Today is Saturday, 27th September, 2025, and I’ve scheduled this post to appear at 11:00am – which means at the time this article appears it will be precisely four weeks to the minute until the doors are open to the public on the 2025 RISC OS London Show, which takes place on Saturday, 25th October. The precise details you need, as a discerning RISC OS user and show visitor, are:
Harrow District Masonic Centre,
Northwick Circle,
Kenton,
Harrow,
HA3 0EL.
The venue has ample (and free) parking for visitors making the trip by car, and for those coming by public transport, both Kenton and Northwick Park stations are only a very short walk away.
If you’re travelling far, and planning to stay in London one or more nights to make it easier, there is a Premier Inn fairly local to the venue – at which you might even bump into one or two exhibitors, depending which nights you (and they) stay. In addition to this, there are many cheap hotels in the Watford area, which being only 25 miles away and outside of the ULEZ area are good options for drivers, and for public transport users the Watford Junction and Watford High Street stations are on the London Overground line with trains going directly to Kenton every fifteen minutes.
And, of course, if you choose to stay longer, you’ll have excellent public transport links into London – at which you might find one or two things to see and do that’ll make it a worthwhile stay.
Back to the important details: The London Show’s doors will be open from 11:00am and closed again at 4:00pm, with a ticket price of £7 payable on entry, with under-16s getting in for free. The show’s organisers, the RISC OS User Group of London (ROUGOL) ask that you try to have the correct change with you when you arrive and intend paying by cash – but two other acceptable options are payment by card, or payment by cash accompanied by the words “Keep the change!”)
With the formalities (and a slight diversion into staying over) out of the way, what can you expect to see when you’ve made it to the front of the massive queue, paid your entry fee, and made it through the doors?
There are currently twenty exhibitors listed on the show website, which makes for quite a full room, although (off the record, you didn’t hear this from me) I believe it may be possible to squeeze in one or two more (smaller?) exhibitors – so if you have anything you wish to show off, now is probably the time to get in contact with the organisers, before it’s too late.
Those twenty include many familiar names, covering pretty much everything you need as a RISC OS aficionado. The most obvious three broad areas are software, hardware, and publications:
- There will be software of all sorts available from the likes of R-Comp, CJE Micro’s (yes, according to the website they’ll be exhibiting again), Sine Nomine, Steve Fryatt, and others, with more defined areas, such as games, covered by AMCOG and Soft Rock Software, or hardware emulation from the RPCEmu developers, an electronic filofax from North One, and so on.
- Hardware will be available from R-Comp, RISCOSbits, and CJE – and with the latter there, you know that hardware covers a very broad spectrum and includes those annoying little things that you keep losing. (Or am I the only one?)
- If you’re looking for something to read (or just refer to), you’ll be able to pick up the latest issue of PDF magazine Drag ‘n Drop from one of another two exhibitors named Chris (the aforementioned CJE being another). That’ll be the one of the Dewhurst variety, who will also have a range of books available, and the Chris of the Hall variety will have his updated Impression manuals.
That breakdown isn’t exclusive – for example Chris Hall will also have some software available, as will Chris Dewhurst, who may also have some hardware in the form of a graphics tablet, Soft Rock Software doesn’t just have games available, and so on, and a you’ll also find a charity stand, which is a source of all three of those broad categories. Raising money for Combat Stress, a very worthy cause that helps provide mental health support to veterans, the charity stand could be your source for an absolute bargain or two, while at the same time helping them out.
The operating system itself will also be featured as usual, with RISC OS Developments, who own it, and RISC OS Open, who administer it, both exhibiting.
There is also at least one new London Show exhibitor in the form of Paolo Zaino, aka ZFP Systems. Paolo will be demonstrating his early developments on Merlin, a “modern, memory-safe kernel and platform”, along with other software he has developed, or is currently working on, and trying to coax you in to join the RISC OS Community. A more detailed news article about some of Paolo’s developments will be appearing on RISCOSitory in the near future.
So what else is there to say, other than the usual: See you there!
