Londoners heading across the capital on Saturday and Sunday face a crowded, complicated weekend on the transport network, with Transport for London confirming a string of closures and partial shutdowns across the Underground, Overground, DLR and Elizabeth line.
The central line will be one of the hardest-hit routes, with no service between Marble Arch and Leytonstone on Saturday, May 16 and Sunday, May 17, including during Saturday Night Tube. Trains will also not stop at Mile End on those two days. TfL said no closures should affect people travelling to the major events taking place this weekend, but the warning comes as the city prepares for unusually heavy demand across central London and east London.
The scale of the disruption is tied to the sheer number of events landing at once. The Met is planning what it has called an “unprecedented” policing operation on Saturday, May 16, when two protest marches and the FA Cup final all take place on the same day. Scotland Yard has put heavy restrictions in place to keep the Unite the Kingdom and pro-Palestine Nakba Day rallies apart. Tube travel around Central London is expected to be extremely busy before and after the match between Chelsea and Manchester City at Wembley Stadium, where crowds will be moving in both directions at the same time.
Sunday brings a different pressure point. Homerton station will not open until 11am for the Hackney Half Marathon, and TfL is advising passengers to use Hackney Wick instead. Extra services will be put on to cope with the expected crowds heading to East London for the race, but there will still be no service between New Cross Gate and both Crystal Palace and West Croydon, and no service between Tower Gateway and Shadwell.
The weekend list also includes work that will affect people trying to move west and south. There will be no service between Paddington and Ealing Broadway until 7.45am on Sunday, while sections of two London Overground lines, the DLR and the Elizabeth line will also be affected between Saturday, May 16 and Sunday, May 17. On the DLR, there will be no service after 11.30pm each night from Friday, May 15 until Tuesday, May 19, a five-day stretch that will also include no service between Tower Gateway and Shadwell on Sunday.
For passengers, the message is straightforward: plan ahead, leave more time and expect some stations and links to be busier than usual, even where services are still running. With protest policing, football crowds and the Hackney Half Marathon all landing in the same 48-hour window, the network is being asked to absorb three different kinds of movement at once, and the central line sits right in the middle of that strain.
