Taste of London in Regent's Park is the big one: five days in June, entry from £24, and the food costs extra on top. The specialist festivals are cheaper and better value, and the best free food of the year is given away at Trafalgar Square.
London has four kinds of food festival, and they work so differently that comparing their ticket prices is almost meaningless. There is the big park festival, where you buy entry and then buy dishes. There is the single-subject festival, where the ticket includes the tasting. There is the city-wide programme with no site at all, just a month of special menus in restaurants. And there are the free cultural festivals where the food is part of the point.
This page gives the dates, what each one actually costs for two adults, and which ones have quietly stopped running. For the permanent markets, which are open every week and cost nothing to walk into, see our guide to London's food markets instead.
Taste of London: what the ticket buys, and what it does not
Taste of London takes over Marylebone Green in Regent's Park for five days each June. In 2026 it ran from Wednesday 17 to Sunday 21 June, across eight sessions: an evening session on the Wednesday, an afternoon and an evening session on each of the Thursday, Friday and Saturday, and a single long family session on the Sunday. Each session lasts between four and five hours.
The critical thing to understand is that the basic ticket includes no food at all. Around 36 restaurants each bring a short menu, and you pay for every dish separately using dish vouchers. Vouchers come in two denominations, Signature and Exclusive, and each restaurant brings at least three dishes, one of which is made only for the festival.
| 2026 ticket | Price from | Includes |
|---|---|---|
| Taste Pass | £24 | Entry only, one chosen session |
| Flexible Single Session | £32 | Entry to any one session, decided later |
| Tasting Ticket, 2 dishes | £39 | Entry plus two Signature dishes |
| All Sessions Pass | £42 | Entry to every session, all five days |
| Tasting Ticket, 3 dishes | £54 | Entry plus two Signature and one Exclusive |
| VIP, 2 dishes | £62 | Fast-track, lounge, champagne, two dishes |
| Group of six or more | £21.60 | Ten per cent off entry, all ticket types |
Every order carries a £2.95 transaction fee, whatever the number of tickets. Booking online before the day saved 15 per cent against the box-office price in 2026, and tickets were still sold at the gate subject to availability. No 2027 prices had been published by the time we looked, though the organiser's own answers point to a June 2027 edition without naming the days.
Two adults will spend more than the ticket price on dishes. Dishes are small, in the region of a generous starter, so a satisfying afternoon means three or four each. Budget the entry ticket and then at least as much again per person for food and drink.
Photo: Acabashi · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons · resized
Taste of London: the rules that catch people out
There is no re-entry. Once you leave the site your ticket is finished, so an All Sessions Pass is the only way to come and go across the week. There is no cloakroom except in the VIP area, and large bags are discouraged, which is worth knowing if you are arriving with luggage.
The site is entirely cashless, and every restaurant and producer takes contactless. You may not bring food or soft drinks in unless they are for a medical or access need. There are water refill points, but your bottle must arrive empty and must not be glass.
Last entry is 30 minutes before a session ends and the bars stop serving 15 minutes before that, so an evening session that closes at 9.30pm is effectively over at 9.15pm. All entrances are step-free, there is an accessible queuing lane, wheelchair and mobility scooter hire can be booked in advance through the festival's own team, and there is a Changing Places facility in the West Toilet Block. Personal assistant tickets are free alongside a paid adult ticket.
Children aged six and over need an entry ticket, and no under-18 may attend without an adult; teenagers aged 13 to 17 have a ticket type of their own. For the Underground, use Regent's Park on the Bakerloo line, or Great Portland Street, which the Circle, Metropolitan and Hammersmith & City lines all serve. Baker Street is a little further. Parking around the park is very limited.
The London Coffee Festival, where the ticket includes the tasting
This is the model that gives better value, and it is worth understanding the difference. The London Coffee Festival fills the Truman Brewery off Brick Lane, and the ticket covers entry plus the samples, tastings and demonstrations, rather than entry alone. With 275 coffee and food brands pouring, nobody leaves thirsty.
The 2027 festival runs from 13 to 16 May at the Truman Brewery, entering at F Block G1 in Ely's Yard, E1 6QR. Thursday and Friday are industry days. The public weekend is split into sessions: in 2026 the Saturday ran as a morning session from 9am to 1pm and an afternoon session from 1.45pm to 6pm, and the Sunday ran straight through from 9.30am to 3.30pm.
Children under five go free and need no ticket; those aged five to 16 need a ticket and must be with an adult. The site is cashless, wheelchair accessible by a mix of ramps and lifts, and there is a quiet room for anyone who needs to step out of the noise. One companion accompanies a disabled visitor free of charge on production of the documentation the festival lists. There are no refunds. Shoreditch High Street is five minutes away, Aldgate East and Liverpool Street about ten.
If you are here at any other time of year, our guide to finding a decent cup of coffee in London covers the roasters and cafés behind most of the stands, several of which are within walking distance of the festival site.
Meatopia: fire, Tobacco Dock and a currency made of coins
Meatopia has been held at Tobacco Dock in Wapping since 2013, and it is the most distinctive of the ticketed festivals. Up to 75 chefs appear across the weekend, between 20 and 30 on any single day, and each one cooks exactly one dish over wood or charcoal. Nothing is cooked on gas or electricity.
The 2026 festival ran from Thursday 3 to Sunday 6 September. The Thursday session, 4pm to 10pm, was for over-18s only. Friday ran from 2pm to 10pm, Saturday from noon to 10pm with first entry at 11.30am, and Sunday from noon to 6pm.
Food is bought only with MeatBucks, a minted coin that you buy in advance with your ticket or on site from roving sellers. One coin buys one dish, all of them the same starter size. The festival's own estimate is that people eat four or five dishes over a day. The chefs take neither cards nor cash, and there is no digital version of the coin. The bars work the other way round: they take cards and contactless, and the site takes no cash at all. Unused coins stay valid for a future Meatopia, so buying a few too many is not a loss.
The popular dishes run out before the session does. Chefs cook until their ingredients are gone, so arriving in the last two hours means eating whatever is left. Turn up near the start of the session you have booked, not at the end.
The entrance is the first arch on the left as you come in from Wapping Lane and Pennington Street. Shadwell and Wapping stations are both around five minutes' walk. The venue has lifts to both levels, and a carer accompanying a disabled visitor is admitted free.
London Restaurant Festival: a festival with no festival site
Every October, London Restaurant Festival runs a programme of one-off meals in restaurants across the city rather than building a site. The events are individually ticketed and include a Sunday brunch day, neighbourhood dinners, guided eating tours of specific districts, wine and small-plate evenings and cocktail or chocolate masterclasses. Tickets for the 2026 autumn edition went on presale from 10am on Thursday 3 September 2026 to cardholders of the festival's sponsoring bank, with general sale afterwards.
It is the only London food festival where the price is essentially the price of dinner, and it suits people who would rather eat one long meal than graze. If that is your preference year round, our page on food tours in London compares the guided alternatives, and traditional British food explains what to order when the menu is in dialect.
The free ones, which include the best meal of the lot
Trafalgar Square hosts several free cultural festivals a year with substantial food programmes. Vaisakhi on the Square falls on Saturday 17 April 2027, from noon to 6pm, and includes langar cooking demonstrations along with langar and tea tents serving free vegetarian food and tea to anyone who turns up. There is no ticket and no charge of any kind.
Diwali on the Square in the autumn has a market and food stalls, all vegetarian and vegan, which you pay for. Neither event is billed as a food festival, which is exactly why the queues are shorter than they should be. For the other fifty weeks, see our page on vegetarian and vegan London.
The same logic applies at London's free summer arts events. The Greenwich and Docklands festival brings independent street-food traders to Greenwich Park for its family weekend, with no admission charge to reach them.
Festivals that are no longer what the guidebooks say
Three long-running events have changed, and older articles have not caught up.
The Great British Beer Festival, held at Olympia every August by CAMRA and once described as the biggest pub in the world, is not currently running. CAMRA's own page says the festival is taking a break and points drinkers instead to the hundred or so smaller CAMRA festivals held around the country each year. For beer in London itself, our guides to brewery taprooms and the Bermondsey Beer Mile are the practical replacements.
Pub in the Park no longer has a London date. Its last London edition was at the end of May 2025; the 2026 festival ran in Marlow only, and the 2027 dates announced so far are for Marlow again, on 14 to 16 May at Higginson Park. Travel guides still list it as a London summer event.
London Cocktail Week has moved out of October. The organisers have shifted the next festival to March 2027, saying the autumn calendar had become too crowded. The format is unchanged: you buy a wristband, and it gets you signature cocktails at £9 in participating bars, with non-alcoholic and small-format drinks at £6 and champagne cocktails at £12. Our page on London's cocktail bars covers the same bars without the wristband.
The year in one table
| Festival | When | Where | What you pay for |
|---|---|---|---|
| London Cocktail Week | March 2027 (moved from October) | Bars across the city | Wristband, then £9 a cocktail |
| Vaisakhi on the Square | Saturday 17 April 2027 | Trafalgar Square | Nothing; langar food is free |
| London Coffee Festival | 13-16 May 2027 | Truman Brewery, E1 | Ticket, tastings included |
| Taste of London | Five days in June | Regent's Park, NW1 | Entry, then every dish |
| Meatopia | Early September | Tobacco Dock, E1 | Ticket, then MeatBucks |
| London Restaurant Festival | October | Individual restaurants | Each meal separately |
| Diwali on the Square | October or November | Trafalgar Square | Entry free, stalls charged |
June is the month with the most happening, which our guide to London in June sets in context alongside everything else in the diary. The full events calendar is on the what's on page.
Whether a food festival is worth it at all
Be honest about what you are buying. At Taste of London, two adults with a basic ticket and four dishes each will spend more than a good meal in a restaurant would cost, and they will eat it standing up in a park. What they get in exchange is breadth: eight or ten kitchens in one afternoon, several of which are hard to book.
If breadth is not the point, skip the festivals. Borough Market on a Thursday, or the weekend markets around Brick Lane and Spitalfields, deliver the same variety for the price of the food alone and cost nothing to enter. Our cheap eats page goes further in the same direction, and British food words explained will stop you ordering something you did not expect.
Frequently asked questions
Does a Taste of London ticket include any food?
Only if you buy a Tasting Ticket or a VIP ticket, which come with two, three or four dish vouchers. The basic Taste Pass covers entry alone, and every dish is bought separately at the restaurant stands. Dishes are small, so most people buy three or four each over a session.
When is Taste of London 2027?
No dates had appeared by our September 2026 check. Five days in June is the long-standing pattern, and the organiser's guidance to corporate bookers refers to a June 2027 edition without naming the days. Join the festival's mailing list if you want the presale, which usually opens months ahead of general sale.
Which London food festival is best with children?
Taste of London's Sunday session is the family one, running as a single relaxed afternoon, and children aged five and under go free at the London Coffee Festival. Meatopia is the least suitable: the Thursday is adults only, the site is dark and loud, and the dishes are not designed for small appetites.
Is there still a big beer festival in London?
Not at the moment. CAMRA's Great British Beer Festival, which filled Olympia every August, is on hold, and the organisers are directing drinkers to smaller regional festivals instead. In London itself, brewery taprooms in Bermondsey and Hackney now do the job the festival used to.
Can I get into a London food festival for free?
At the Mayor of London's cultural festivals in Trafalgar Square, yes. Vaisakhi in April serves free vegetarian food and tea from the langar tents, with no ticket. The commercial festivals in parks and warehouses all charge for entry, and none of them offers a walk-up free option.
Sources
- Taste of London - ticket options and prices (checked September 2026)
- Taste of London - official visitor FAQs (checked September 2026)
- The London Coffee Festival - visiting and FAQs (checked September 2026)
- Meatopia On-Fire London - dates, times and FAQs (checked September 2026)
- Meatopia - MeatBucks explained (checked September 2026)
- London Restaurant Festival - autumn edition (checked September 2026)
- CAMRA - Great British Beer Festival (checked September 2026)
- Mayor of London - Vaisakhi on the Square 2027 (checked September 2026)