September is a particularly strong month for South Asia-related exhibitions at UK public institutions, all free to visit.

A Mughal Songbook
8 September 2026–7 March 2027 | Fitzwillian Museum, Cambridge

The Fitzwilliam Museum explores the world of music, poetry and performance in Mughal South Asia through the extraordinary Plowden songbook, a rare manuscript of 77 songs in Persian, Urdu, Classical Hindi and Punjabi. Paintings, manuscripts and music bring the cultural life of late Mughal India vividly to life.

Amar Kanwar
23 September 2026–31 January 2027 | Serpentine North, Serpentine Galleries

New Delhi-based artist and filmmaker Amar Kanwar presents a major solo exhibition of new and existing films and multi-screen installations. His poetic work examines the legacies of Partition and decolonisation, as well as displacement, power, justice and memory.

Balraj Khanna: Lines of Flight
30 September 2026–21 February 2027 | Ikon Gallery, Birmingham

Ikon presents the first major survey of the Indian-born British artist Balraj Khanna (1939–2024), bringing together work from across his long career and exploring his distinctive contribution to British and South Asian modernism.

Sagarika Sundaram: Reservoir

30 September 2026-10 January 2027 | Henry Moore, Institute, Leeds

Indian born, and US based, textile artist Sagarika Sundaram's first institutional exhibition Reservoir brings together a body of work created especially for the show and produced in the artist's temporary studio in Kutch, Gujarat, a region of India renowned for its indigenous craft traditions.