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Hey Neighbour,
There’s so many things to do in North London this weekend. Here’s the full list.
— Maryam
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Your guide to what’s happening in North London this week. Events marked with (£) require a ticket in advance.
Hadley Wood Dog Show | 📍HWA Centre, Hadley Wood, EN4 | 6 September | (£)
This is less Crufts, more neighbourhood dog chaos in the best way. Dogs of all breeds can enter nine lighthearted classes, including Perfect Puppy, Golden Oldie, Waggiest Tail, Best Rescue, Best Behaved Dog and Dog Most Like Its Owner, with prizes and rosettes for the winners. There are also dog trick demonstrations, children’s forest school activities, face painting, a cake sale, ice cream van and a bar. Registration opens at 2pm, judging starts at 2.30pm and classes cost £3 each.
St John’s Got Soul | 📍St John the Evangelist Church, Finsbury Park, N4 | 5 September | (£)
Inside St John the Evangelist in Finsbury Park, three emerging artists are playing an afternoon concert to help fund the church’s food projects. Guÿa, Molly Chadwick and REYA will each bring their own take on soul and more experimental sounds, with the audience seated inside the church and welcome to bring their own drinks. The £15 ticket goes towards St John’s Soup Kitchen, food bank and its new Soup Garden, which is being developed to support the same work.
Extra/Ordinary Women | 📍Charles Dickens Museum, WC1N | Until 6 September | (£)
This is the final week to see the Charles Dickens Museum’s exhibition about the women who shaped his life, work and public image. Inside Dickens’s former home, you can see everything from Catherine Dickens’s cookbook and Angela Burdett Coutts’s handwritten work to belongings linked to Ellen Ternan, alongside a portrait of Dickens’s daughters Katey and Mamie being shown publicly for the first time.
Denmark Street Sessions | 📍Denmark Street, WC2H | 5 September | Free
For one day, Denmark Street turns its music shops, studios, bars and tiny venues into one long free festival. The street has been tied to London’s music scene for decades, and this is a chance to actually step inside the places that still make it tick, with more than 20 live performances, listening sessions, talks and pop ups happening from afternoon into the night.
London Podcast Festival | 📍Kings Place, King’s Cross, N1 | 3 to 13 September | (£)
Podcasts usually happen somewhere behind a microphone and reach you days later. For 11 days, Kings Place lets you sit in the room while some of them are actually being recorded, complete with the bits, audience questions and unexpected moments that may end up in the finished episode. This year you can see No Such Thing As A Fish, Jameela Jamil’s Wrong Turns, the wonderfully odd Beef and Dairy Network, plus shows about gardening, film, history, writing and more. Each podcast has its own date and ticket, so have a look through the programme and pick the one you already love or something you have never listened to before.
🌿Nature
Highgate Horticultural Society Autumn Show | 📍Holly Lodge Community Centre, N6 | 5 September | Free
Highgate has had its own horticultural society since 1859, and this is one of those very local traditions that has stuck around. The Autumn Show brings together plants, homegrown produce and seasonal exhibits, with homemade teas, a raffle and, at the end, an auction where some of the exhibits are sold off. You do not need to be a gardener to pop in and have a look around. 2pm to 4.30pm.
New Barnet Autumn Show | 📍St John’s Church Hall, EN5 | 5 September | (£)
New Barnet Amateur Gardeners & Floral Art Society is holding its autumn show, with horticultural exhibits, floral art displays, plants and bulbs for sale, and gardening advice from members. There will also be tea and cake if you want to stay for a while. The society has been running in the area since 1897. 2pm to 4pm. Entry £2.
Islington Grow Show 2026 | 📍Caledonian Park, N7 | 6 September | Free
This is a Sunday gathering for people who grow things, and people who simply like seeing what their neighbours have managed to grow. Gardeners from across Islington will bring in their tomatoes, herbs, vegetables and other harvests to show and share, while everyone else can wander the stalls, take home free compost, pot up a plant, join a mushroom or microgreens workshop and pick up ideas for growing food in even the smallest space. There is a Filipino buffet style community lunch from 12.30pm too, followed by the Grow Show winners at 1.30pm. 11am to 4pm. No booking needed.
Highgate Wood Heritage Community Day | 📍Highgate Wood, N10 | 6 September | Free
Annual community day in Highgate Wood from 11am to 4pm, with live music, craft and conservation stalls, a dog show and visits from local beekeepers. There will be plenty happening around the Information Hut near the café, with a chance to meet some of the people involved in looking after the wood too. No need to book, just turn up for a free Sunday in the woods.
Birds of the Heath in the Autumn | 📍Hampstead Heath, NW3 | 6 September | Free
You do not need to know your warblers from your woodpeckers for this one. Bird expert Pete Mantle is leading a two hour early morning walk across Hampstead Heath, helping you spot and identify whatever is moving through the trees, ponds and open spaces as autumn begins. The Heath can throw up some real surprises too. A Dartford Warbler was spotted there this year for the first time since WWII, while Alpine Swifts and Bitterns have appeared in the past. Nothing rare is guaranteed, which is part of the fun. Meet at Burgh House at 9am. Bring binoculars and sturdy shoes. No advance booking needed.
Palmers Green Festival | 📍Broomfield Park, N13 | 6 September | Free
Palmers Green Festival has been part of the local calendar since 2008 and this year returns to Broomfield Park for a full afternoon. Live music at the bandstand, a vintage village, artisan food and crafts, the Starfish Art Exhibition, a dance zone, model boats on the boating lake, donkey rides and Biddall's Fun Fair, which has been visiting the park for over 100 years. Fun dog show in the Broomfield Bowl. Run entirely by local volunteers and organisations. 12pm to 5pm.
Angel Canal Festival | 📍City Road Basin, N1 | 6 September | Free
Forty years ago a back garden party was held to save City Road Basin from development. The festival that grew from it is still going, now one of Islington's most loved free community days. Live music, puppetry, art workshops, water sports, street food and traditional canal boats along the towpath. 11am to 4pm.
St John’s Got Soul | 📍St John the Evangelist Church, Finsbury Park, N4 | 5 September | (£)
Inside St John the Evangelist in Finsbury Park, three emerging artists are playing an afternoon concert to help fund the church’s food projects. Guÿa, Molly Chadwick and REYA will each bring their own take on soul and more experimental sounds, with the audience seated inside the church and welcome to bring their own drinks. The £15 ticket goes towards St John’s Soup Kitchen, food bank and its new Soup Garden, which is being developed to support the same work.
Classic and Vintage Car Show | 📍Capel Manor Gardens, Enfield, EN1 | 6 September | (£)
More than 500 classic and vintage cars are rolling into Capel Manor Gardens for the day, with some dating all the way back to the 1920s. You can wander among the cars, chat to owners and browse the auto jumble, basically stalls selling old car parts, memorabilia and motoring bits. Your visit also includes Capel Manor’s 30 acres of gardens and mini zoo, with live entertainment, food stalls, a bar and cream tea on the lawn outside the manor house.
Source: Art Car Boot Fair
Art Car Boot Fair | 📍Lewis Cubitt Square, King’s Cross, N1C | 5 September | (£)
More than 100 artists take over Lewis Cubitt Square for the afternoon, selling prints, paintings, photographs and one off pieces directly to the people browsing. This year includes Mr Bingo, Bob and Roberta Smith, Margo in Margate and Vic Reeves, while photographer Rankin will be taking portraits on the day. There are also performances, music and plenty of odd creative things happening as you wander.
London’s Transport in Miniature | 📍The Model Railway Club, N1| 6 September | (£)
For one day, London’s transport network gets shrunk down to model size. You can watch tiny Tube trains, trams and railways running through detailed miniature stations and streets, including Copenhagen Fields, a reimagining of the area just north of King’s Cross with Caledonian Road, old Piccadilly line stations and street running trams built into the layout. There are also several fictional and semi fictional London inspired railways to explore, all made by enthusiasts who spend years getting the small details right. 11am to 4pm.
Mews Festival 2026 | 📍Avenue Mews, N10 | 5 September | Free
Avenue Mews is a small pocket of shops, creative spaces and a brewery in Muswell Hill, and this Saturday the people based there are opening up the whole lane for a neighbourhood festival. From 6pm, there will be bands playing from a stage above Cha Cha Cha Vintage, vinyl DJs inside the shops, street food, cocktails and local beer, psychedelic light projections, surreal puppets and a literary salon. You can also browse the vintage shops and pop up stalls as you move between everything. Stalls start from 2pm, with the main festival running 6pm to 10pm.
FLUX Exhibition | 📍The Bomb Factory Art Foundation, Marylebone, NW1 | 3- 6 September | Free
Seventy artists, all under one roof, and no single style tying them together. FLUX is a four day exhibition of contemporary art, meaning work being made by artists now, with rooms of paintings, sculpture, collage and mixed media to wander through at your own pace. Some artists are established, others are earlier in their careers, and there are live performances, music and talks happening around the exhibition too.
My Dinner With: Jess Cole & Friends | 📍Rose Lipman Building, N1 | 5 September | Pay what you feel
This is the kind of dinner where you arrive on your own and end up sharing a table with people you have never met. My Dinner With is a travelling not for profit supper club, and this time Aunties Street Food is doing the cooking, with food inspired by the feeling of being fed in your mum’s or auntie’s kitchen. Everyone sits down together, eats the same meal and lets the evening unfold from there. Bring your own drinks, pay what you feel and come hungry. Doors open at 6pm, with supper served at 6.30pm.
FT Weekend Festival | 📍Kenwood House Gardens, NW3 | 5 September | (£)
Think book festival, food festival and big ideas day out, all in the grounds of Kenwood House. You choose your own line up, moving between tents to hear people like Yotam Ottolenghi on food, Mary Beard on history and Richard E. Grant telling stories, then switch to a talk on AI, health, money, books or travel. In between, grab something to eat, join a tasting, browse the book stalls or sit out on the grass. You do not need to read the Financial Times or know anything about finance to enjoy it.
Queen’s Park Book Festival | 📍Queen’s Park, NW6 | 5 & 6 September | (£)
After nine years, Queen’s Park Book Festival is bowing out with one final weekend in the park. Across two days, authors, journalists, chefs and thinkers take to the stages for conversations about books, food, politics and culture, with this year’s line up including Jacqueline Wilson, Philip Pullman, Sathnam Sanghera, Sebastian Barry, Theo Randall and Honey & Co. The Community Tent stays free and gives space to local writers, young poets and emerging voices, so you can mix the bigger names with something completely new.
Source: FT Weekend
North London Curated: Home Edition | 📍Floral Hall, Crouch End, N8 | 6 September | Free
North London Curated is doing its first market devoted entirely to things for the home. Floral Hall will be filled with vintage and preloved homeware, art, interiors, accessories and pieces from independent makers, so you can browse old glassware, decorative bits, one offs and things you probably were not looking for until you saw them. It runs from 10am to 5pm and entry is free.
York Rise Street Party | 📍Dartmouth Park, NW5 | 5 September | Free
York Rise’s annual street party is back, and it is much bigger than a few tables outside the neighbours’ houses. From midday, York Rise and Dartmouth Park Road fill with live music, theatre, film screenings, stalls, food, drinks, family activities and quieter spaces if you want a break from the crowds. This year includes Massaoke, where the whole crowd sings along with a live band, Centrist Dad, and The Garden Cinema showing films including The Magic Faraway Tree, introduced by writer Simon Farnaby. 12pm to 9pm.
Re-Enchantment Book Swap | 📍K.C. Continental Stores, N1 | 5 September | Free
Bring along a book you have finished, leave it for someone else, and take home another one from the pile. Re-Enchantment, a London literary collective that brings readers and writers together, is taking over the basement at K.C. Continental Stores for a relaxed afternoon of swapping books, drinking coffee or wine and chatting about what everyone has been reading. You can come alone, stay for a while or simply drop in with a few books and see what finds its way back home with you. 12pm to 5pm.
Music Unlock | 📍Stonebridge Lock, N17 | Sundays 6-27 September | Free
Every Sunday in September, the waterside at Stonebridge Lock is becoming a little meeting place for music, making and conversation. There will be local musicians and singers, world music and dance, poetry and spoken word, plus art activities you can join rather than just watch. Come alone or bring someone, sit by the lock for a while, have a listen and get involved in whatever is happening that week. 1pm to 4pm. All ages welcome.
⏳Still On
Catch them while you can.
Marionettes: An Exhibition Celebrating String Puppets | 📍Little Angel Workshop, N1 | 22 August to 6 September | Free
Little Angel Theatre is turning 65, and instead of just looking back at old productions, it is opening up a collection of the string puppets that helped shape its history. You will see marionettes, the puppets controlled by strings from above, made by British makers across six decades, from founders John and Lyndie Wright to artists working today. The exhibition also looks at why the craft has become so rare, with fewer than five people in Britain currently making a living carving marionettes. Last weekend to visit.
St Giles’ Book Fair | 📍St Giles’ Cripplegate, EC2Y | Until 1 September | Free
If you like rummaging through second hand books, this is one of only four chances a year to catch St Giles’ Book Fair. Long tables of used books fill the church, so you can browse properly, pick up something unexpected and come back another day if one visit is not enough. No booking needed. Open daily from 11am to 6.30pm.
Regent's Park Music Festival | 📍Regent's Park, NW1 | Until 20 September | Free
Every Sunday all summer, there's a free band playing in Regent's Park. Jazz, brass, steel and concert bands, with swing dancing on five Sundays and jazz on selected Saturdays. Now in its tenth year.