For one month every September, London’s oldest thoroughfare becomes its largest stage. This year the tide brings a Turner Prize-nominated artist, a Victorian steam coaster turned concert hall, and a run of stories told right at the water’s edge.
Totally Thames is back for September 2026, and the Thames Festival Trust has lifted the lid on a first wave of programming that treats the river as both subject and stage. Running the whole month, from Tuesday 1 to Wednesday 30 September, the festival draws on the Thames as a source of creativity and community connection across the capital, gathering site-specific installations, live performances and new writing along its banks. The Port of London Authority returns as principal sponsor.
The Trust has been at this for more than two decades, using learning, culture and creativity to bring communities together along the river and, increasingly, in cities beyond it. Totally Thames itself has run every September since 2014, spread across the 42-mile tidal stretch that threads through the city. This year’s early line-up leans into the water’s ecological, cultural and heritage value, and into the idea of the Thames as an asset that belongs to everyone who lives beside it.
“Totally Thames 2026 promises to be an epic year, with an amazing site-specific installation on the orphan columns of the old Blackfriars Rail Bridge and an awesome immersive sound and light experience in SS Robin.” – Adrian Evans, Director, Thames Festival Trust
Turning the Tide
The festival’s centrepiece belongs to Turner Prize-nominated artist Catherine Yass. Turning the Tide, running from 17 to 20 September, is a site-specific film installation projected onto the disused red columns of Blackfriars Railway Bridge, which have stood in the river since 1864. For four nights the free public artwork, made in partnership with the disabled-led theatre company Graeae, will place disabled young actors at monumental scale above the water, performing in response to texts they have written themselves. The piece has already been awarded the Art Explora – Académie des beaux-arts European Award, the leading European prize for new dialogues between the arts and audiences.
ON THE WATER
River Recital Presents SS Robin
On 26 and 27 September, the SS Robin, the oldest complete steam coaster in the world, becomes an instrument in its own right. Berthed at Trinity Buoy Wharf, the historic ship and its pontoon are given over to an immersive environment of sound, moving image and live performance. The programme features newly commissioned audiovisual work by Clifford Sage, whose credits take in the National Gallery and the ICA, alongside site-responsive pieces from the Computational Art Department at Camberwell College of Arts, with further interventions from Ninon Ardisson (Tate Modern; Victoria and Albert Museum) and Mathis Saunier (Philharmonia Orchestra; London Symphony Orchestra).
On 26 September the pontoon turns into a live music stage. The bill brings together Tara Lily, who has played the Royal Albert Hall with RAYE and appeared at Glastonbury, with Chris Hyson (BBC Proms; Snowpoet), Carolina Cury, Thomas Stone (Tate Britain; Serpentine Gallery) and Narotam Horn (Serpentine Gallery; Wigmore Hall), whose music moves between contemporary classical composition, jazz improvisation and Bengali devotional song. Developed through the Trust’s Seed Funder programme, the evening invites audiences to experience the vessel as a living archive, shaped by memory, ecology and the Thames’s industrial past.
STORIES AT THE WATER’S EDGE
Aftertide
The month’s quieter moments arrive early. On 5 September, Hermitage Moorings hosts Aftertide by Seb Harcombe, a site-responsive audio walk designed to be taken alone, as a reflective journey along the river and across the central London bridges. Drawn from the testimonies of coma survivors at St Thomas’ and Guy’s Hospitals, and from the artist’s own recovery overlooking the Thames, the work blends recorded voices of patients, loved ones and clinicians with atmospheric soundscapes and music from Handel’s Alceste, itself based on the myth of Alcestis, who journeys into the underworld and returns. For all its moments of fear and disorientation, many of the accounts are humorous, imaginative and life-affirming. Supported through the Seed Funder programme, it connects deeply personal experience to older, archetypal journeys of crossing, return and renewal.
The Waterfront Journals
The following night, on 6 September, production company ONE DAY THIS KID stages The Waterfront Journals at Thames Barrier Park, a site-specific outdoor performance built from the writing of artist and activist David Wojnarowicz. Three actors carry a series of powerful monologues in a promenade piece that weaves personal histories and queer narratives together at the water’s edge, opening up a conversation about cruising, love, loss and resilience. Also supported by the Trust’s Seed Funder programme, the project commissions new responses from LGBTQIA+ Londoners, and the creative team includes co-direction from Alex Lawther (The End of the F***ing World; Black Mirror), Ellie Kendrick (Game of Thrones; Misfits) and Hugh Wyld.
Where the River Holds Us
At Two Temple Place on 27 and 28 September, Helen Epega presents Where the River Holds Us, an immersive live performance that combines operatic voice with the West African tambin flute. Inspired by the Thames as a living archive, the piece explores water as a conduit for memory, ritual and belonging. Epega, founder of the creative collective The Venus Bushfires, is a Black British neurodiverse artist whose interdisciplinary practice centres access, collective listening and embodied experience through opera, sound and performance. The work is part of the Trust’s Seed Funder programme.
BEYOND THE BANK
Art on Your Doorstep, at Brentford
Over the weekend of 4 to 6 September, the Brentford Art Trail joins the Creative Mile as Art on Your Doorstep partners with the National Gallery to turn Brentford into an open-air exhibition. Life-size reproductions from the Gallery’s collection will appear in striking and unexpected corners of the town, with the Thames forming a backdrop to several of the installations. Responding to Brentford’s riverside identity, the project sets nationally significant paintings within everyday public space, and works with local schools and community groups, using the Gallery’s learning resources to prompt creative responses in photography, drawing and writing.
Kick the Door Down
New writing gets its own night on 25 September, when Kick the Door Down brings an alumni showcase aboard the Theatreship in Canary Wharf. Five original works, chosen from the company’s 2024 and 2025 participants, are presented by a cast of actors, writers and directors. Delivered with Riverside Studios and shaped alongside industry figures from the Bush Theatre, Theatre503 and the Pleasance, the evening offers selected artists an artist fee, tailored feedback and a genuine platform within London’s theatre community. It, too, is backed by the Trust’s Seed Funder programme.
“Increasing access, particularly for under-represented communities including disabled people, to the culture, heritage and wellbeing benefits of the tidal Thames is a core priority for us.” – Siân Foster, Director of Corporate Affairs, Port of London Authority
When: Tues 1 – Weds 30 Sept 2026, across the month.
Where: Along the tidal Thames, from Trinity Buoy Wharf and Canary Wharf in the east to Blackfriars, Two Temple Place and Brentford in the west.
Don’t miss: Turning the Tide, Blackfriars Railway Bridge, 17 to 20 September (free); River Recital Presents SS Robin, Trinity Buoy Wharf, 26 to 27 September.
More: www.thamesfestivaltrust.org
@thamesfestivaltrust
