Easter in London

Published 21 September 2026 · By the Guide to London editorial team · Editor: Terje Moy

The Easter weekend of 2027 occupies Friday 26 March through to Monday 29 March. The Friday and the Monday are both bank holidays. Easter Day in between is not, yet it is one of the two dates on which English law keeps the large shops closed, and in 2027 the clocks move forward that same night. Nothing in London closes for the whole weekend, but the four days behave very differently from one another.

Easter moves. It is fixed to the moon rather than the calendar, so it can fall any time between 22 March and 25 April. That matters for a trip, because an Easter at the end of March is a cold, bare, early-spring weekend and an Easter in the third week of April is a warm one with the blossom out. 2027 is at the very early end: 28 March is one of the earliest Easter Sundays most visitors will ever see.

Which shops, banks and services shut on each of the four days is set out on our page about the holidays that close London down. This page is about what the weekend is actually like: where to go, what is on, what the weather will do, and the two things that trip visitors up.

The clocks go forward on Easter Sunday itself

British Summer Time begins at 1am on the last Sunday in March, which in 2027 is 28 March. Easter Sunday and the clock change land on the same night, and that combination causes more missed trains and late arrivals than anything else on this page.

Your phone will move itself. A hotel alarm clock, a watch, a hire car dashboard and a printed ticket will not. If you have a flight, an early train, a booked tour or a church service on the morning of Sunday 28 March, work backwards from the new time and add a margin, because you will also be travelling on a Sunday timetable with an hour less sleep.

There is a compensation. From that Sunday evening onwards the sun sets around an hour later, and London suddenly has usable light until well after seven. If your trip straddles the weekend, keep the outdoor half of it for the Sunday and Monday.

A March Easter is a cold Easter

Because Easter 2027 falls in March rather than April, plan for March weather. Heathrow's long-term averages, published by the Met Office, put a typical March day at 11.7°C by afternoon and 4.1°C overnight, with air frost still likely on around three nights of the month. April is roughly three degrees warmer by day.

In practice that means a coat rather than a jacket, a waterproof rather than an umbrella, and no realistic expectation of sitting outside a pub. It also means the gardens are only just beginning. The magnolias and the first cherry blossom usually open in the second half of March, so an Easter this early may catch the very start of it rather than the show; our guide to cherry blossom in London explains where to look and when each variety turns. For the fuller month picture, see London in March.

The cathedrals belong to worshippers this weekend

This is the practical detail nobody puts in a guidebook, and it can save you a wasted morning or hand you the best free experience of the trip.

At St Paul's a sightseeing ticket costs £27 for an adult and is sold for Monday through Saturday; no such ticket exists for a Sunday. Holy Week bends the schedule further, because worship takes precedence all week. If Easter Day is the only morning you have free, there is no way to pay to go in and look at the dome.

What you can do is go to a service. The cathedral holds around thirty services a week, most of them free, most of them needing no booking, and you are welcome whatever you believe. Seating under the dome is unreserved; a steward will hand you an order of service; photography during a service is not allowed. Easter Sunday morning is the biggest of the year, so arrive early and expect a full building. Westminster Abbey follows the same principle, shutting its ticketed route on Sundays and on the principal days of Holy Week so that its own liturgy can run.

Smaller churches are the underrated version of this. Parish churches across central London mark Holy Week with music of a standard that would be ticketed anywhere else, and none of them fills the way the two big buildings do. Check the individual church's own website in the weeks beforehand, because the Holy Week schedule is published late and differs from the ordinary Sunday pattern.

Good Friday: fish, buns and a very quiet city

Good Friday is a bank holiday but not a shopping restriction, so the shops open on normal hours and the streets are busy in the middle of the day and dead in the morning. The two traditions you will actually notice are food ones.

Fish is the first. Good Friday is historically a day of abstinence from meat, and although few people in Britain observe that now, the fish and chip shops still have one of their busiest days of the year. Queues form at lunchtime at the long-established ones. Our guide to fish and chips in London covers where to go, and for something beyond the fryer, our page on seafood and oysters has the older fish restaurants and the oyster bars, which take bookings and are a far more comfortable Good Friday lunch than a pavement queue.

The second is the hot cross bun: a spiced, fruited, glazed bun marked with a cross, eaten toasted with butter, and sold everywhere from supermarkets to the best bakeries from about February onwards. A good one from an independent bakery bears no relation to the supermarket version; see our guide to London bakeries and pastries.

Easter Monday, and the parade that is not in London

Easter Monday is a bank holiday that behaves like a busy Sunday: museums, galleries, shops and transport all running, and family attractions at their fullest.

The one long-standing Easter Monday event with London in its name is the London Harness Horse Parade, and the thing to know is that it has not been held in London for years. It takes place at the South of England Centre at Ardingly in West Sussex, and the 2027 parade is confirmed for Monday 29 March. Gates open at 8am, carriages enter the parade route at 9.30am and judging starts at 10.15am, with a final parade of all the exhibits in the early afternoon. Entry is £10 for an adult, children go free and parking is free. It is a working display of harness horses, ponies and donkeys, with vintage vehicles alongside them, rather than a tourist attraction. The organisers give the nearest railway stations as Haywards Heath and Three Bridges, both of which need a taxi at the far end; the showground is a few miles from junction 10 of the M23 and parking there is free.

In London itself, Easter Monday is the day the royal parks and the big family attractions are busiest. Hampton Court, Kew and the zoo all run egg hunts and family trails over the weekend, priced separately and announced a few weeks ahead, so check each site's own calendar rather than assuming. Hampton Court Palace and Kew Gardens are both a train ride from Waterloo and both have enough space to absorb a bank holiday crowd; our guide to London with children has quieter alternatives.

Easter Sunday: the shops are the problem, nothing else is

Along with 25 December, Easter Day is one of a pair of dates on which the law keeps big English retailers shut. The threshold is a selling floor of more than 280 square metres, so every department store and every full-size supermarket is caught by it, and the usual six-hour Sunday window is withdrawn for the day.

Everything else works. Small shops, corner shops, cafes, restaurants, pubs, markets, museums, galleries and attractions are all free to open and nearly all of them do. Transport runs a Sunday service. If you were not planning to buy a coat, Easter Sunday in London is an ordinary good Sunday, and a notably quiet one in the centre because the shopping crowds are absent. Our page on bank holidays and opening hours explains the exemptions in full.

Transport: the biggest engineering weekend of the year

Network Rail concentrates major work into the Easter weekend precisely because the railway is quiet, and it does so every year. Whole routes close for four days, stations shut, and replacement buses appear on lines that normally run every ten minutes.

Three consequences for a visitor:

• Check any journey out of London before you buy the ticket. Brighton, Bath, Canterbury and the two university cities are all vulnerable, and a closure may add an hour each way. Our guide to buying UK train tickets explains advance fares and what happens when a route is altered after you book.
• Check the airport link too. Easter is when Britain as a whole travels, and airport rail lines are a standard target for holiday engineering work.
• Inside London, expect Tube branch closures. They are announced a few weeks ahead and shown on the TfL Journey Planner.

The one holiday that is worse for this is Christmas, where the railway stops altogether; our guide to Boxing Day in London explains that version of the problem.

What is not on: the Boat Race is a fortnight later

The Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race is often described as an Easter fixture, and in some years the two do land close together. 2027 is not one of them. The race is on Sunday 11 April 2027, two weeks after Easter Monday, with the Women's crews starting at 3.40pm and the Men's at 4.40pm. The start time is set by the tide, not the holiday calendar.

If you are in London for Easter and want the river anyway, the course itself is a good walk on a bank holiday: flat, green, lined with boathouses, and free. Our guide to the Boat Race describes where to stand on the day, and Chiswick and Kew covers the riverside at the Mortlake end, which is pleasant on any spring weekend.

The other big spring event is later still: the London Marathon runs on 24 and 25 April in 2027, over two days for the first time. Both fall well outside the Easter holidays, and our guide to watching the marathon has the details. For the rest of the month either side, see London in April.

Prices, crowds and the school holidays

Easter is the first real pressure point of the London year after New Year. Hotel rates rise across the four days, the museums that charge nothing are as busy as they get, and anything sold by timed slot runs out sooner than you would expect.

The school holidays are the reason. English schools close for about a fortnight around Easter. In 2027 the break runs from roughly 26 March to 9 April, with the exact dates set locally by each borough and each individual school. Families travel from all over the country during it, which fills the free science and natural history museums in South Kensington and the zoo far beyond their term-time levels. Our guide to London in the school holidays sets out the whole year's pattern.

Two ways to work round it. Book timed entry for the popular attractions the moment it opens, and use the mornings: most family attractions are calm for the first ninety minutes and chaotic from about eleven. Theatre is the other good bank holiday option, and it thins out over the weekend itself, so check the performance calendar; our comparison of West End and fringe theatre explains what each is worth.

Frequently asked questions

What are the Easter dates in London for 2027?

The holy days fall on 26, 28 and 29 March 2027: Good Friday, Easter Day and Easter Monday in that order. The first and the last of those three are bank holidays in England. Easter falls much later in 2028, on 16 April, and on 1 April in 2029.

Are shops open in London at Easter?

On Good Friday, Easter Saturday and Easter Monday, yes, on normal or bank holiday hours. On Easter Sunday large shops, meaning those over 280 square metres, must close all day by law. Small shops, cafes, restaurants, markets and attractions are unaffected and stay open.

Do the clocks change at Easter 2027?

Yes. British Summer Time begins at 1am on Sunday 28 March 2027, which is Easter Sunday itself. You lose an hour overnight and gain an hour of evening daylight from that day. Phones update automatically; hotel clocks and watches do not.

Is St Paul's open for sightseeing on Easter Day?

Not as a paying sightseer. St Paul's sells sightseeing tickets from Monday to Saturday only, so Sundays are for worship. You can attend a service free of charge without booking, including on Easter Sunday, though the building is at its fullest that morning.

Is Easter a good time to visit London?

It is a good time if you want the city working normally with longer evenings, and a poor one if you want low prices or empty museums. The weekend is busy, hotels cost more, and rail engineering work makes trips out of London harder. An Easter this early also means March weather rather than spring.

Sources

• GOV.UK - UK bank holidays, England and Wales (checked September 2026)
• GOV.UK - When do the clocks change? (checked September 2026)
• legislation.gov.uk - Sunday Trading Act 1994, Schedule 1 (checked September 2026)
• St Paul's Cathedral - Planning your visit and opening times (checked September 2026)
• St Paul's Cathedral - Attending a service (checked September 2026)
• London Harness Horse Parade - Visitor information and 2027 date (checked September 2026)
• The Boat Race - 2027 date and start times (checked September 2026)
• Met Office - Heathrow climate averages 1991-2020 (checked September 2026)