Art News: Banksy Murals in 2026, Where to See Them in London and Bristol

Banksy's murals appear overnight and are often gone within days, painted over, boarded up, cut out or stolen. The last year has followed the pattern. A judge beating a protester on the Royal Courts of Justice was removed within days in September 2025; two children gazing at the stars appeared in London before Christmas; and in April 2026 he left a statue on a plinth in St James's. Here are his best-known walls, which ones you can still see in London and Bristol, and what happens to them when they come off the wall.

London: the latest

On 8 September 2025 a judge in a wig, striking a protester on the ground with his gavel, appeared on the Queen's Building of the Royal Courts of Justice, the day after police arrested more than 800 people at a protest in support of Palestine Action. Banksy confirmed it on Instagram. Within hours it was hidden behind screens and guarded, and HM Courts and Tribunals Service had it removed because the building is listed.

Security guards in front of the screened-off mural at the Royal Courts of Justice, 8 September 2025. Photo: Matt Brown, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Just before Christmas two children in bobble hats and boots, lying on their backs with one pointing at the sky, appeared above a row of garages on Queen's Mews in Bayswater, which Banksy claimed, and in identical form near Centre Point on Tottenham Court Road, which he did not. The boy appears to be the same figure he painted in Port Talbot in 2018. At last report the Bayswater wall was boarded over and the Centre Point version was behind a clear screen, damaged by paint.

In the early hours of 29 April 2026 a statue of a man in a suit, stepping off a plinth with a flag blown across his face, was put up on Waterloo Place, near the Crimean War Memorial and the statue of Edward VII. Banksy confirmed it with a video the next day. Westminster City Council fenced it off, and by September had spent more than £60,000 on security while it explored what to do with it.

Banksy's statue on Waterloo Place, St James's, May 2026. Photo: Aethonatic, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.

London: the 2024 animals and what survives

In March 2024 Banksy sprayed bright green paint across a wall on Hornsey Road in Finsbury Park, behind a heavily pruned tree, so that from across the road the bare tree seems to be in leaf, with a small figure holding a pressure washer beside it. It was splashed with white paint within days and, at last report, is behind protective panels.

Crowds at the Hornsey Road mural, Finsbury Park, 19 March 2024. Photo: Jim Osley, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

That August he painted nine animals in nine days. Few lasted. The wolf in Peckham was stolen, the cat in Cricklewood was taken down the same week, and Transport for London washed the monkeys off a Brick Lane bridge that December. The goat in Kew and the gorilla on the shutter at London Zoo were removed for safekeeping. The elephants in Chelsea, the pelicans on a Walthamstow fish bar and the rhino in Charlton are still on their walls, and the piranhas, painted on a police box near St Paul's, are due to go on show at the new London Museum at Smithfield.

Older London pieces survive in odd places: the royal family on Stoke Newington Church Street, a graffiti painter off Portobello Road, rats in King's Cross and the City, and two pieces of 2017 behind perspex in the Beech Street tunnel at the Barbican. Many more have gone, among them the stencil he left on Regent's Canal in Camden during the Copenhagen climate summit in 2009.

I Don't Believe in Global Warming, Regent's Canal, Camden, December 2009. Photo: Matt Brown, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Bristol

Bristol, where Banksy started, has about a dozen of his works left. The Mild Mild West, on our cover, has been on the side of 80 Stokes Croft since the late 1990s: a teddy bear throwing a Molotov cocktail at three riot police, painted after police raids on unlicensed parties.

Well Hung Lover, on Frogmore Street and best seen from the bridge on Park Street, shows a naked man hanging from a window ledge. The council let it stay in 2006 after a public vote backed keeping it, and the paint thrown at it since is still visible.

Well Hung Lover on Frogmore Street, Bristol, March 2026. Photo: Earthkingfather, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

On Lower Lamb Street, a line of words of 2011 runs across a brick wall, using its fittings as features: You Don't Need Planning Permission to Build Castles in the Sky. One of the vents has since been bricked up.

You Don't Need Planning Permission to Build Castles in the Sky, Lower Lamb Street, Bristol, November 2022. Photo: Christophe Krief, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

The Girl with a Pierced Eardrum, a 2014 take on Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring with an outside security alarm as the earring, is on Hanover Place on Spike Island. The Grim Reaper, painted on the side of the Thekla boat, is now in the M Shed museum, and the Paint Pot Angel from his 2009 show at the Bristol Museum is still in its entrance hall.

The Girl with a Pierced Eardrum, far right, on Hanover Place, Spike Island, Bristol, July 2017. Photo: Ian Capper, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Beyond London and Bristol

In December 2018 Banksy painted Season's Greetings on a garage in Port Talbot: a boy catching snowflakes on his tongue that turn out to be ash from a burning skip. An art dealer bought it, and it was moved off the site and put on show in the town.

Season's Greetings on display in Port Talbot, November 2021. Photo: Sionk, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

In November 2022 he painted seven works in Ukraine. In Irpin a gymnast balances on a hole left by a shell; when the building was demolished in 2023, the section of wall was cut out and set in a metal frame, 7.5 tonnes in all. In Kyiv two children use an anti-tank barrier as a seesaw.

The gymnast on a shelled building in Irpin, Ukraine, November 2022. Photo: Rasal Hague, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Children on a seesaw made from an anti-tank barrier, Kyiv, November 2022. Photo: Rasal Hague, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

In October 2013 he spent a month in New York, putting up a new piece every day under the title Better Out Than In. Hammer Boy, a boy swinging a mallet at a fire hydrant as if at a fairground strength test, on West 79th Street, drew crowds like this one. In Venice, the Migrant Child he painted on a palazzo in 2019 was removed from its wall, restored, and unveiled near the Arsenale in May 2026 before a tour of the city.

Crowds at Hammer Boy on the Upper West Side, New York, October 2013. Photo: Charley Lhasa, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Can you sell a Banksy mural?

Several walls have been cut out and sold, but they are a market of their own. Pest Control, the only body that can authenticate a Banksy, does not authenticate street pieces, so a mural taken off a building comes without the certificate that buyers and the main auction houses expect. Ownership can be disputed too, since the building's owner, the council and the people who campaigned to keep it may all have a claim.

The Banksys that trade most are his signed and unsigned prints and his canvases, with Pest Control paperwork. Our Banksy price guide and authentication guide cover both, and our page on selling street art covers the wider market.

If you own a Banksy print or original and are thinking of selling, send us photographs for a free valuation. There is no obligation to sell, and we act for you rather than for the saleroom.

Cover: The Mild Mild West on Stokes Croft, Bristol, May 2026. Photo: Earthkingfather, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.