Some of London's leading cultural institutions are joining forces with the Indian organisation Serendipity Arts to stage a major festival celebrating South Asian creativity. The V&A, Science Museum and Natural History Museum are among the partners for Serendipity Arts Festival London, which will take over Exhibition Road and South Kensington's cultural quarter from June 19 to 27, 2027.

The nine-day programme, organised in partnership with the Great Exhibition Road Festival led by Imperial College, will also involve the Royal Albert Hall, the Royal Geographical Society, the Royal College of Art and the Royal College of Music. It will feature established and emerging artists from India and its diaspora across visual art, music, dance, new media and food, with events staged in galleries, concert halls, cafés and outdoor spaces.

Six women curators have been appointed to shape the programme: Veeranganakumari Solanki and Nancy Adajania for new media, Latika Gupta for visual arts, Preethi Athreya for dance, Sneha Khanwalkar for music and Elizabeth Yorke for culinary arts. Serendipity Arts co-founder and patron Shefali Munjal said South Asian creativity cannot be understood through a single discipline, tradition or geography — it lives as much in food, sound and movement as in a gallery.

The announcement is timed to a growing South Asian presence in London's museums. V&A senior curator Kristian Volsing called the partnership an incredibly timely collaboration, pointing to the museum's exhibition South Asia Now: Fashion. Art. Design. at V&A East in spring 2027 and the reopening of its South Asia Gallery in 2028. The London edition builds on Serendipity Arts' annual festival in Goa, which marked its tenth anniversary in 2025 and has drawn more than one million visitors while supporting over 10,000 artists since launching in 2016. The partnership will also extend to India, with the Natural History Museum bringing its Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition to the Goa festival this December.