Looking for Christmas pressie inspiration? Here's our hand-selected gift guide, featuring exclusive London-themed present ideas. By the time you've read this article, you might have your festive shopping done!
London gifts for transport geeks
After London transport-themed goodies? These are all wheely good:
🚇 Any transport lover will be au fait with the London Transport Museum shop and its embarrassment of transport-themed riches for everyone from babies to boomers. Next stop: a moquette tea towel... or sofa.
🚇 For the murder mystery obsessed moquette lover in your life, it's got to be a copy of Andrew Martin's latest detective caper, The Moquette Mystery, in which a rare piece of fabric leads department store girl May Mitton on a search for an elusive killer.
🚇 Another transport book published in 2025 — this one, a definite coffee table tome — is Philip Butler's 226 Garages and Service Stations, which pulls over at beautiful old garages across the country, including a number in London.
🚇 Adam Nathaniel Furman's trippy take on the classic London Underground motifs (designs including 'Bakerloo Boogie Woogie' and 'Mighty Metropolitan') make for eye-catching cushions, mugs, backpacks and sweaters. A refreshing change from the usual moquette designs which everyone now seems to be wearing as socks (us included).
🚇 Friend of Londonist Luke Agbaimoni, aka Tube Mapper, has released a 2026 A3 calendar — each month featuring one of his finest Tube snaps from the past year. Here's to a satisfyingly symmetrical 2026.
🚇 Supperclub.Tube serves up Latin American inspired dishes on a 1967 Victoria Line Tube carriage, which as you can imagine, makes for a memorable night out. Get gift cards here.
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Creative gifts from the National Portrait Gallery
British creativity and elegant design are at the heart of the National Portrait Gallery's Christmas collection, which includes bespoke products spanning fashion, homewares, stationery, decorations and children’s gifts — many inspired by the Gallery's current Cecil Beaton exhibition.
Wallace Sewell — the design team responsible for TfL's moquettes — created the exclusive (and rather stylish!) Cecil Beaton Lambswool Scarf in Monochrome. Artist Luke Edward Hall's Boy Wonder range, a nod to Beaton's 1927 self-portrait drawing, features 14 original designs across tote bags, cushion covers, silk ties, t-shirts and more in eye-catching pastel colours. Cecil Beaton's Cocktail Book is also available, and pairs beautifully with elegant glassware by The Vintage List.
If you're thinking of treating someone (or yourself!) in advance of the big day, take a look at the exclusive National Portrait Gallery advent calendar designed by Emily Sutton. The 3D masterpiece is inspired by the Gallery’s Ross Place forecourt and Pavilion café, and contains charming hidden portraits of Gallery sitters from Oscar Wilde to Tracey Emin peeking out from each advent window.
The National Portrait Gallery's Christmas Shop is now open in store and online. Enjoy late-night shopping in store until 9pm every Friday and Saturday evening.
Walking tour and experience gift vouchers
After a present for someone who likes to get out there, walk around, learn stuff... and maybe eat/drink stuff too? Here you go:
🔍 Liquid History run regular booze-themed walks of London, where you can glug down quirky anecdotes and trivia, while calling in at some of the city's iconic watering holes. They sell gift vouchers, as well as other themed merch.
🔍 Look Up London sells gift vouchers for private guided tours, where you can choose from a lengthy list of neighbourhoods, from Bankside to Soho to Waterloo. There's a much-lauded feminist Jack the Ripper tour, too.
🔍 The sagacious Footprints of London team — with whom we've enjoyed numerous enlightening wanders — offer a range of vouchers for public, private, and even virtual, tours exploring the city's nooks and crannies.
🔍 You can also get gift vouchers of various denominations for TfL's Hidden London tours, which take you into the secretive spaces beneath the city's streets. Just be aware some of these experiences are on the 'premium' side, price wise.
🔍 The Clink is a charity restaurant based inside HM Brixton prison, which trains up inmates to cook and serve food, ready for employment and career progression after they've served their time. The cuisine has won plaudits, and gift vouchers are the ideal gift for that foodie friend who's always looking for a new experience.
Gifts for London history fans
A gift subscription that history fans will drool over.
Have you discovered our weekly newsletter about London's history? Each week, Londonist: Time Machine digs deeper into a little-known chapter from the capital's past. We ask questions like "Who was the first person to ever ride the Tube?". We see how Londoners of yesteryear imagined the 21st century city might look. And we colour in a lot of old maps.
AND there's an added level to Londonist: Time Machine. For a small subscription, you get to access additional newsletters, browse the full archive, get invitations to meetups and behind-the-scenes tours and be part of the Londonist: Time Machine community.
If you know somebody who's sweet on history, consider buying them a gift subscription for Christmas. It's just £5 for a month or £45 for a whole year.
London gifts for kids
🦖 Baby grows, snow globes — even mini guard's hats (which aren't made from real bearskin FYI): Historic Royal Palaces has a fab collection of London-themed kids gifts to peruse.
🦖 Wimbledon, Stokey, Croydon, Hampstead, Brixton and a host of other London locales feature in the Colour Your Streets colouring book series. Children will love it, as will certain adults in your life.
🦖 Know a young kid who's a West End star/director/costume designer of the future? Fan the flames of their passion, with one of these beautiful paper theatres from Benjamin Pollock's Toyshop in Covent Garden — it's an IRL shop, though they also do online orders.
Boozy London gifts
Suggestions for beer, wine and spirit drinkers. We've got teetotallers covered, too:
🍺 Beer: If you're looking to buy London-crafted beer for someone, but don't know where to start, check out our list of taprooms and click on the web shops to see what they offer (lots of breweries sell selection boxes, which make a fine festive gift). A brewery tour also makes a thoughtful present; among London breweries offering them are Fuller's in Chiswick (one for the heritage lovers), Five Points in Hackney (one of the best), and Small Beer in Bermondsey (for those who like to appreciate beer in moderation).
🍷 Wine: If it's vino you seek, make sure it's a London label: Blackbook make "bloody good wine" in their Battersea winery, thanks to grapes sourced from vineyards a stone's throw from the capital. Their "Londoner" 6 pack of wine would make for one stonking great present, or six very good ones. Otherwise, pick up a mixed case of reds, whites and sparklings from E17's Renegade Urban Winery, famous for their 'face' labels.
🍹 Rum: Buy a bottle of Market Row rum, described as "Brixton in a bottle" — and guaranteed to perk up any festive punch.
🍋 Gin: Graveney Gin sells a selection of juniper-infused nectar, including a rosemary and thyme variation — or book a gin tasting experience for two at its home in Tooting Market.
🥃 Whisky: Yes, London-made whisky is a thing. Although if the person you're buying for prefers the stuff sourced from north of the border, the Scotch Malt Whisky Society sells various memberships, giving access to their plush Hatton Garden tasting rooms.
🎨 Pub pics: As Lydia Wood continues on her quixotic quest to draw every single pub in London, know that she sells prints of various boozers (perhaps you'll find one of a friend/family member's fave drinking hole).
🫖 Alcohol-free: Drink gifts for the non-drinkers in your life? How about tickets to a Club Soda event, a tea tasting at Twinings, or one of these literary afternoon teas.
London book gift ideas
2025's been another bumper year for books about London. Here's our shortlist of some which we think will tickle your fancy.
📚 Londonist's ever-prolific Matt Brown published another book with cartographer Mike Hall this year — and it's a doozy. The Boroughs of London is a cornucopia of fascinating facts, anecdotes and trivia of each of the 32 boroughs (on this, their 60th anniversary), accompanied by boldly coloured, 1960s-style maps.
📚 Journalist Kelly Frost's debut outing as an author has produced The Kings Head, a fast-paced novel set in 1950s Finsbury Park, home to girl gang Seven Sisters and their rivals the Kings. The Times called it "compelling".
📚 The inexhaustible Peter Ackroyd's latest tome, Forgotten London is a dynamically-paced voyage through the various ages of London. Read an extract here.
📚 Anyone who's been past the queue outside Roti King (and smelled the intoxicating aromas drifting from therein) will know how much Sugen Gopal's chain of Malaysian restaurants has captured the hearts (and stomachs) of Londoners. Roti King: Classic and Modern Malaysian Street Food tells you how to cook like Gopal — or at least get pretty close to it.
📚 Looking for a coffee table book your friends will scoop up and be glued to for the next half hour? You'll need Above and Across London, an astonishing collection of aerial photos.
📚 "A thrilling history of mudlarkers, charlatans, experts and chancers" — that's Stony Jack and the Lost Jewels of Cheapside, Victoria Shepherd's novel about the discovery of a cache of Elizabethan treasure.
📚 Granted, London isn't looking all that lush right now, but David Fathers' generously illustrated Green London has 14 walks around the city that will delight walkers anytime of the year. It might even come in handy on Boxing Day...
📚 From Ada Lovelace to Twiggy, London's Statues of Women by Juliet Rix proves that the capital now has a remarkable and reassuring array. Use it as an 'I Spy' book, and tick them off as you find them.
📚 Londonist editor Will Noble's debut book Croydonopolis: A Journey to the Greatest City That Never Was, which came out in paperback this year, debunks the myth of Croydon as a 'concrete hell' — unearthing a place that gave us experimental railways, the country's first international airport and some of the greatest musicians of all time.
📚 We raved about As Seen on the Streets of London — which covers street are from tiny stencils to multi-storey murals — as "stunning".
📚 And a reminder that we have not one, but two illustrated tomes of our own: Londonist Mapped (a gorgeous cartographic voyage around London Trivia), and Londonist Drinks, which spills over with trivia on liquid London — from gin to craft beer to milk rounds.
We featured these book because we know it's the kind of thing our readers will enjoy. By buying them via links in this article, Londonist may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, which also helps support independent bookshops.
Tickets for London theatre shows in 2026
The answer to the question: 'What do I get the person who has everything?' is so often: 'Tickets to a show!' Here's our pick of those arriving on the London stage in early 2026:
🎭 Sunny Afternoon, Alexandra Palace Theatre (from 15 Jan 2026): The 2014 jukebox musical Sunny Afternoon is back — this time staged at the stunning Alexandra Palace Theatre, not far from the band's old stomping ground of Muswell Hill. All the hits are in this autobiographical story of the band; tickets will make a groovy pressie for parents/grandparents.
🎭 Beautiful Little Fool, Southwark Playhouse Borough (from 15 Jan 2026): The tempestuous relationship between F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald — as witnessed through the eyes of their daughter, Scottie — is the subject of rock musical Beautiful Little Fool.
🎭 Cable Street, Marylebone Theatre (from 16 Jan 2026): Following two sold out runs in 2024, this musical set around the day of the Blackshirt-trouncing Battle of Cable Street in 1936 is back on stage, at Marylebone Theatre. It's been called a "dazzling musical portrait of a community against fascism".
🎭 The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, Haymarket Theatre (from 29 Jan 2026): The 2023 film about a pensioner who sets out on a pilgrimage from Devon to Berwick has now tramped all the way to London's West End, starring Mark Addy of Full Monty fame in the title role.
Londony stocking fillers
Simply looking for something small to slip in a stocking? Here are a handful sockful of suggestions.
🧦 W Martyn in Muswell Hill has barely changed since 1897. It's a shoo-in for coffee, chocolates, tinned biscuits, Turkish delight, preserves and the like. You can buy online, but visit in person if you can — they put on a wonderful yuletide display.
🧦 Pink gooseberry & elderflower; damson & black pepper; and mandarin and sherry are among the zesty preserves available from London Borough of Jam, a small-batch company based in Clapton.
🧦 Soapsmith takes the concept of London neighbourhood-inspired aromas, and runs with it. The Walthamstow-based setup crafts soaps and bath soaks with names including Brick Lane, Lavender Hill, Marble Arch and Hackney Marshes.
🧦 For something dainty (and relatively cheap), have a look at Open City's gift shop, where there are smart municipal-themed socks and soap bars, as well as construct-it-yourself cardboard models of the Trellick Tower, Tolworth Tower and Dawson's Heights. Swoon.
🧦 Blue Crow Media have a knack of producing maps you instantly need to buy; in their collection are Londony maps on Black history, art deco, brutalism, alleyways, Christopher Wren and loads more.
🧦 OK, you might struggle to fit one of Simon Turner's coal hole bowls into a stocking — but one of these handmade beauts will surely make a unique Londony present for the tricky-to-buy-for giftee.
🧦 Something a little different courtesy of the Science Museum: a chance to adopt an object (teddy bear, Enigma machine, Victorian toilet) on behalf of a culture-loving friend/family member. They'll receive a digital certificate, and we'd also recommend pairing this gift with VIP tickets to one of the museum's Lates.
Londonist merch (aka the shameless plug section)
From t shirts to prints to mugs to tea towels, the Londonist shop is brimming with Londonist merch that you won't find anywhere else. Plenty here for smashing secret Santas, stocking fillers and main pressies, even if we do say so ourselves.
Still got some bits and pieces to tick off your shopping list? Read London's Best Christmas Markets And Festive Fairs.
