The 10 best new London theatre openings in October 2026

The glut of big celebrity openings in September has left October a shade quieter than usual. It’s still one of the year’s busiest months however, and there’s still some pretty enormous plays: most notably Keira Knightley’s first stage role in over 15 years, in the latest from Britain’s hippest director.

Elsewhere we have two members of the Stranger Things cast making their UK stage debuts in two very different shows, and a month that runs the gamut from the first ever UK production of (oh yes) High School Musical, to a massive-scale Japanese language adaptation of one of Haruki Murakami’s most out-there early novels. 

The best new London theatre shows in October 2026

1. The Lives of Others

We should always be excited when Brit auteur Robert Icke returns to the stage to direct a play and what a treat it is that we get two this year. Following on from March’s boldly conceptual take on Romeo & Juliet, The Lives of Others is his first stage adaptation of an arthouse film – something the European directors he’s influenced by are massively into, but has never really caught on in the same way in British auteur circles. The Lives of Others is Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s Oscar-winning 2006 German film about a Stasi agent and the relationship he develops with the couple he spies upon. You can always trust Icke to get a superlative cast, and the big draw here is Keira Knightley in her first stage role in 15 years. She’ll co-star with Luke Thompson and Stephen Dillane.

Adelphi Theatre, Oct 14 2026-Jan 9 2027. Buy tickets here.

2. Hay Fever

Opening at the very start of October, Hay Fever is the most sparkling of all Noël Coward’s comedies about mad posh people. It’s always a joy when it comes around, and this revival of the classic 1924 play about the dysfunctional Bliss family and what happens when each of them invites a guest to dinner on the same evening without telling each other is given a considerable shot in the arm by marking the wonderful Richard E Grant’s first London stage performance in over two decades. He’ll star as David Bliss, with US star Christine Baranski as his wife Judith.

Wyndham’s Theatre, until Dec 12. Buy tickets here.

3. Rent

What with Lin-Manuel Miranda’s relentless hyping of tragically short-lived musical-theatre maestro Jonathan Larson and the simple fact that it’s been ages since London has seen a production of Larson’s masterpiece Rent, it was only a matter of time before it came back to our stages. And now here it is, in a new production by Luke Sheppard, the musical-theatre director of the moment, whose revival will be headed up by Gaten Matarazzo of Stranger Things fame, playing the lead role of documentary maker Mark in Larson’s tearjerking Aids-epidemic-set reworking of La Bohéme.

Tom Stoppard Theatre, booking to Feb 13 2027. Buy tickets here.

4. The Cherry Orchard

The Cherry Orchard is the least performed of Chekhov’s four great plays, and the last one we had was a completely bonkers take at the Donmar a couple of years back. So now it’s time for something a little more classic and you don’t get directors of naturalism better than Ian Rickson, who has directed classic productions of Uncle Vanya and The Seagull, the latter starring Kristin Scott Thomas. She reunites with Rickson to star in the Russian playwright’s poignant story of a dwindling aristocratic estate, alongside Stephen Mangan.

Harold Pinter Theatre, Oct 3-Jan 9 2027. Buy tickets here. 

5. End of the World and Hard-Boiled Wonderland

It’s only on for a few days, but this massive-scale Japanese-language stage adaptation of Haruki Murakami’s early masterpiece Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World is the sort of splashy international work the Barbican exists for, and which we see too little of in these straitened post-pandemic times. Japanese movie star Tatsuya Fujiwara heads up the cast of Murakami’s dazzlingly whimsical vision that intercuts stories of a bleak dystopia with a surreal, dreamy fantasy (the elements are presumably reordered in Ako Takahashi’s adaptation, hence the name change).

Barbican Centre, Oct 8-11.

6. Martin Guerre

French songwriting duo Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boublil are the men responsible for both Les Misérables and Miss Saigon. So it’s no surprise that superproducer Cameron Mackintosh spent a lot of time and money in the ’90s trying to make Martin Guerre – a musical about a real case of a man who was tried for assuming another man’s identity – a success. The consensus is it never quite worked, but with Cameron having finally given up the rights, Matthew Warchus’s swansong at the Old Vic is an intimate semi-staged take that should, at the very least, be unmissable for musical theatre buffs.

Old Vic, Oct 1-31. Buy tickets here.

7. Ilford Boy

Actor Danny Lee Wynter’s 2023 debut play Black Superhero was a programme highlight during a difficult time for the Royal Court Theatre and now he hopefully builds on it with this semi-autobiographical comedy drama about growing up gay and mixed race in ’90s east London. Newcomer Leo Whitfield Harris will play Ted – the young protagonist – with a fine supporting cast that includes Jodie McNee and Ria Zmitrowicz. Always-entertaining Donmar boss Tim Sheader will direct it himself.

Donmar Warehouse, Oct 10-Nov 28.

8. Some Woman

We don’t know a huge amount about this new drama from Helen Edmundson, other than that it’s about a middle-aged woman named Julie Robson, who decides one day that she’s going to have to take a stand against the world. Still, the National Theatre name and the star presence of Anne-Marie Duff has more or less sold out the entire run of Some Woman already – get ready to smash the Friday rush ticket releases to bag a seat.

National Theatre, Dorfman, Oct 7-Nov 21.

9. Affluenza

Whether erstwhile Stranger Things co-stars Gaten Matarazzo and Noah Schnapp are both coincidentally starring in London theatre shows this month or it’s a sort of working pals’ holiday, we’re certainly spoiled for seeing stars of the spooky Netflix show on stage. Where Matarazzo is tackling the musical theatre classic Rent, Schnapp is taking on something rather different. Affluenza is an intriguing new play by writer-director Andy Sandberg that’s based upon a Texan teen’s successful legal defence that his coddled super-rich upbringing left him unable to comprehend the consequences of drunk driving.

Riverside Studios, until Nov 21. Buy tickets here.

10. High School Musical

Asking if High School Musical is ‘good’ is a pointless question: the low-budget 2006 Disney TV movie that took over the world is simply a part of our culture now. The Grease-indebted jocks vs nerds high-school romance has been on our stages before – a clone of the original US production, which was knocked out quickly to capitalise on the film – but there’s never been an original Brit production… until now! Let's see if we can make this one our own as Joseph Houston and William Whelton direct a cast in which McFly’s Harry Judd is the star attraction as Coach Bolton.

Troubadour Wembley Park, Oct 14-Jan 3 2027. Buy tickets here.

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