West End shows reaching milestones in 2026

The West End wouldn’t be the West End without its staples.

While we’re always excited to welcome new shows into theatreland, we have to respect and admire the productions that have settled into and become part of its infrastructure, continuing to delight audiences night after night!

In 2025, we celebrated Les Misérables turning 40 with some spectacular celebrations, so we’re looking ahead to the next year and what might be in store.

Note: For anyone looking to have a West End mainstay, consider giving your show a title starting with the letter “M”.

Mamma Mia!

We simply can’t resist a jukebox musical here in London, especially a feel-good one set on a Greek island stuffed full of ABBA hits. Mamma Mia! famously celebrated a quarter of a century in the West End a couple of years ago, but as it enters its 27th we’re including it here as the longest-running jukebox musical in theatre history and fifth longest-running West End show.

Plays at the Novello Theatre

Matilda The Musical

The RSC’s musical adaptation of Matilda will celebrate a big birthday in 2026 – its fifteenth! Coincidentally, it is also the fifteenth longest running production in the West End. The Roald Dahl tale, with tunes by Tim Minchin, has welcomed many revolting children through the gates of Crunchem Hall for more than 5000 performances, and long may it continue!

Plays at the Cambridge Theatre

Moulin Rouge! The Musical

Spectacular spectacular news! Moulin Rouge! will have been can-canning for five years by the end of 2027. Based on the much-loved turn-of-the-century film about a Parisian courtesan who falls in love with a writer, it was one of the first new musicals to arrive in the West End post-pandemic and has been a sparkling diamond there ever since.

Plays at the Piccadilly Theatre

The Mousetrap

Agatha Christie’s famed whodunnit will embark on a tour in 2026 that continues into 2027, when the production will be celebrating 75 years of shocks and guesses! The production opened in London in 1952, following previews in Nottingham, where it has remained and holds the record for the West End’s longest theatrical run (30,000 shows and counting)- with booking open to 2027.

Plays at St Martin’s Theatre

The Phantom of the Opera

A masked singer of sorts has been haunting London for forty years now with his music of the night. The Andrew Lloyd Webber favourite continues to enchant audiences old and new as the third-longest-running West End show, and with rumours of a new film adaptation circulating. We wonder how prima donna those celebrations will be – we’re sure they have enough candles for the cake!

Plays at His Majesty’s Theatre

Wicked

Good G-oz! We all have Wicked fever and rightly so, thanks to the blockbuster movies starring Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande. The stage show flew into London 20 years ago and has defied all expectations ever since, becoming the ninth-longest-running West End show in history. We can’t see that anybody in all of Oz, no wizard that there is or was, is ever going to bring it down. Thank goodness!

Plays at the Apollo Victoria Theatre