World Heritage Sites, storied museums, ancient crafts—these destinations offer unique experiences to remember.
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One of the greatest advantages of living in a city is having world-class art and culture right on your doorstep. On any given day, you can spend the morning seeing world-famous works of art, the afternoon browsing bookshops and poking around indie galleries, and the evening at a comedy night (or the theatre, or a gig). Then there’s all the other stuff, like neighbourhood cinemas, street art, traditional festivals and museum lates. The best bit? In many of the world’s best cities, you can experience all that wonderful human creativity for free.
GOLDEN TRIANGLE, INDIA
My second-last recommendation for your 2025 travels is my own personal favourite trip from 2024: India’s Golden Triangle. It’s golden for a reason, since it enfolds the country’s main attractions.
WHY GO NOW?
You should visit this year, because there’s no time like the present. At least that’s what I told my mom, who had always dreamed of seeing Taj Mahal and is not getting any younger. So we went.
Also: India is going electric in order to reduce the smog and air pollution as well as to slow down climate change.
WHAT TO SEE!
What not to see? Beyond the bucket-list place of Taj Mahal are numerous UNESCO World Heritage Sites, excellent food and friendly people. The biggest positive surprise was how many cultural and historical sites Delhi has like Humayun’s Tomb; a mausoleum that inspired the architecture of Taj Mahal.
SINGAPORE
A friend of mine suggested, we go to Singapore next year. First, I said: Yes of course! Secondly, I asked: Why do you want to go?. The allure is the futuristic vibe. Being both a city and a country, Singapore has a reputation of being expensive and with some very strict rules, but also the ideal exit point for other countries.
WHY GO NOW?
This year, it will be Singapore’s 60th birthday. Hurray!
WHAT TO SEE!
From the very first second of 2025, Singapore promises the festivities will light up the city like never before. This year’s activities are connected to the theme “Building Our Singapore Together”. Highlights include Racial and Religious Harmony Month, National Day Parade with fireworks and Singapore’s August 9 birthday extravaganza. See the full program here.
If you need a break from the flashing lights, head to the UNESCO-listed Botanical garden. This 156-year old colonial garden is one of only 3 on the list.
MORE TIME?
3,5 hours by bus is Malaysia’s historic cities of Malacca. Melaka and George Town shows the influences of Asia and Europe from the 15th-century Malay sultanate, through the the Portuguese and Dutch periods and up until the British era from the end of the 18th century. They show an unparalleled architectural and cultural townscape.
ABU DHABI, UAE
Surprisingly (even to myself), I’ve included Abu Dhabi in this list of 2025 travel recommendations. I visited the emirate in 2024. but apparently there is something as being too much a first-mover, and I was one year too early. I wasn’t planning on coming back, but now I have to. Maybe on a layover…
WHY GO NOW?
In 2025, Abu Dhabi’s Saadiyat cultural district will open completely with several new museums, cultural and education centres.
WHAT TO SEE!
In 2024, only the Abu Dhabi Louvre was open, but it has a unique collection and is definitely worth it. Unfortunately, it will not tell you a lot about the emirates, but maybe this will be remedied now. What I liked about the cultural sites in Abu Dhabi, is that they tried to focus on the similarities between cultures and hence what we share as humans. Hopefully, this will be true of the new museums as well as they promise.
All of 3 new museums will open in 2025. The The Guggenheim promises to be the region’s pre-eminent museum of global modern and contemporary art, but it will have a specific focus on West Asia, North Africa, and South Asia. The Zayed National Museum. however will “take you through the history of the United Arab Emirates, back to a 300,000-year-old stone tool found at Jebel Hafit in Al Ain…and link the ancient past with people’s living traditions.” Don’t miss the Tyrannosaurus Rex of the Natural History Museum.
London
London has a lot going for it. A vibrant food scene that caters to all palates and income brackets, residents drawn from all corners of the planet, historic attractions, genuinely walkable neighbourhoods and a mysterious shop on Essex Road that’s absolutely rammed full of taxidermied animals.
Perhaps most impressive however, is the city’s arts and culture scene. Off the bat: there’s nowhere in the world with so many elite galleries and museums that are entirely free to visit. South Kensington by itself (fka ‘Albertopolis’) probably has more incredible exhibits housed in its many legendary institutions than you can find in every state in America combined (this is an estimate, please don’t look into it). What’s mad is that new museums – all free to visit, all world-class – are still appearing all the time. The V&A East and V&A East Storehouse have added a sense of cutting-edge relevance to the East End (not to mention the still-fresh Young V&A down the road). Like pretty pictures? The Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration in charming Clerkenwell opens in June and should be on the radar of any art fanatic. Fans of young people and their antics meanwhile, should book tickets now for the new Museum of Youth Culture, coming (at long last) to that hotbed of scuzzy juvenility Camden Town. And if all that wasn’t enough, the phenomenal London Museum reopens in its all-new Smithfield location at the end of the year.
Paris
Paris has always opened its arms to both illustrious cultural figures and emerging avant-garde talents, offering them a unique range of grand, prestigious venues as well as more intimate spaces. This convergence of talent continues with the same energy in 2026 across all forms of art, from painting to photography, from architecture to fashion. This year, you can admire Matisse, 1941–1954 at the Grand Palais or One Hundred Years of Art Deco at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs and follow it up with Africa Fashion at the Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac or Lee Miller at the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris. And while the iconic Centre Pompidou remains closed for renovation until 2030, the Musée de la Vie Romantique and the new Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemporain are (re)opening their doors.
There’s also brand-new art and culture coming to the French capital in 2026, from multi-use cultural venue PRINT in the 20th arrondissement to La Caverne du Pont Neuf, an immersive installation taking over Paris’s oldest bridge this summer. Community-run arthouse cinema La Clef is worth a visit after it was recently saved from demolition – but if you only do one thing, a simple walk through the Marais and its countless galleries is the perfect introduction to contemporary art in Paris (and it’s free)!
New York City
Frankly, we don’t have to prove New York’s cultural bona fides – the city’s world-renowned museums and avant-garde galleries, unbeatable theatre productions, storied literary tradition and lively music scene (we’re the birthplace of hip hop, punk rock and pretty much everything cool) more than speak for themselves.
But 2026 sees the Big Apple truly showing off when it comes to culture. We’re talking America’s first-ever comprehensive Raphael exhibition right here at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a 50-years-in-the-making Marcel Duchamp retrospective at MoMA and an otherworldly ode to fashion designer Iris Van Herpen’s confoundingly beautiful couture at the Brooklyn Museum. And that’s just indoors – the Public Art Fund will stage sculptural works from Woody De Othello, Genesis Belanger and more in city parks throughout the year. In New York, as ever, great art can be found anywhere and everywhere.
How it ranked: Ninety-three percent of New Yorkers rate their city’s culture highly – and so too do 80 percent of the experts at Time Out. After London and Madrid, it ranked as the third-best city in the world for theatre, but it was New York’s museum scene that received the highest score among locals, with 85 percent applauding the Big Apple’s legendary institutions.
Cape Town
Cape Town’s culture scene is deeply layered and always evolving. Africa’s collective creativity is anchored at the Zeitz MOCAA and in the Norval Foundation’s contemporary sculpture garden. You can catch the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra at City Hall, home to a bronze statue of Nelson Mandela honouring his first address to the nation after his release from prison. The Labia remains the city’s beloved home of independent arthouse cinema, while comedy and theatre thrive at the iconic Baxter and Artscape. Each February, the Investec Cape Town Art Fair, as the continent’s largest, draws international art collectors; while First Thursdays brings locals out on a free-to-attend art crawl at the start of each month. In 2026, Cape Town is experiencing a blockbuster year for art – brand-new cultural moments include the recent immersive digital art installation LUMENOCITY and the limited-edition Veuve Clicquot’s Emotions of the Sun’s Magnum Photos collaboration.
Beijing
Beijing never really stops surprising me. One minute you’re stepping into 3,000 years of history, from the Forbidden City to the Great Wall, and the next you’re stumbling into something completely contemporary. I love how easy it is to tap into its literary side, too, whether that’s visiting the city’s best satirist Lao She’s former residence, the Lu Xun Museum, or getting lost for hours in the mammoth National Library of China. At the same time, there’s always something new happening: big-ticket exhibitions, like the recent National Museum of China’s Pompeii show with Italy’s Treccani Institute, bring global culture into the mix, while spaces like Red Brick Art Museum spotlight artists like Tesfaye Urgessa. And when night falls, you can always end up at a Beijing Improv show or a Comedy Citadel night – funny, sharp and very Beijing.