146 Best Performing Arts Venues in England

These free festivities have taken place on and around the weekend closest to April 23, the Bard’s birthday, since 1824. Over several days, the streets are filled with performers, impromptu concerts, and pageantry, and special events are held at various venues. The celebrations culminate with a spectacular procession.

This popular playhouse is devoted to finding, commissioning, and fostering new work and talent, and therefore is a prolific presenter of plays and performances by young, emerging, and newly established playwrights. With three performance spaces, it also puts on its fair share of comedy, cabaret, drag, and dance shows, and so, unsurprisingly, the bar is always full.

After closing during the pandemic, this impressive little theater has reopened with an additional space near Elephant & Castle in addition to its original space in what was once a car showroom. It produces award-winning original musicals and gritty drama for a fraction of the cost of the West End. The bar-café is good, too, which is fortunate—the surrounding area is something of a culinary no-man's-land.

A church built in the 18th century, St. George's now serves as one of the country's leading venues for classical, jazz, and world music, with near-perfect acoustics. Stop by for lunchtime concerts.

Chamber music, organ recitals, and orchestral concerts are held at this baroque church behind Westminster Abbey. There are three or four lunchtime recitals a month, and a café in the crypt.

Scarborough is firmly on Britain's theater map, largely thanks to the presence of noted playwright and local resident Alan Ayckbourn, who was for many years the artistic director of this theater and premiered most of his acclaimed plays here. His legacy lives on in the theater's commitment to new writing and its strong summer repertory season. There are two stages, plus a cinema, restaurant, and bar.

In one of Cumbria's most vibrant cultural settings, the company at the Theatre by the Lake presents classic and contemporary productions year-round. The Keswick Music Society season runs from September through January, and the Words by the Water literary festival takes place here in June. The theater also has its own restaurant, ideally situated for an early dinner before the show.

Norwich's biggest and best-known theater, the Theatre Royal hosts touring companies staging musicals, ballet, opera, and plays.

Windsor's Theatre Royal, where productions have been staged since 1910, is one of Britain's leading provincial theaters. It puts on plays and musicals year-round, including a pantomime for five weeks around Christmas.

Plymouth's Theatre Royal presents ballet, musicals, and plays by some of Britain's best companies.

The region's most established performing arts center, the Theatre Royal stages high-quality productions and is also a venue for touring musicals and dance.

A gemlike Regency playhouse from 1805, the Theatre Royal has a year-round program that often includes pre- or post-London tours. You must reserve the best seats well in advance, but you can line up for same-day standby seats or standing room.  Take care with your seat location—sight lines can be poor.

With a gem of an auditorium, the theater has been a favorite venue for shows on their way to, or fresh from, London's West End for more than 200 years. It's close to the Royal Pavilion.

This modern theater by the river has two auditoriums and covers all the lively arts: classical and popular music, dance, and drama.

The splendidly neoclassical venue holds a wide range of events, including organ recitals, opera, and contemporary music concerts. Monthly tours teach about the history of this magnificent building, where both Mendelssohn and Charles Dickens debuted new works.

Running from April to throughout the summer, Underbelly offers a packed calendar of stand-up comedy, cabaret, and circus from its pop-up location in Cavendish Square, just north of Oxford Street. The range of shows caters to all ages, from family-friendly daytime events to risqué after-hours parties. Shows take place in a self-contained, inflatable, cow-shaped venue (hence the name of the festival). Tickets can be purchased in advance or on the day. There's also a sister festival in Earl's Court.

Dedicated to innovative work for young audiences, this modern theater hosts plays, musicals, and interactive theater for everyone from toddlers to preteens. Inclusivity is a major focus, with performances for those with visual and hearing and other impairments taking place regularly.

This eight-week extravaganza of fringe theater and stand-up comedy is a chance to see some of the United Kingdom's most innovative and engaging performers. The atmosphere in the eerie tunnels beneath Waterloo Station (where the festival takes place) is always buzzing.

Held every February in York, this weeklong commemoration of the conquest of England by the Great Viking Army in 866 (only the British would hold a festival celebrating a losing battle) has more than 60 events, including a longship regatta. In addition, a Viking Games competition culminates in a battle reenactment featuring hundreds of combatants, and the invading Norsemen confront the Anglo-Saxon defenders using real (!) weapons. There are workshops for kids ranging from Viking-era crafts to fighting skills like archery and swordplay, as well as historical lectures, a banquet, and a Best Beard competition. It ends with a Norse mythology-themed son-et-lumière display.

A contemporary arts center by the harbor, the Watershed also has a movie theater that screens excellent international films.

Music, traditional dance, and storytelling are among the offerings during Whitby Folk Week, usually held the week before the late-August bank holiday. Pubs, halls, and sidewalks become venues for more than 600 performances by British artists.

This twice-yearly alternative music event, held in late April and late October, sees Whitby flooded with thousands of visitors from around the world to celebrate the Goth and steampunk subcultures and watch bands perform at various venues across town. Aficionados of Goth style head to the Bizarre Bazaar, a market with over 100 stalls.

Concerts, poetry readings, and children's events highlight the Windsor Festival, held over the last two weeks in September, with events occasionally taking place in the castle. The festival also runs a smaller program in March, with a focus on classical music events.

Based in a lovely 18th-century building, the York Theatre Royal hosts theater, dance, music, and comedy performances, as well as readings, lectures, and children's entertainment.

Just down the road from its elder sibling The Old Vic, this offshoot hosts big names performing alongside emerging talent, often in daring innovative productions of both new and classic plays that appeal to a more diverse audience than is traditionally found on the London scene, with notable productions regularly transferring to the West End. Good food is served all day at the bustling bar.

This horseshoe-shape theater on an island in the River Wey frequently previews West End productions. The smaller Mill Studio showcases more intimate productions.