Street Art Tours in Shoreditch

Published 20 September 2026 · By the Guide to London editorial team · Editor: Terje Moy

A guided street art tour of Shoreditch costs from about £14 for two hours, and a tour that ends with a stencil workshop costs £30 to £40 (September 2026). You can also do it for nothing: the walls are on public streets, and a loop of Brick Lane, Hanbury Street, Redchurch Street and Holywell Lane takes about ninety minutes. The paid version buys you names, dates and the stories behind the pieces, not access.

Our guide to Shoreditch covers where the art is concentrated, and the best walking tours in London sets tours of this kind against the rest. This page is about the decision: what a tour actually includes, what it costs, and how to find the good pieces yourself if you would rather not pay.

Why the walls change, and what that means for you

The first thing to understand is that there is no permanent collection. Some walls are commissioned and repainted on a schedule, some are painted over by other artists within days, and some pieces survive for a decade by accident. One long-running operator describes its own routes as changing "as often as the art itself", which is an honest description of the problem.

The practical consequence: any list of specific works you read online, including lists published this year, will be partly wrong by the time you arrive. Plan around streets rather than around individual pieces, and treat anything still standing as a bonus.

The artists most often associated with this part of London include Roa, Shepard Fairey, Invader, Vhils, Conor Harrington and Stik. Several of them have painted large commissioned walls here over the years. Whether a particular one is still visible on the day you visit is genuinely unpredictable.

What a paid tour actually gives you

Nothing about the streets is ticketed, so a tour is not buying entry. What it buys is threefold.

Attribution. A good guide will tell you who painted what, roughly when, and whether it was commissioned or not. Without that, a wall of murals is a wall of murals.

Navigation. The best pieces are often in yards, on side walls and above head height. Left alone, most visitors walk the length of Brick Lane, see the obvious things, and miss two-thirds of it.

Currency. Guides who work the area weekly know what went up last Tuesday. That is the single hardest thing to replicate from a phone.

What it costs, with one operator's prices as an example

We checked the published prices of Alternative London, which has run tours in the area for fifteen years, as an indication of the going rate. It is one of several operators and we are not recommending it over any other; use the figures to judge what you are being quoted elsewhere.

Prices checked September 2026; always confirm on the operator's own site. Tip-based "free" walking tours also cover this ground. They are not free in any useful sense: the guide is paid entirely by what the group hands over at the end, and £10 to £15 a head is the usual expectation. If that is what you would pay anyway, a fixed-price small-group tour is often the better deal.

The workshops, which are the genuinely different option

The part of this trade that has no free equivalent is the workshop. You walk the streets for an hour or so, then go into a studio and make a stencil yourself: cut the layers, register them, spray them, take the result home.

It is the best version of this activity for teenagers, for anyone who has already walked the area once, and for a rainy afternoon, since half of it is indoors. Expect two and a half to four hours and £30 to £40. Book ahead: studio capacity is the limiting factor, and weekend slots go first.

Doing it yourself, street by street

Here is a route that needs no guide and no money. Start at Shoreditch High Street station and allow ninety minutes at an ambling pace.

1. Braithwaite Street and Bethnal Green Road, immediately outside the station, for the large commissioned walls that turn over most often.
2. Holywell Lane and Great Eastern Street, five minutes west, where several of the biggest repainted surfaces in the area face each other.
3. Rivington Street and the yards off it, which reward looking sideways rather than straight ahead.
4. Redchurch Street, heading east, where shop shutters are as interesting as the walls above them. Go on a Sunday morning, when the shutters are still down.
5. Brick Lane, north and south of the Old Truman Brewery, and the lanes running off it.
6. Hanbury Street, Fashion Street and Princelet Street, which carry some of the largest single works in the district.
7. Sclater Street and Bacon Street, to finish, before walking back up to the station.

What is legal, and what is not

Most of the large murals you will photograph were painted with the building owner's agreement, often as a paid commission. That is what makes them possible on that scale: a wall that size takes days and a cherry picker.

Painting or spraying on property without the owner's permission is criminal damage under section 1 of the Criminal Damage Act 1971, whatever the artistic intent. The workshops exist partly because they give people a legal surface to spray on. Do not buy a can and improvise.

Photographing the walls is fine. Note that the walls stand on residential and business streets: people live above the murals, and staff are trying to open shops beneath them.

How to photograph walls in a narrow street

Almost every disappointing street art photograph has the same two causes: you were too close, and the sun was behind the wall.

Most of the big pieces in Shoreditch are on side walls two or three storeys high, on streets six metres wide. You physically cannot stand far enough back to fit them in, so either accept a steep angle and use it deliberately, or shoot a detail rather than the whole thing. The shutters, which are at eye level, are the exception and the easiest wins.

For light, the east-facing walls work in the morning and the west-facing ones in the late afternoon. Overcast days are genuinely better than bright ones here, because direct sun on half a wall wrecks the colour on the other half. That makes this one of the few London activities improved by grey weather.

Is a tour worth it? An honest split

If money is the deciding factor, our guide to London on a budget has more of this sort of trade-off.

Getting there, and staying sensible at night

Shoreditch High Street on the Overground puts you in the middle of the area; our guide to the DLR and the Overground explains the line. Liverpool Street and Old Street are each about ten minutes' walk. A bike tour uses the same streets faster, and our page on cycling in London covers hiring one yourself.

The area is busy and well lit at night but it is also a drinking district, and pickpocketing rises with crowd density. Our page on whether London is safe has the specifics. Street art is a daylight activity regardless: colours read badly under sodium light and the best pieces are in the least lit corners.

What else to fold into the same day

The obvious pairing is food. Brick Lane's curry houses and the bagel shops at its northern end are two minutes from the biggest murals; see Brick Lane and London's curry scene and our guide to food tours in London if you would rather someone else chose. Vintage and second-hand shopping is concentrated on the same streets.

For the history under the murals, Whitechapel and the East End is the place to start, the Whitechapel Gallery has shown the area's art for over a century, and Jack the Ripper walking tours cover the same streets in a very different register, as do London's ghost tours.

If you want more of the same and less of the crowd, walk north into Hackney and London Fields or up to Dalston. South of the river, Peckham has its own painted walls and far fewer tour groups.

Frequently asked questions

How much does a Shoreditch street art tour cost?

Guided walking tours start at about £14 for two hours, tours combined with a stencil workshop run from about £30 for two and a half hours to £40 for a four-hour weekend version, and bike tours from about £25 (September 2026). Tip-based walks are also offered; £10 to £15 a head is the usual expectation.

Can you see Shoreditch street art without a tour?

Yes. Everything is on public streets and free to look at. A loop taking in Braithwaite Street, Holywell Lane, Rivington Street, Redchurch Street, Brick Lane and Hanbury Street covers the main concentrations in about ninety minutes.

When is the best time to go?

Sunday morning before eleven. Shop shutters are still down so the shutter paintings are visible, the market crowds have not arrived, and the light reaches into the narrower streets. Avoid weekday evenings, when the area fills with drinkers.

Is there any Banksy left in Shoreditch?

Assume not. Works in the area have been painted over, removed or covered by protective panels at various times, and nothing about the street art here is permanent. Any list naming specific surviving pieces goes out of date quickly, which is the main argument for a guide who was there last week.

Are street art tours suitable for children?

A two-hour walk suits older children who will walk that far. The stencil workshops work better for most families, because they are shorter on their feet, partly indoors, and everyone takes something home. Check each operator's minimum age when booking.

Sources

• Alternative London - tours and workshops, prices (checked September 2026)
• Criminal Damage Act 1971, section 1 (checked September 2026)
• Transport for London - London Overground (checked September 2026)