UK Korean Events Calendar 2026: KCCUK, H Mart, and Local Programming
KCCUK has two events live this month, H Mart UK is running its full UK catalogue, and Korean community programming is settling into a regular rhythm. A practical calendar for UK readers, with venues and ticket notes.
What's on this month
Two Korean Cultural Centre UK events are live as of early May 2026, and both are worth a visit if you are within reach of central London. The Korean Cultural Centre UK (KCCUK) runs the country's main official cultural programme, and the What's On feed at kccuk.org.uk/en/whatson/ is the canonical UK calendar. Anything listed there is free to attend unless the event page states otherwise, which is rare.
The two current entries are a food festival and a ceramics exhibition, sitting at opposite ends of the cultural programme. Together they show how KCCUK sequences its calendar: one short, intense, social event paired with a longer-running gallery show.
Jung Festival, 1 to 4 May 2026
Jung Festival is KCCUK's spring food event, running from 1 to 4 May 2026. The category on the KCCUK listing is Food, and the format is a programme of cooking demonstrations, tastings, and short talks across four days. Entry is free, but a number of the cooking demos require a free ticket booked in advance through the KCCUK site. Walk-up access works for the open programme.
The festival is held at the KCCUK building at Northumberland Avenue, central London, near Embankment and Charing Cross stations. If you are travelling in for it, plan around the demo schedule rather than dropping in at random. The most popular sessions fill up early.
Icheon and Beyond: The Space Within Form
The exhibition "Icheon and Beyond: The Space Within Form" runs from 27 March to 5 June 2026, also at KCCUK. The category is Exhibition, and the focus is Korean ceramics from Icheon, a city designated by UNESCO as a Creative City of Crafts and Folk Art. The show covers contemporary Korean ceramic practice grounded in the Icheon tradition.
Free entry, no ticketing. Standard KCCUK gallery hours (Tuesday to Saturday, 10am to 6pm). For UK readers interested in Korean material culture beyond food and beauty, this is the most substantial exhibition currently on. The catalogue is available to read on the KCCUK site.
H Mart UK: where to actually shop
H Mart UK at hmart.co.uk is the largest UK-shipped Korean grocery operation and the most reliable source for UK-availability claims. The catalogue tree as of 2026 covers ready-to-cook foods, ramyun (in pack, cup, and box formats), dried seaweed and vegetables, snacks, and seasonings. Specific UK-stocked variants worth flagging include Shin Ramyun Tomyum, which has appeared as a distinct shelf SKU in recent updates.
H Mart UK ships nationally. Their physical stores cluster in west London (New Malden has the densest Korean retail presence in the UK). For UK readers planning a Korean cooking project, H Mart UK is the operational starting point. Their catalogue structure is the most useful single map of what is and is not actually available on the UK side.
Annual UK anchors to watch
A few recurring UK Korean events sit outside the current What's On feed but are worth tracking through the year.
Chuseok, the Korean harvest festival, falls in late September or early October. KCCUK typically runs a Chuseok-themed programme in the run-up to the date.
Seollal, Lunar New Year, is in late January or early February. Expect KCCUK programming, plus a demand spike for hangwa (traditional sweets) and tteokguk (rice-cake soup ingredients) at H Mart UK and other Korean retailers.
The London Korean Film Festival is a KCCUK annual event, typically in late autumn. Programme and ticketing go up roughly six weeks before the festival opens.
K-Music Festival is a KCCUK and SOAS classical and cross-genre music programme, running annually with venue partners across central London.
New Malden community programming
New Malden in south-west London is the densest Korean community in the UK, and a separate strand of Korean cultural programming runs there outside the KCCUK calendar. Local programming is typically advertised through community Facebook groups and the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames cultural events page rather than through any central feed.
If you are travelling specifically for Korean cultural programming, New Malden is worth a day trip. The high street has the densest concentration of Korean restaurants, supermarkets, and cafes in the country.
Booking notes
KCCUK events run through the official site only. Avoid third-party resellers, since most KCCUK events are free and any paid programming uses the KCCUK booking system directly. Free events sometimes still require a free ticket to manage capacity, particularly for cooking demos and gallery talks.
For Korean cultural news beyond UK programming, korea.net is the official Republic of Korea cultural-affairs portal, published in English. KCCUK and korea.net together give a complete picture of what is on, both UK-side and Korea-side, week to week.
Watch the KCCUK news section for any added events through summer. The site's news path has been intermittent, so the What's On feed at kccuk.org.uk/en/whatson/ remains the most reliable single page to bookmark.