About the festival
The Mayor’s Thames Festival celebrates London’s river with amazing open air arts, pyrotechnics, illuminations, river events, street theatre, massed choirs and music. This year marks the festival’s 10th Anniversary and we are celebrating in style - from the Al Fresco Ballrooms in unique riverside settings, to themed feasts on Southwark Bridge, to the festival’s climactic event, a spectacular Night Carnival and fireworks display.
The festival was launched in 1997 with a stunning high-wire walk across the River Thames and over the years it has grown incrementally to become one of London’s largest annual events. In 1998, a year on from the wire walk, we delivered the first Thames Festival. There was an international food and craft market peppered with street theatre and music and two large scale events: a mid-river concert on a floating stage and a night carnival. It was a modest start, but even then the festival’s character started to establish itself - one based on celebration, transformation and participation.
Essentially, we want to provide a celebration for London and its river, a city centre party if you like, one that is free and open to all. We want to close roads and bridges and transform them with culture. We want to educate and transform people’s ideas about the river, too. Most of all, we want people not just to be spectators, but to be active participants in this spectacular London event.
Adrian Evans, Festival Director