Correct as of July 2026
Every year, the West End sees scores of shows debut. Many of them are for a limited engagement or for a whole season, but there are some shows which are so special that audiences keep coming back for them year after year.
Below are the 20 longest-running shows to have been staged in the West End, comprising drama, comedy, musical and variety. How many have you seen? And will your favourites be the next show to crack the top 20?
1. The Mousetrap
1952 – present (over 30,642 performances)
Agatha Christie’s whodunnit mystery began life as a radio play, written as a birthday present for Queen Mary, wife of George V. Five years later she adapted it for the stage. Set in a recently converted guest house, five guests arrive before a sergeant of the Berkshire police turns up investigating a recent murder. Before long, the guests have been snowed in and another murder takes place…
The play began life at Theatre Royal, Nottingham and briefly toured England before arriving at the Ambassadors Theatre 25 November. The original cast was led by Richard Attenborough and his wife Sheila Sim.
In 1957, the play broke the record for longest running play in British theatre – a title it doesn’t look to be giving up any time soon. The play moved over the road to its current home, St Martin’s Theatre, in March 1974 and has stayed there ever since. Among many anniversaries, on 19 March 2025 it reached the landmark of 30,000 performances.
2. Les Misérables
1985 – present (over 16,189 performances)
Les Mis debuted in Paris in September 1980 before an adapted version arrived in London five years later. Based on Victor Hugo’s novel and set in revolutionary-era France, Les Misérables is the story of former convict Jean Valjean and his quest for redemption.
Its first three-month engagement at Barbican Theatre opened on 8 October 1985 and sold out. The show transferred to the Palace Theatre before Christmas and has been running continuously in the West End ever since, making it the longest-running musical in the world after The Fantasticks (off-Broadway). In 2004 it moved to the Queen’s Theatre, later renamed Sondheim Theatre, where the show celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2025.
3. Phantom Of The Opera
1986 – present (over 15,897 performances)
Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom Of The Opera opened at Her Majesty’s Theatre (now His Majesty’s Theatre) in October 1986 and has remained there ever since. The show celebrated its 10,000th performance in 2010 and its 40th anniversary in 2026.
The story of a deformed musical genius’s obsession with a talented soprano, Phantom has won more than 70 major theatre awards and has been seen by more than 140 million people. It is the longest-running show in Broadway history and the first to reach 10,000 performances in New York.
4. The Woman In Black
1989 – 2023 (13,232 performances)
Based on Susan Hill’s chilling 1983 novel, The Woman In Black is a terrifying play within a play, performed by only three actors. In an empty Victorian theatre, an old man employs a young actor to help dramatise the time he was sent to a remote house and deal with the last will of Mrs Drablow. The play was very popular with school groups due to its meta-fictional narrative and use of stage magic to spook and scare its audience.
After originally being staged at the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough, it arrived in London with runs at the Lyric Hammersmith, Strand (now Novello) Theatre and Playhouse before settling at the Fortune Theatre from August 1989. Like all West End productions, it paused during the covid-19 lockdown restrictions. It resumed in September 2021 for a final year and a half.
5. Mamma Mia!
1999 – present (over 10,865 performances)
Mamma Mia! is a jukebox musical featuring the songs of Swedish pop sensation and Eurovision Song Contest winners ABBA. Although it wasn’t the first jukebox musical, it is surely the most successful and inspired a new generation of jukebox musicals to be made. The show follows a young bride-to-be on a Greek Island who wants to track down her father, so he can give her away at the wedding.
The musical opened on 23 March 1999 at the Prince Edward Theatre, before transferring to the Prince of Wales Theatre in June 2004 and finally the Novello Theatre in September 2012. It has been seen by over 60 million people in 50 productions in 16 different languages. The show celebrated its 9,000th performance on 3 March 2022.
6. Disney’s The Lion King
1999 – present (over 10,622 performances)
Although Disney’s The Lion King’s script is faithful to the 1994 animated feature film, its continued success is surely down to the stunning theatrical choreography, costuming and puppetry, helmed by the Olivier Award-winning director/costume designer Julie Taymor.
Like the movie, Disney’s The Lion King follows the Hamlet-inspired story of Simba, a young lion who challenges his murderous uncle for the throne of Pride Lands. The show is one of two shows in the top 20 with music by Elton John.
7. Blood Brothers
1988 – 2012 (10,013 performances)
Willy Russell’s Blood Brothers is a Liverpool-set musical about twin brothers who were raised separately but became childhood friends. The class differences between the richer and poorer twin start to reveal themselves as they grow up and fall in love with the same woman.
Blood Brothers holds the record for longest-running revival production. The original production ran for six months, winning two Olivier Awards, but the record-breaking revival followed a 1987 national tour. It returned to the West End, first at the Albery Theatre (now the Noël Coward Theatre) in 1988 before moving to the Phoenix Theatre in 1991.
The production saw many famous faces including Spice Girl Mel C, Barbara Dickson – who appeared in both the original and revival – and four of the six Nolan Sisters.
8. Cats
1981 – 2002 (8,949 performances)
Andrew Lloyd Webber’s famed musical takes its inspiration from Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, a collection of poetry by T. S. Eliot. The plot follows a group of cats – Jellicle cats – who are competing to win the prize of ascending to the Heavyside Layer and coming back to a new life.
Cats opened at the New London Theatre in 1981 and closed 21 years later in 2002, making it London’s longest-running musical until Les Misérables overtook it in 2006. Alongside the music, the show is famed for its choreography and the venue was later renamed the Gillian Lynne Theatre in honour of the visionary choreographer who brought Cats to life.
Cats made a return to the West End with two winter revivals in 2014 and 2015 at the London Palladium, followed by new staging at the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre in 2026. The show was radically reimagined in a critically acclaimed production, Cats: The Jellicle Ball, in New York in 2024.
9. Wicked
2006 – present (7,720 performances)
Wicked, based on the book by Gregory Maguire, tells a story that sits alongside L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Instead of focussing on Dorothy, it tells the origin of Glinda the Good and Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West. It premiered on Broadway in 2003 before arriving in the West End’s Apollo Victoria Theatre in September 2006.
The show celebrated its 20th anniversary in the West End in 2026, the same year it overtook Starlight Express to become the eighth longest-running West End musical and hot on the heels of a two-part Hollywood blockbuster film adaptation starring West End stars Cynthia Erivo and Jonathan Bailey, alongside pop star Ariana Grande.
10. Starlight Express
1984 – 2001 (7,406 performances)
Much like Cats, Starlight Express is another Andrew Lloyd Webber musical about an unlikely subject. The show tells the story of a child’s toy train set come to life. The big selling point of the show was that all the actors wore rollerskates. For the production, the Apollo Victoria Theatre was drastically renovated to feature racetracks that went around the audience in the stalls and along the front of the Royal Circle.
The rock musical wowed West End theatregoers for 17 years, coming to a halt in 2001. It was revived for two years at the Starlight Auditorium in Wembley from 2024, and continues to live on in Germany, where it has been performed continuously since 1988 in a custom-built theatre.
11. No Sex Please, We’re British
1971 – 1987 (6,761 performances)
This critically-slated farce delighted audiences at the Strand (now Novello) Theatre when it opened in 1971 and in 1977, it overtook There’s A Girl In My Soup as the longest-running comedy in the West End.
The comedy follows the complications and confusion after a newly-married assistant bank manager sends off a mail order for Scandanavian glassware and receives a flood of pornography instead. Two years into its run, the play was adapated into a film starring Ronnie Corbett.
The original cast included Michael Crawford, who went on to also originate the title role in Phantom Of The Opera, and later featured David Jason (Only Fools And Horses) and Andrew Sachs (Fawlty Towers).
12. Stomp
2002 – 2018 (6,512 performances)
Stomp is a show unlike any other on this list of longest-running West End productions. The show takes ordinary objects like plastic bags, dustbins and sinks to create music in the mundane. Alongside its physical comedy and irresistable music, it perhaps found popularity with domestic and international audiences due to the non-verbal show having no language barrier.
It began life in Brighton in 1991 and had a season at Sadler’s Wells in 1994 where it won the Best Choregraphy Olivier Award. Among many international tours, it found a permanent residence in 2002 at the Vaudeville Theatre and later the Ambassadors Theatre, from 2007. As part of its 16 year run, it was featured at the Royal Variety Show and the 2012 Summer Olympics closing ceremony.
13. Chicago
1997 – 2012 (6,187 performances)
Like Blood Brothers, this is record is held by a revival rather than the first London production. After a run in the late ’70s, Chicago returned to London in November 1997 at the Adelphi Theatre. It ran there for nine years before transferring back to the Cambridge Theatre, home of the first 1979 London production, for another six years.
The show follows a 1920s Chicago lawyer who makes celebrities out of his clients in order to avoid a guilty verdict, in this case two female vaudevillian performers accused of murders. With its Jazz-age allure and witty Bob Fosse book, the show oozes cool, helped by its rotating celebrity cast.
After a five year absence, Chicago reopened in the West End at the Phoenix Theatre in early 2018 until 5 January 2019.
14. Matilda The Musical
2011 – present (over 5,555 performances in the West End)
Matilda The Musical is based on Roald Dahl’s beloved children’s book that tells the story of Matilda Wormwood, her incredible hunger for learning and unstoppable desire to the right thing. Ignored by her family and bullied by her headmistress, the terrifying Miss Trunchbull, Matilda eventually finds hope in her teacher, Miss Honey.
The Royal Shakespeare Company recruited Australian comedian Tim Minchin to write the music and lyrics to the show, which enjoyed a succesful run in Stratford-upon-Avon before coming to the West End and winning a record-breaking (at the time) seven Olivier Award wins in 2012.
The show celebrated 15 years in the West End in 2026.
15. Buddy – The Buddy Holly Story
1989 – 2002 (5,140 performances)
Buddy Holly was a pioneering figure of American rock ‘n’ roll, but surprisingly his story was first brought to the stage at the Theatre Royal, Plymouth, with the help of Paul McCartney, who owned the copyright to Buddy Holly’s music. It arrived in London two months later.
The show details his short-lived, but nonetheless hugely influential rise to fame as part of the Crickets and then as a solo musician. It leads to his untimely death at age 22 in an aeroplane crash alongside Ritchie Valens and ‘The Big Bopper’ JP Richardson, known as The Day The Music Died.
The bio-musical ran in the West End for more than 14 years and continues to play throughout England and at international venues.
16. The Book Of Mormon
2013 – present (4,890 performances)
Written by South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, along with Avenue Q co-creator Robert Lopez, The Book Of Mormon is a satirical musical that takes shots at everything from organised religion to consumerism, the state of the economy and the musical theatre genre itself.
After nearly seven years of development, their musical opened to sold-out audiences on Broadway, before transferring to Prince Of Wales Theatre in London. The show went on to win four Olivier Awards, including Best New Musical.
17. We Will Rock You
2002 – 2014 (4,657 performances)
Featuring songs by Queen, We Will Rock You was originally intended to be a biography about lead singer Freddie Mercury, but ultimately became a fantasy story about resistance against conformity in a dystopian future.
Despite initially harsh critical reviews, the jukebox musical drew approving audiences to the Dominion Theatre and remained popular until it closed in 2014. It was revived for a summer season at the London Coliseum in 2023, starring Ben Elton, who wrote the book for the show.
18. Thriller Live
2009 – 2020 (over 4,657 performances)
More choreographed concert than musical, Thriller Live is a non-stop playlist featuring highlights from Michael Jackson’s 45-year career, from his time with the Jackson 5 to Thriller and beyond.
Originally scheduled from January 2009 to May of the same year, the show ran to 2020 and continued to draw Jackson and pop fans to London’s Lyric Theatre.
19. Billy Elliot The Musical
2005 – 2016 (4,566 performances)
Like The Lion King, Billy Elliot is based on a movie and also features the music of Elton John.
The musical tells the story of a boy’s pursuit of ballet in a Northern town beset by a mining strike. It premiered at the Victoria Palace Theatre in 2005. Ten years after its final performance it was announced the show would return to the West End featuring Liam Mower, one of the original three Billys, now playing grown-up Billy.
20. The Play That Goes Wrong
2014 – present (over 4,489 performances)
The Play That Goes Wrong began life in The Old Red Lion Theatre, a room above a pub in Islington with a capacity of 60 people. It has now become the longest currently-running comedy in the West End and Mischief and has spawned numerous spin-offs as well as two BBC TV series.
Like the first show on this list, it appears to tell the story of a whodunnit in a remote country manner. Unlike that first show, this play is ostensibly being performed by one of the worst amateur-dramatic groups you’ve ever seen. As the Cornely Dramatic Society fumble their way through the story, lines get missed, props are mislayed, fires break out and before long the set starts to fall apart.
The show celebrated its tenth anniversary at the Duchess Theatre in 2022 and soon after received a royal visit from King Charles and Queen Camilla, after they enjoyed the team’s latest show, The Comedy About Spies, at the Royal Variety Show.
*Information supplied to Society of London Theatre, correct as of July 2026. Ranked by number of performances.
