Multiple venues
Thursday, 1 October 2026 – Sunday, 4 October 2026
Free Admission
— £40
The flagship event of Chelsea Heritage Quarter, the Festival brings history to life in one of the capital’s most storied neighbourhoods. This year’s theme, World History, will be explored through around 100 talks, performances, concerts, walking tours, workshops and family activities examining the people, events and ideas that have shaped societies across the globe.
With support from the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and headline sponsor Cadogan, the programme will unfold across Chelsea Physic Garden, the National Army Museum and Royal Hospital Chelsea, as well as Chelsea Old Church, Chelsea Theatre, Royal Court Theatre and Garrison Chapel.
New for 2026, acclaimed broadcaster and journalist John Simpson joins the Festival as Guest Curator. In John Simpson Unspun, at the National Army Museum on Friday 2 October at 4pm,
he will sit down with Chelsea Citizen Editor Rob McGibbon to reflect on more than six decades spent reporting the first draft of world history. Moving beyond the wars, political upheavals and encounters with world leaders, the conversation will reveal the man behind the camera and the headlines.
Chelsea Physic Garden will also open free of charge on Saturday 3 and Sunday 4 October, giving visitors the opportunity to explore London’s oldest botanic garden and its remarkable collection
of medicinal, edible and useful plants.
Newly announced events and speakers from the programme include:
• The History of Chelsea in Four Objects, bringing together collection items from across Chelsea Heritage Quarter to tell the story of the neighbourhood and its wider influence.
• At Chelsea Physic Garden, Dr Menaka PP Bora leads Mudra and Music, an interactive wellbeing workshop combining Indian dance, music, plant symbolism and ancient healing.
• Political historian Dr Nigel Fletcher presents new archival research into the relationship between Winston Churchill and Queen Elizabeth II in Churchill’s Queen: The Remarkable Friendship that Shaped Our Age.
• Multi-award-winning storyteller Anna Conomos-Wedlock brings the life of Grand Duchess Elizabeth Romanova, granddaughter of Queen Victoria, into vivid focus through dramatic storytelling, song and atmospheric soundscapes in Fashion & Fables.
• Professor Rosamund Oates places deaf people at the centre of the story of early modern England in Silent Histories.
• Travel writer Daniel Stables takes audiences around the world in Fiesta: A Journey Through Festivity, examining what celebrations from Venice Carnival to the whirling dervishes of Konya reveal about culture, community and our shared humanity.
• Tina Hodgkinson uncovers the capital through the eyes of Agatha Christie, exploring the theatres, hotels, suburban streets and hidden corners that influenced the life and fiction of
the Queen of Crime.
A varied programme of tours will reveal Chelsea from new perspectives. Chelsea Physic Garden’s Hidden Treasures Tour explores tucked-away corners and rarely seen elements of its living and historic collections, while expert guide Rav Singh leads two tours examining Chelsea’s connections to the Kingdom of Lahore, the Anglo-Sikh Wars and Sikh service in the British Indian Army.
Visitors can also go behind the scenes at the Royal Court Theatre, enter the State Apartments and Wellington Hall Museum at the Royal Hospital Chelsea, and join guided walks exploring Chelsea’s spies, artists, writers, Tudor and Victorian residents, and rock-and-roll past.
Celebrating local creativity, Chelsea Heritage Quarter invited people living, working or studying in the area to respond to the World History theme through an Open Call. Selected by Chelsea Heritage Quarter Director Gill Webber, Mayor Cllr Tom Bennett and artist and photographer Alison Jackson, the projects span music, film and hands-on making: Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas at Chelsea Old Church, close to the site of its first known performance in the 1680s; Morley College Chelsea’s Artists Made in Chelsea, tracing the neighbourhood’s global creative influence through film, an illustrated talk and workshop; and Out of Silence, exploring the First World War through British art song and poetry.
Tickets on sale at www.chelseaheritagequarter.co.uk. View the full programme here.