This year is bursting with openings, relaunches and new places to visit. Here’s our pick of the best so that you can pack your year ahead with adventure
1. Visit London Museums
Situated in London’s QE Olympic Park, V&A East is part-museum, part-pathway to arts jobs for young people, and part-behind-the-scenes peek at the huge V&A collection; you’ll find vintage football kits, Glastonbury ephemera and samurai swords, as well as a huge David Bowie collection. The venue opens with new exhibition ‘The Music Is Black: A British Story’ vam.ac.uk. Other major exhibitions in the capital in 2025 include a deep dig into the magic of soil at Somerset House and The Robot Zoo at the Horniman Museum.
2. Make Tracks
Did you know that it’s been 200 years since the modern railway was born this year? Railway 200 marks this milestone with nationwide celebrations: County Durham’s Locomotion (locomotion.org.uk) museum opens its New Hall with 47 newly accessible locomotives and there are chances to jump aboard steam trains across the UK, including Severn Valley Railway’s Boogie Express; a sound and light, karaoke and silliness party on a train!
3. Planet Ahead
Telescopes at the ready: the North York Moors and Yorkshire Dales Dark Skies Festival is celebrating its 10th anniversary this spring with a typically inventive and experimental programme of glowing neon painting sessions, supernatural walks through Whitby and a disco at Boggle Hole with electronic experimentalists Long Dead Stars. From 14th February. There’s more stargazy fun to be had at Welsh Dark Skies Week (discoveryinthedark.wales) and the South Downs Dark Skies Festival (darkskiesnationalparks.org.uk).
