Banksy London December 2025, new Banksy mural, Queen’s Mews W2 4BZ, Centre Point WC1A 1DB, London street art history, Banksy homelessness art — London has once again become the global stage for Banksy’s work. In the days before Christmas 2025, two nearly identical murals of children gazing at the sky appeared in the capital — one confirmed by Banksy, one widely believed to be part of the same intervention. But these works do not exist in isolation: they sit inside more than two decades of Banksy using London as his primary political and cultural canvas. This is reported by The WP Times, citing Associated Press and leading UK media.
The new Banksy murals – December 2025
In the days before Christmas 2025, a new Banksy appeared on the streets of London: a black-and-white stencil of two children in winter clothing lying on the ground and looking up at the sky, one of them pointing upward. The image was quickly recognised as part of the artist’s signature visual language — simple, human and emotionally direct.
Two almost identical versions emerged within days of each other in different parts of the city. One was later confirmed by Banksy himself in a quiet residential street in West London, while the other appeared earlier beside a major central London landmark, suggesting a carefully planned, two-location intervention. Placed just before Christmas, the image immediately resonated with wider debates about childhood, poverty and visibility in the capital, turning a small stencil into a city-wide social statement.
Queen’s Mews, Bayswater — the confirmed Banksy
- Date: 22 December 2025
- Address: Queen’s Mews, Bayswater, London W2 4BZ
- Coordinates: 51.513318, −0.189689
This mural, officially posted by Banksy, shows two children in winter clothing lying on their backs and pointing toward the sky. It is placed above garage doors in a quiet residential mews, forcing viewers to look up — mirroring the children’s own gesture.
Why this location matters: Bayswater is ordinary, domestic London. Banksy deliberately placed a fragile, emotional image inside a normal street, where poverty and insecurity are easy to overlook.
Centre Point, Tottenham Court Road — the suspected twin
- Date first seen: 19–20 December 2025
- Address: Centre Point, 101–103 New Oxford Street, London WC1A 1DB
- Coordinates: 51.516294, −0.129467
A visually identical mural appeared at the base of Centre Point, one of London’s most symbolically loaded buildings. Although not officially confirmed by Banksy, its timing and style strongly suggest it belongs to the same project.
Why this location matters: Centre Point was once infamous for standing empty while London faced a housing crisis, and it later gave its name to Centrepoint, the homelessness charity. Here, the children gazing upward read as a direct comment on housing insecurity and youth homelessness.
WhWhat the December 2025 works are saying
Banksy never provides official explanations for his work, but in this case the visual language is unusually clear and tightly constructed. The December 2025 murals use a small number of carefully chosen elements to deliver a focused social message.
- The children stand for vulnerability and innocence — figures who are least protected by the systems around them.
- Their winter clothing and their position on the ground point directly to cold, exposure and physical insecurity, reinforcing the idea of people who have nowhere safe to go.
- The upward gaze introduces a second layer: hope, imagination and the human instinct to look beyond immediate hardship.
Taken together, the murals form a quiet but powerful statement about child poverty and homelessness in London. Their appearance in the days before Christmas — a season of comfort, celebration and spending — sharpens that contrast, forcing the city to confront realities it would normally prefer to overlook.
Banksy’s London works — what came before
Banksy has used London for over 20 years to test ideas about power, class and visibility. Some of his most important works appeared here:
| Year | Location | Work | Core message |
|---|---|---|---|
| Early 2000s | South Bank | Girl with a Balloon | Innocence, hope, loss |
| 2004 | Soho | Kissing Coppers | Authority and sexuality |
| 2005 | West Bank barrier (London versions exhibited) | Political stencils | War, occupation |
| 2018 | Sotheby’s London | Girl with Balloon self-shredding | Art market, value |
| Sept 2025 | Royal Courts of Justice | Judge striking a protester | Power and justice |
| Dec 2025 | Bayswater & Centre Point | Stargazing children | Homelessness, hope |
London is where Banksy repeatedly returns when he wants maximum public and political impact.
Who Banksy is — the Hintergrund
Banksy is not simply a street artist — he is one of the most powerful economic and cultural forces in the global art market. Emerging from the Bristol underground graffiti scene in the mid-1990s, Banksy transformed stencil art into a worldwide industry built on anonymity, political commentary and extreme scarcity.
Although his identity has never been confirmed, Banksy’s works are now traded at the very highest levels of the international art market. Original canvases and authenticated street works routinely sell for hundreds of thousands or millions of pounds. In 2021, his painting Love Is in the Bin (the self-shredding version of Girl with Balloon) sold at Sotheby’s London for £18.6 million, one of the highest prices ever paid for a living British artist.
Banksy controls his own brand through Pest Control Office, a private authentication body that certifies which works are genuine. Without a Pest Control certificate, a Banksy piece — no matter how convincing — is effectively worthless on the market. This gives the artist total control over what becomes part of his official catalogue and what remains urban ephemera.
London plays a unique role in this system. It is not only where many of Banksy’s most famous works appeared, but also where his economic power is most visible. Major auctions of Banksy art regularly take place in London’s West End auction houses, and the city remains the primary legal and commercial hub for his market.
Banksy’s genius lies in combining illegal street art with high-value financial assets. A stencil sprayed overnight on a public wall — free for anyone to see — can later become a multi-million-pound cultural object. This tension between public access and private wealth is not accidental; it is at the core of Banksy’s phenomenon.
In that sense, the December 2025 murals are not just artworks. They are also interventions into London’s economy of attention, property and visibility. By placing emotionally charged images of vulnerable children into some of the city’s most expensive and symbolically loaded locations, Banksy continues to test the boundaries between art, money and social responsibility.
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