Olympia London Regeneration — Kensington Cultural District

Olympia’s Victorian exhibition halls are still standing. The 1.3 billion pound regeneration built over and between them instead of knocking them down, threading a curving glass canopy through a Grade II listed roofscape while parts of the site kept trading.

Project Scope

The scheme covers 2.25 million square feet across 14 acres in West Kensington. Heatherwick Studio and SPPARC co-designed it, Laing O’Rourke is main contractor and Gardiner & Theobald is cost consultant. The British Airways Theatre is a 1,575-seat, five-storey proscenium house opening in 2027, the largest purpose-built theatre in London since the National in 1976. The British Airways ARC is a 3,800-capacity live music venue at the rear of the site. One Olympia, a 550,000 square foot office building, started welcoming tenants in 2026 and houses Premier League Studios, an international convention centre and The Addison lounge. Two hotels opened in summer 2026: the 204-room Hyatt Regency London Olympia on 6 July, and the 146-room citizenM earlier that season. Eleven food and beverage venues roll out through 2026 into early 2027.

Why It Matters

Olympia secured 925 million pounds in senior refinancing on 1 April 2026, which says something about lender appetite for large UK mixed-use at a point when very little of it is getting funded. Projected impact runs to more than 600 million pounds a year for the UK economy, 7,000 jobs, and roughly 10 million annual footfall across the venues and hotels. The harder achievement is operational rather than financial: building an entire district around and above a listed hall that never fully closed is a sequencing problem most heritage schemes solve by shutting the doors for three years.

Project Team & Details