Best New London Openings in 2018

London's oldest railway station, London Bridge Station, is fully upgraded and reopened in January 2018. With a new concourse bigger than the pitch at Wembley Stadium and 15 new extra-long platforms, the central London station will offer a better service for the 56 million passengers it brings into the city each year. Part of the London Bridge Quarter development, it connects passengers to The Shard, Borough Market and beyond.

Opening in early 2018, Vintry & Mercer's 92 bedrooms range from intimate doubles to suites with glass-panelled balconies that overlook the livery halls, guilds and narrow streets of the City.

Also in early 2018, the unveiling of the 334-room Principal London will transform the former Hotel Russell: a Grade II* listed building which occupies the eastern flank of Russell Square in Bloomsbury. Officially launching in March 2018, the tall and slender 4 star Dorsett City opens its 267 rooms next to Aldgate Tube Station.

While the apartments are set to be completed in spring 2018, Manhattan Loft Gardens 145 room design hotel, complete with pool and roof-top restaurant and set within the same 42-storey, double-cantilevered tower in Stratford will open later in the year.

In summer 2018 Standard Hotels - no longer with hotelier André Balazs - will bring The Standard London with roughly 250 rooms to a former Camden Council building in King's Cross. 

Bankside Hotel, part of One Blackfriars development, opens 161 modern, airy rooms on the south bank, close to Tate Modern, the National Theatre, and Borough Market in September 2018.

Nearby and expected to open in Autumn 2018, The Dixon is a boutique-style hotel with a spotlight on art, heritage, culture and design. Located near Tower Bridge on Tooley Street, it's an area which is undergoing a cultural renaissance with the new Bridge Theatre just a few minutes walk away.

On 19th May 2018 the 56 million pound redevelopment of the Royal Academy of Arts is unveiled, mark the gallery's 250th anniversary. The project has taken three years to complete and includes a bridge linking Burlington House on Piccadilly to Burlington Gardens in Mayfair. The new development increase the Academy's space by 70 per cent and includes six new galleries.

The former Peckham Road Fire Station, which has been donated to the South London Gallery is to be transformed into a new cultural centre opening to the public in 2018. The four million pound project, led by 6a architects, creates a series of light and inspiring spaces over four floors, maintaining the original layout of rooms as much as possible.

In January 2018 Greyhound Café opens in Fitzrovia and Simon Rogan's Roganic returns to Marylebone, not as a pop-up but as a permanent fixture. Following a series of successful supper clubs, chefs Gerald Mirey and Ko Ito open their first bricks and mortar restaurant, Bistro Mirey in Fulham and pizzeria, Zia Lucia, comes to Brook Green in late January. 

Feast Canteen from the Pergola group and Frame Hammersmith open in a west London shopping mall. The team behind Jidori, the much-loved yakitori restaurant in Dalston, bring their Japanese small plates restaurant to Covent Garden in February 2018 adding a karaoke room for private parties. 

In April, Tom Brown (previously head chef at Nathan Outlaw's eponymous restaurant at The Capital Hotel in Knightsbridge) is to open his debut restaurant, Cornerstone in Hackney Wick.

One of London's best known landmarks, Centre Point now houses 82 luxury homes and, from April 2018, you can visit VIVI, a British restaurant run by rhubarb serving 1960s comfort food. In the same month, Bluebird, whose Kings Road restaurant is a London institution of 20 years standing, flies to White City where Homeslice also adds another outlet to its mini pizza chain. 

In April 2018 in the City, the final restaurants to join the strong lineup in the Bloomberg Arcade are EKTE Nordic Kitchen, owned by Soren Jessen of 1 Lombard Street, serving informal Nordic inspired cooking, Brigadiers and a second restaurant from Michelin starred chef A Wong. 

Tomos Parry, formerly of Kitty Fisher's, will open his debut restaurant, Brat, on Redchurch Street in spring with a focus on fire cooking and food from the Basque country.

Set to open in King's Cross on Friday 26th October 2018, Coal Drops Yard adds a new shopping quarter to north London. Originally built in the 1850s to help distribute coal from the north-east and Yorkshire to London, Victorian brick arches and surviving ironwork are purposed in a design by Heatherwick Studio.

Over in west London Boxpark Wembley opens in late 2018. Differing slightly from its successful predecessors in Shoreditch and Croydon, instead of shipping containers, the Wembley site will come with a new and bespoke building design on Olympic Way. There will be 29 units for food and a cultural hub hosting over 200 events each year.

The biggest shake up to London's transport system since the Tube began, Crossrail's new Elizabeth line opens in December 2018. Connecting 41 stations from Reading in the west to Abbey Wood in the east, the new line integrates seven stations in central London. As well as cutting journey times and introducing grand spaces, the line adds new public works of art. The Culture Line reveals works of art commissioned for each central London station.

CENTRAL LONDON STATIONS: Abbey Wood - Woolwich - Custom House - Canary Wharf - Whitechapel - Liverpool Street - Farringdon - Tottenham Court Road - Bond Street - Paddington