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In 2026, the Southbank Centre marks the 75th anniversary of the Royal Festival Hall, the only permanent cultural building to emerge from the 1951 Festival of Britain and the opening chapter in the site’s continuing public story.
To begin the celebrations, the Southbank Centre is releasing 750 tickets at £7.50 for the opening weeks of three major exhibitions at the Hayward Gallery. The offer is limited, subject to availability, and available only during the dates listed below.
Two exhibitions, one February: textiles, found objects, and the architecture of memoryYin Xiuzhen: Heart to Heart and Chiharu Shiota: Threads of Life (offer available Tue 17 – Sun 22 Feb) arrive concurrently, turning the Hayward Gallery into a conversation between two internationally celebrated artists whose work expands the language of contemporary art through everyday materials.
Across both exhibitions, textiles and found objects become carriers of lived experience. Shiota’s immersive environments and Yin’s materially driven narratives approach memory, identity and the human condition from distinct vantage points, yet share a belief that ordinary things can hold extraordinary emotional charge. Presented together, the pair reads as a form of cultural collaboration by proximity: two practices in parallel, inviting viewers to navigate intimacy at architectural scale.
Mount Moriah at the Gate of the Ghetto 2022Anish Kapoor (offer available Tue 16 – Sun 21 Jun) marks the artist’s return to the Hayward Gallery, which was the first public gallery in the UK to stage a major survey of his work in 1998. The exhibition spans new monumental works alongside seminal pieces, unfolding across the entire gallery and its terraces.
Kapoor’s practice has long pressed at the edges of what sculpture can do, not only as object but as encounter. Here, the Hayward becomes an instrument of disorientation and focus, staging work that pulls at depth, reflection and scale, and asking visitors to experience form as something felt as much as seen.
About the Southbank CentreThe Southbank Centre is the UK’s largest arts centre, occupying 11 acres on the South Bank of the Thames. Its venues include the Royal Festival Hall, Queen Elizabeth Hall, Purcell Room and the Hayward Gallery, alongside the National Poetry Library and the Arts Council Collection. The site is also home to six Resident Orchestras: Aurora Orchestra, Chineke! Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, London Sinfonietta, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and Philharmonia Orchestra.
About the Hayward Gallery
Opened by Queen Elizabeth II in July 1968, the Hayward Gallery is known for presenting work by some of the world’s most adventurous artists, through major solo shows and influential group exhibitions. The Brutalist building, designed by a group of young architects including Dennis Crompton, Warren Chalk and Ron Herron, remains one of the few buildings of its style still standing, and is named after Sir Isaac Hayward, a former leader of the London County Council.
Ticket offer termsThe opening week offer is subject to availability and limited to 750 tickets. Offer ends at 10am on Friday 30 January 2026.
©2026 Southbank Centre
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