Everyone gets to the London Eye and the Tower eventually. The better London is the one visitors — and plenty of Londoners — never quite find: a beer poured metres from the tank it fermented in, a museum built from one collector's cabinet of curiosities, a dinner whose location stays secret until the night itself. We've spent over a decade running tours out of a railway arch in Bermondsey, so we know this side of the city rather well. Here's our honest, no-filler list of genuinely unusual things to do in London for 2026 — nothing on it is a tourist trap, and most of it is easy to do this weekend.
1. Drink where it's actually brewed: the Bermondsey Beer Mile
Most "beer tours" in London mean a bus and a gift shop. Ours means walking a real working brewery district — the Bermondsey Beer Mile, a run of independent breweries set into the railway arches south of London Bridge, where trains rumble overhead and the beer in your glass was fermenting a few feet away an hour earlier. It's the single most unusual thing we'd put on this list, mostly because it isn't staged for visitors at all — it's just how this corner of Southwark brews. Our guided Bermondsey Beer Tasting Tour runs 2–3.5 hours, costs £49pp with tastings included, and takes you to four of the mile's best taprooms with an accredited Beer Sommelier explaining what you're drinking and why. Meet at Southwark Brewing, 46 Druid Street — no bus required.
2. An evening of immersive theatre or secret dining
London leads the world in experiences that put you inside the story instead of in a seat watching it — mask-based promenade theatre where you choose which thread to follow, and secret-location dinners where you're told a rough area and a dress code and nothing else until you arrive. Productions and supper clubs open and close through the year, so search what's currently running before you commit an evening — but when one lines up with your dates, take it over almost anything else on this list. We cover the wider immersive scene, including where the format started and which venues are worth booking, in our guide to immersive experiences in London.
3. The odd little museums no one puts on a top-ten list
Skip the big three and London's museum scene gets properly strange, in the best way. Think a cluttered cabinet of taxidermy and curiosities in a Hackney shopfront, the cramped Georgian garret where amputations happened without anaesthetic near London Bridge, or a house preserved exactly as its eccentric owner left it two centuries ago. None of these will be busy, all of them are memorable, and most take under an hour — perfect for slotting between a market lunch and an evening out. Opening days and hours vary by venue and change without much notice, so check the official site before you go.
4. A night walk that isn't the usual ghost tour script
London after dark is a different city — quieter streets, lit-up landmarks with no crowds, and history that lands harder once the sun's gone. Beyond the standard Jack the Ripper walk (still worth doing once), look for smaller operators running plague-history, hidden-river or lost-pub themed night walks through the City and the South Bank. They're cheap, sociable, and a genuinely good way to see London's bones without the daytime scrum. Pair one with a pint at the end and you've built a proper evening for very little money.
5. Play London as a giant Monopoly board
Slightly mad, entirely brilliant: the Monopoly pub crawl takes the streets on the classic board — Old Kent Road, Whitehall, Mayfair and the rest — and turns them into a real, if very long, day out. Nobody sane does the full 28 stops in one go, but picking a colour set (the oranges, say, or the greens) makes for an unusual, genuinely fun afternoon with a group, and it's one of the few pub crawls in London with a built-in game.
6. Drink through history on a historic pubs crawl
For something a little calmer, our guide to historic London pubs strings together the city's oldest surviving taverns — coaching inns, riverside smugglers' pubs, and the odd galleried courtyard you'd otherwise walk straight past. It's less "unusual" and more "hidden in plain sight," which might be the most London category of all.
7. Wander Maltby Street Market, then go where it comes from
A five-minute walk from Borough Market's crowds, Maltby Street Market is the quieter ropewalk version — small stalls under railway arches, foraged produce, and some of the best food you'll eat all week. Because it sits right at the start of the Beer Mile, it's the natural warm-up act before an afternoon of tasting beer in the arches where it's made. Locals treat this combination as a Saturday ritual, not a tourist itinerary, which is exactly why it belongs on this list.
8. Craft beer near London Bridge, minus the crowds
If you only have an hour or two, our guide to craft beer near London Bridge picks out taprooms and bottle shops a few minutes off the main drag — good for a quick, unusual stop between meetings or before a train, without committing to a full crawl.
Unusual things to do in London for couples
Shared, slightly out-of-the-ordinary experiences make far better dates than dinner and a film — a small-group tasting tour where you're learning something together, a secret dinner, or an evening walk followed by a nightcap. We've written a whole guide to this: date night ideas in London for beer lovers, built around exactly this kind of shared, hands-on evening.
Unusual things to do in London this weekend
If you're planning something for the next few days rather than months out, stick to the low-friction options: Maltby Street Market and a Beer Mile wander need no advance booking beyond picking a tour slot, a historic pubs crawl is entirely self-guided, and the odd little museums rarely need tickets booked far ahead. Save the immersive theatre and secret dining for a weekend you can plan two or three weeks out — those sell through fast.
Doing it as a group
Several of these scale brilliantly for birthdays, stag and hen dos, and work socials. We run private group tastings for 6 to 60+ people on the Beer Mile, and for foodie groups our Saturday Cheese, Meat & Beer Tour (£65pp, 12–2:30pm) adds British cheese and charcuterie pairing to the formula. East Londoners should also look at the Hackney Wick Craft Beer Experience (£41.25pp, selected Saturdays) — a similarly offbeat, working-brewery-district afternoon on the other side of town.
Give the experience as a gift
An unusual afternoon beats another parcel almost every time. Our gift vouchers are bought directly on our gift vouchers page, delivered instantly by email, and never expire — the recipient just picks the date and which tour suits them, whenever they're ready.
More offbeat London experiences
The link below is an affiliate link: if you book through it we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. We only suggest experiences we'd recommend anyway.
- Shoreditch Pub Crawl — a guided, ready-made route through East London's street-art backstreets if you'd rather not plan your own.