Explore a flat in the St Pancras Clock Tower, a rolling bridge and the Cheesegrater: it’s the closing weekend of Open House Festival 2023

Press Release

Sep 13

1157 events from tours of sky scrapers to private homes are taking place across 400 sites in the finale of London’s Open House Festival.

This weekend will see hundreds of free tours and events taking place all over London marking the closing weekend Open House Festival 2023.

The annual two week celebration of London and Londoners, which this year opened on the 6th of September, has already seen tens of thousands of visitors exploring some of the capital’s most remarkable homes and buildings from skyscrapers to social housing estates.

The final weekend of the festival features free events at 400 sites including beautiful private homes, a Modernest school designed by the legendary architect Ernő Goldfinger, Britain’s first black-led self-built street Nubia Way, a new tower in Canary Wharf by Tate Modern architects Herzog and de Meuron, and walking tours across the city exploring big themes.

For the first time ever, Open House Festival is highlighting homes that visitors can also book overnight stays in on Airbnb who is the headline partner of the festival. The Airbnb partnership is also enabling a new programme of special tours for young Londoners from under-represented backgrounds taking place throughout the festival.

Celia Mead, Director of Open House Festival said, “Our mission is to make London more open and accessible. I am thrilled that Airbnb are supporting us to run free tours of special homes and buildings for Londoners of all backgrounds.”

Amanda Cupples, General Manager for Northern Europe at Airbnb said, "We're thrilled to be partnering with Open House Festival to make London's incredible architecture more accessible to everyone. This is a unique opportunity for people to explore the city's hidden gems and learn about its rich history and culture. We hope that our partnership will inspire people to fall in love with London all over again."

The 2023 edition of the festival has proved extremely popular with over 50,000 entries to ballots for tickets to some of the most popular festival tours and tens of thousands of visits taking place during the festival so far.

Founded in 1992, the Open House Festival format has spread around the world with events now running in over 60 cities including New York, Maputo, Taipei and Santiago.

The final weekend of Open House Festival 2023 takes place on Saturday 16 and Sunday 17 of September. Visitors planning to attend should go to programme.openhouse.org.uk and register for a free visitor account to start planning their itinerary.

Filming and interview opportunities

Most festival sites are available on request for filming and media interviews. For all media enquiries email press@open-city.org.uk to arrange access.

The official festival launch is taking place on Thursday the 7th of September at Waterloo City Farm. To arrange media access or filming permission email press@open-city.org.uk.

Notes to editors

The 2023 Open House Festival runs from the 6th to the 17th of September.
Typically the Open House Festival attracts 170,000 visits. The economic impact is estimated to be £2.9m direct spend in the local economy by visitors.
Open City, the charity which stages the Open House Festival was founded in 1992 and runs educational programmes for children and young people from under-reperesnted communities in London and Birmingham year-round.
Over its three-decade history, the Open City has helped set up Open House Festivals across the world from New York City to Lagos. There are now nearly 60 Open House Festivals worldwide which together attract around 750,000 visitors a year.