London Named World Street Art Capital In New Study

While London might see its fair share of grey up in the skies throughout the year, there’s no shortage of bright colours to be found across the city. A good chunk of that can be found drawn across the walls of the big smoke, which is why it has just been named as the street art capital of the world in a new piece of research ahead of World Art Day tomorrow (April 15).

Slingo crunched the numbers on their ‘Graffi-Tourism’ blog and compared the top cities across the globe for all things street art. London was praised by the study for its art all around the city across walls, abandoned buildings, and more. They recognised Camden and Shoreditch as the two best-known hubs for street art, but also gave love to Leake Street tunnel as essential viewing for street art lovers.

With its score of 9.5 on the ranking system, London pipped Paris to the the post, with the city of love earning an 8.93 on the scoreboard which factors the number of street artworks in the city; TikTok and Instagram posts; and Google search numbers for terms including ‘street art’, ‘graffiti, and more.

Second and third placed Paris (with 1,065) and Melbourne (with 2,837) did trump London’s number of street artworks (472), so if it’s volume you’re after, you might be better placed checking out these cities. But London’s numbers for search terms and social media posts saw it come in far higher than any other city, particularly on Instagram, with 639,000 posts on graffiti and 609,000 on street art.

Three UK cities made the top 10 (London, Birmingham, Bristol), and the study reckons this owes a big part to the global success of the elusive Bristolian artist Banksy (and we reckon they’d be correct). View below to see how they ranked the rest of the cities around the world in the same study.