covent Garden Piazza.
Their every step is followed by a determined group of photographers, and bemused yet gleeful tourists.
But what exactly is the Rent Ceremony? It's an event where the trustees pay the "peppercorn rent" of five rosy red apples and five posies of flowers — a callback to the fruit and flower market on which Covent Garden was founded — to the landlords of the five properties of the 'Protected Lands'.
The trust has a 150 year lease on the properties and this is the 31st edition of the ceremony, meaning there's another 119 years left to go.
The parade winds its way around Covent Garden, pausing for the town crier to make a booming speech explaining what on Earth is going on, followed by a musical interlude from the string quartet. The parade then sets off again.
Most impressively the quartet includes a man marching with a massive double bass, often for brilliant comic effect. (As someone who played the instrument abysmally at school, I cannot stress enough how physically impressive a feat this is.)
At two different points, the peppercorn rent is exchanged. The first time comes reasonably early in the parade for the lease on the St James's buildings. The second is at the end of the parade, for the lease on the main Covent Garden Piazza building.
After that, a few speeches thank all involved in the merry day out, before the parade marches out of the piazza and dissipates.
Take a look at some photos we captured at 2019's ceremony, followed by the video we shot in 2017.
