What's On In October

When: 1–31 October The festival returns at full strength for its twentieth anniversary, running across the whole month with a programme taking in filmmaking workshops, guided tours, Diwali celebrations and museum treasure hunts. More than 150 events are spread across upwards of forty venues, free and ticketed. Most of it is walkable in an afternoon, which is the point.

When: From 2 October The first UK retrospective of Es Devlin's thirty-year practice in sculpture, performance, language and light, with maquettes and new commissions. Thirty years of building stages that outlast the shows on them. NIGO: From Japan with Love closes on the 4th, so there's one weekend where you can catch both.

When: From 3 October The first exhibition London has given Renoir in nearly twenty years, made in partnership with the Musée d'Orsay and Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, focusing on the most prolific stretch of his career from the mid-1860s to the mid-1880s. It's built around how he painted intimacy - couples, dancers, families at leisure - and brings Bal au Moulin de la Galette to the UK for the first time. The season's first blockbuster, and the one to book early.

When: From 3 October Quince opens a sibling bakery directly across the road, in a larger setup with room to sit down: scotch pancakes and scrambled eggs at breakfast, hearty soups at lunch, and weekend brunch. Expect tattie scones, pies and buns alongside. One of the best bakeries in London, with chairs this time.

When: 1, 2, 8, 9 and 22 October The Borough Market butcher's new supper club sits twelve guests around one table for five cuts of steak, cooked in front of you by Benito, twenty years a butcher and known to everyone as Benny the Meat Maestro. Fillet, sirloin and prime rib alongside onglet and feather blade, with Koffmann's chips, the house horseradish and ketchup, and free-flowing Lirac chosen for The Ginger Pig by Master of Wine Simon Thorpe. Two hours, £95 a head, and the practical stuff on breed, ageing, rendering and resting that you'll actually use at home.

When: 5 October–8 November Covent Garden neighbours join forces for The Double Date: a warm, chewy date cookie made with fresh dates, soft brown sugar and a shot of strong black coffee, served under a mountain of date and pomegranate molasses soft serve. Sticky toffee pudding by way of Indo-Chinese Kolkata. Available at both sites, and Floozie's cookie shop will serve Fatt Pundit's masala chai for the duration. Runs to the end of Diwali weekend.

When: 7–18 October The 70th edition opens on the 7th with the European premiere of Elsinore, Simon Stone's biographical drama about the Scottish actor Ian Charleson, and closes on the 18th with the UK premiere of Jesse Eisenberg's The Debut at the Royal Festival Hall. Twelve days of premieres, screen talks and the Expanded strand of immersive work, with £6 tickets for anyone 25 and under.

When: From 8 October Curated by Edward Enninful, a major show on how 1990s British art, fashion and photography fused into a single cultural force, with Hirst, Lucas, McQueen, Westwood and Teller. The decade the Cold War ended and Britain came out of recession, and the wave of optimism, freedom and rebellion that followed across art, design, fashion and music. Runs to February, so no need to rush it.

When: From 9 October Walker celebrates the UK's LGBTQ+ trailblazers in a fantastical exploration of queer identity, community and love. Portraits of Chappell Roan, Lady Gaga, Pet Shop Boys, Hunter Schafer, Miriam Margolyes and Frank Ocean sit alongside a bank of never-before-seen images from five years photographing activists, performers, artists and writers.

When: From 13 October The eleventh annual Hyundai Commission fills the Turbine Hall with a site-specific installation from the artist and composer, blending music, technology, sculpture and performance into multisensory environments. Atoui builds his own instruments and works in sound rather than objects, so this is a commission you hear before you see. Free.

When: 14–18 October The Regent's Park Both fairs return, with an invitation-only preview on Wednesday 14 October. Almost 300 galleries, and curated sections including The Code Universe. Two ticketing rules catch people out: tickets are online only, with no gate sale, and general admission carries no re-entry, so stepping out for lunch ends your visit. 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair runs 15–18 October at Somerset House and PAD London opens a day earlier in Berkeley Square - give 1-54 its own half day rather than tacking it onto a Frieze afternoon. Frieze Sculpture stays outdoors, free and ticketless in the English Gardens until 1 November.

When: From 14 October Landy's watercolour and pen drawings imagine landmark buildings, Soane's own museum among them, as overgrown future ruins. Exactly the right building for it, and free.

When: From 16 October A hundred new images from this year's competition, from polar landscapes to tropical rainforests, printed large and lit in a darkened gallery. It stays up until next summer, which makes October the quietest time to go rather than the last chance.

When: 18 October–6 December Seabird, on the fourteenth floor of The Hoxton, Southwark, brings back its sold-out Ronnie Scott's series with GREY GOOSE across eight Sundays. Dining and DJs from noon until 4pm, then a headline live performance at 5pm, with the city going dark through the windows behind it. The cocktail list is stirred not shaken so the music stays uninterrupted: martinis your way, wet or dry, dirty or with a twist, and a Bergamot Martini with bergamot cordial, charcoaled lobster oil and saline, served with an oyster. The four-course menu runs to Seabird's Iberian and seafood strengths, with whole grilled sea bass and paella Valenciana to share. Tickets via SevenRooms from 25 September.

When: From 20 October The complete series, shown in the UK for the first time courtesy of the Iuchi Collection, the Great Wave included. Worth the train south.

When: From October The team behind Camille open a 66-cover restaurant at 57 W. Smithfield, a minute from the old market, celebrating the regional cooking of Britain and Ireland with a whole-carcass approach. Clare Lattin, Ratnesh Bagdai and Tom Hill are joined by Elliot Hashtroudi as chef patron, who stays on as executive chef at Camille; the name is his grandmother's. A 60-cover dining room with white tablecloths draws on the dishes and rituals of Victorian dining, while a separate six-seat bar runs a rotating chalkboard menu for walk-ins only, taking a broader view of how migration has shaped the food of Britain and Ireland since. Camille's Max Hancock heads the wine list, with British winemakers at its centre and the rest following what Victorian London actually drank.

When: From October Endo Kazutoshi opens a ten-seat omakase counter in a two-storey Chelsea townhouse, drawing on 1920s Tokyo with a menu built around purity, seasonality and simplicity. He decides the menu himself each night. Upstairs, listening bar Moga makes its debut, with drinks rooted in the West's growing influence on Japanese culture through the twentieth century. Ten seats for the whole city.

When: From October Florence Knight - Le Manoir aux Quat' Saisons under Raymond Blanc, then Sessions Arts Club in 2021 - takes the eleventh floor of 180 Thames on the Strand, with cooking that shifts with the seasons. The room is as considered as the menu: sound systems and speakers designed by Devon Turnbull, plates and bowls by Cornwall-based artist Michel François, glassware by Danish artist Alexander Kirkeby.

When: Saturdays only Helen Hall and Luke West-Whylie's neighbourhood wine bar has added a Saturday special worth planning a weekend around. The Txuleta Burger is head chef Pablo Urain Alfonso's Basque take on the classic: a patty made from several cuts of Spanish ex-dairy beef, piquillo pepper relish and a cream cheese made with Ossau-Iraty, in a house brioche bun with homemade crisps on the side. The beef comes from retired dairy cows rather than a separate beef herd, so the animal's footprint is shared across milk and meat. It's £15, and only ten to fifteen are made each Saturday, so go early. Stay for the small plates, including croquetas with homemade aioli, lardo tortilla with green pepper mayo, and Cuore del Vesuvio tomatoes with burrata and fig leaf oil, plus a wine list built around bottles that are exciting, consciously farmed and above all good to drink.