Here is a collection of london street art highlights from 2025. It’s my turn to pick so there is no pretence at being comprehensive, or fair or even it being about good and bad, it’s just my personal tastes and preferences and it is limited to just stuff I clocked for real, so none of that “grazing the best photos on the internet” biz. I should also mention it is a result of limited time because 2025 just can’t wait to end, thankf.
all photos: Dave Stuart
Featured image: Clare Ward-Thornton, Oct 2025
For the second year running Banksy gifted new street art to London. The image of a law lord beating a protester was superbly placed at the back of the law courts although the piece spoke more about abuse of power and authoritarian restrictions on freedom of speech and right to protest, so the true target, the perpetrators of the injustice, would be the law makers in parliament. More came at Christmas with a radical two site diptych involving a bright star appearing in the sky and guiding homeless youths to a refuge halfway across London, the novelty and genius of this achievement is revealed in this recent blog post HERE.
Aside: please ignore the link in the caption for that first Banksy photo, 2025 ends with the past 6 years of Graffoto blog posts wiped out and apparently no backup on the host website and it’s not their fault. Anyone know anything about tech BS who could help understand how the host’s explanation of their investigation’s findings makes any sense at all please get in touch!
Aside: please ignore the link in the caption for that first Banksy photo
2025 ends with the past 6 years of Graffoto blog posts wiped out and apparently no backup on the host website and it’s not their fault. Anyone know anything about tech BS who could help understand how the host’s explanation of their investigation’s findings makes any sense at all please get in touch!
A meteoric year for Florist reached escape velocity in the Summer with a beautiful piece on a curved former bank property and one on a concrete plinth used almost exclusively for skinning up. By Autumn Florist had shrugged off the shackles of anonymity with a series of philosophical pieces speaking to camera culminating with a December dawn cop raid on his and his Mother’s homes. Should have stuck to radio.
The obvious inspiration for Florist is the French street artist Space Invader. 2025 ended with a major new invasion with 27 brand new pixel mosaics appearing which, at the time of writing, are believed to have all remarkably survived. You may look forward to a Shoreditch Street Art Tours blog post within the next few days on that.
Street art benefits from a greater inclination towards collaboration among its practitioners compared to conventional studio/gallery artists. Sweet Toof collaborated on walls with numerous painters this including Rowdy, Nylon, Mul and Bonk
The most spectacular collaboration (as distinct from multi artist “jam”) was the all star combination of Damien Hirst, Shepard Fairey and Space Invader. Simulated tearing wove together layers of the Obey Giant motif, trademark Hirst spots on white, Fairey patterns and Invader-esque pixellated references to Hirst’s “For The Love Of God” diamond encrusted skull. The trio also collaborated on several non permissioned paste up street art pieces. Expect a review of “Triple Trouble”, their collaborative show on at Hirst’s Newport St Gallery until 29th March 2026 on a blog very close to here, sometime soon, hopefully before the show ends. Stop pushing me, jeez, it’s all pressure.
Thomas Iser brought a paste up artefact of his Universal Humanity project to London for the first time, though a recent sighting could hint at a second visit to Shoreditch in December.
The all female WOM collective had numerous events across the year but their Allen Gardens Summer Jam was extraordinary, this Sia whimsical beauty is just a sample representative pick from a number of super murals painted that weekend.
Fat Cap Sprays spent the year doing Simpsons characters to no one’s disappointment. [4093]
If you have read this far, firstly congratulations and thank you. You might be thinking “Ah, so they don’t do political street art any more in Shoreditch” in which case please accept this blog’s apologies as any such perception indicated a flaw in the blog and the whole notion of editorial selection. At the start of the year no one had heard of Grow Up Art, by the end of the year his art was being seen by millions the world over and was popping up at political events everywhere (that is, everywhere there was a need to highlight the dangers of fascism). Savvy manipulation of social media and an awareness that a good piece of street art will be seen way more online than actually seen on the streets irl as they say. Donald in speedos with Putin and Epstein tramp stamps is an image we did not need!
Dof the cap to friend and co-guide Subdude whose artistic high point this year was his paraphrasing of the famous Martin Niemöller poem of regret that served to highlight the dangers of fascism, seen in the rewording to be as prevalent today.
When it comes to hitting the nail on the head no one does it with quite the style or skill of Pablo Fiasco, Shoreditch is blessed to have such a skilled and imaginative stencillist creating so much on its walls.
Pavement writing became quite a thing in 2025. A dozen words or less from LosingLxve starting appearing on floors, walls and canal towpaths across East, Central and West London early in the year, Beak and Squeak realised the potential from late Spring onwards and by Autumn numerous street artists were dabbling in it, albeit usually briefly. Thus far nothing really suggests the format can be relied upon for minimalist literary masterpieces or life changing wisdoms and insights though LosingLxve did venture a piece of train graffiti and one thing that even made the mainstream press, though not in a positive way, was the surge in graffiti on train insides and panels on the Bakerloo Line and Central Line in particular.
Even today this little beauty was spotted New Year’s Eve morning by my always reliable graffiti train spotter Lady NoLions who readers of reviews and posts from many years ago may recall is my better half.
Roids put up one of the most breathtaking pieces of writing this year, the letters are stacked in negative space, roids in voids, with elements casting shadows on the letter behind and the leakage where the outline of the R has burst is just beautiful.
On that very same spot later in the year SMO had a day of painting but left a small part of the wall untouched, the following day fellow crew member TUIS rocked up and did this brilliant site specific illuminated graffiti:
2025 may have witnessed a revolution on the streets, it was like 2020 all over again as NFTs arrived. The blog post has been lost that covered this detail compiled at a moment when the explanation was fresh enough in my mind to be understood. The twist was the “street art” in NFT form could be obtained free by visiting a participating piece of street art, minting the coin by wafting your phone over a chip in the wall and registering your ownership of a digital coin connected to the physical artwork on the streets, yet independent of it. Each NFT was available for only a limited time, like a few days, so a kind of scarcity was contrived and if that inspired desirability, then any subsequent trades of the NFT would generate a form of value but you have to believe in bitcoins. What I can say now is those bitcoins I collected don’t appear to have made my fortune, in fact it does seem there have been no trades at all so far as I can tell (I might be looking at the wrong stuff!) and that scheme hasn’t had any new artworks appear on walls since June. A slow burner perhaps but sufficiently novel to be worthy of recording.
Just to finish off this review here is a selection of a few photos not previous seen on this blog, thank you to all the artists who contributed colour, wit, passion, creativity and intelligence to the walls of Shoreditch this year, and best wishes to all readers for a great 2026.
