Banksy is an enigmatic British graffiti artist who brings political street art to walls, bridges, and buildings worldwide.
Since rising to fame in the late 1990s, the artist’s witty, satirical murals and daring pranks have earned him millions.
New pieces pop up on a regular basis, like near Oxford Street in central London and another in France. His artwork can also be found across his hometown Bristol.
More recently, a statue appeared next to the Crimean War Memorial at Waterloo Place in central London with Banksy’s signature scrawled at the bottom.
Its appearance spurred discussion over its creator, with many thinking it’s Banksy despite no post on his Instagram channel confirming it.
The statue shows a man marching off the end of a plinth, holding a flag pole with the flag’s fabric covering his face.
While we wait for an official confirmation, why not take a look at some of his other famous London works? If you’re looking to find them, Metro has outlined where to spot them below.
Where is Banksy’s London graffiti?
Centre Point at Tottenham Court Road
In late December 2025, two identical Banksy artwork pieces cropped up in London, featuring two children lying down in winter clothing and pointing up at the sky.
Latest London news
- Influencer dies after Soho crash that left her in a coma
- Map shows London Marathon 2026 route and road closures for today
- Woman and child die after being pulled from water in London park
To get the latest news from the capital, visit Metro’s London news hub.
The two murals appears on side of an abandoned building in Queen’s Mews, Bayswater in West London and beside the Centre Point building on the intersection of Tottenham Court Road and Oxford Street.
While the Centre Point mural is still around now, the Bayswater graffiti was boarded up by workmen within a few short hours.
Royal Courts of Justice
In September 2025, a new Banksy artwork appeared outside the High Court in London, depicting a judge wielding a gavel and attacking an unarmed person on the floor who held a sign covered in blood.
The elusive graffiti artist confirmed the artwork as his on his Instagram with a caption ‘Royal Courts of Justice, London’, but the mural was quickly boarded up.
Within a day, the mural was scrubbed off the walls and the police had launched an investigation into criminal damage.
Animal art trail
Between August 5 and 13, 2024, nine animal-themed Banksy artworks appeared throughout London.
Some were removed, most lawfully, but one, a howling wolf on a satellite dish was stolen. A few, however, remain, including graffiti artwork of two pelicans eating fish.
They appeared on the side of the fish and chip shop Bonner’s Fish Bar in Northcote Road, Walthamstow. The artwork was been covered with clear Perspex to protect it.
The above two elephant silhouettes with their trunks stretched out towards each other in Edith Grove, Chelsea, were also part of the animal series.
One of the elephants was defaced with white stripes, but the local council removed the stripes and covered the work with a special paint to protect it.
Other animal-themed pieces that appeared around the same time include three swinging monkeys below a London Overground line in Brick Lane, east London that were removed in February 2025.
Also removed was the artwork of a goat precariously balancing on a pillar as rocks fall below it in Kew Green in West London, the graffiti of a tiger stretching on a dilapidated billboard in Cricklewood in northwest London, the London police box whose windows were decorated with a school of piranhas at Ludgate Hill and the artwork of a gorilla pulling up a shutter at London Zoo was removed for ‘safekeeping’.
Finally, artwork of a rhinoceros mounting a parked car on Westmoor Street in Charlton, south London was defaced after someone wearing a balaclava spray painted over the work just days after it appeared.
Stoke Newington
Banksy’s Royal family on a balcony was painted on the side of a building in Stoke Newington in the early 2000s.
The image was one of a series used for Blur’s Think Tank album in 2003.
Hackney Council started painting the wall black in 2009 and was about to cover it until locals pointed out it was a Banksy. They stopped, but the black paint remains around the artwork.
Finsbury Park
The Finsbury Park tree mural in Hornsey Road caught attention when it was put up shortly after St Patrick’s Day in 2024.
The artwork has been covered in clear plastic to protect it.
Mayfair
A Banksy mural of a woman falling from a building holding onto a shopping trolley turned up in 2011 in Bruton Street, Mayfair.
The work is known as both Falling Shopper and Shop Till You Drop.
Shoreditch
There are two Banksy pieces on the side of the defunct nightclub Cargo, which is now a multi-bar and restaurant called Viaduct in Shoreditch.
One of the works, named The Guard Dog, depicts a security guard with a poodle on a lead.
The other, called His Master’s Voice, shows a white dog pointing a bazooka at a gramophone.
They can be found in the outdoor seating area of The Arch, one of the Viaduct’s restaurants.
Poplar
Banksy’s piece My Taps Been Phoned’ popped up in Poplar in August 2011.
It appears to be a reference to the phone hacking scandal that had recently broken in the UK.
Where can you see Banksy’s art in the rest of the UK?
Banksy’s hometown of Bristol is packed with murals by the secretive artist.
One of his most famous works, the Grim Reaper, was originally painted on the side of the Thekla, a nightclub inside a boat docked in Bristol harbour.
However, in 2014, the piece was removed to protect it from damage. It’s now on display in Bristol’s M Shed museum.
You can also find the artwork Well Hung Lover on the side of a sexual health clinic on Frogmore Street, and The Girl with the Pierced Eardrum, a parody of the Johannes Vermeer painting, is on Hanover Place.
Full list of confirmed UK Banksy artworks
- The Great British Spraycation – North Beach, Lowestoft
- Luxury Rentals Only – Cromer, Norfolk
- Swooping Seagull – Lowestoft
- Model Village – Great Yarmouth
- Amusement Arcane Crane – Gorleston, Norfolk
- Couple Dancing – Great Yarmouth
- We’re All In The Same Boat – Lowestoft
- Valentine’s Day – Marsh Lane, Bristol
- Escaping Prisoner – Reading Prison
- Sneezing Woman – Bristol
- Hula Hoop Girl – Nottingham
- Reindeers – Birmingham
- Devolved Parliament – Bristol Museum & Art Gallery
- Season’s Greetings – Port Talbot
- The Mild Mild West – Bristol
- Well Hung Lover – Bristol
- This Is Not A Photo Opportunity – Cheddar Gorge, Somerset
- Lenin Punk – Weston-super-Mare
- Tesco Sandcastle – Hastings
- Winnie The Pooh Bear Trap – Bristol
- Ice Cream Bomb – Brighton
- Art Buff – Folkestone
- Burning Tyre – Bristol
- Draw The Raised Bridge – Hull
- Girl With The Pierced Eardrum – Bristol
His art has also popped up elsewhere in the UK, including Hull, Nottingham, and Cheltenham.
Outside the UK, Banksy visited Ukraine in 2022 and left a number of artworks to show his support for the country, including the Tank Trap See Saw and Irpin Gymnast.
He also confirmed a lighthouse mural as his on Instagram, artwork that shows a shining lighthouse with the words ‘I want to be what you saw in me’.
While the artist refused to share details of the mural’s location, it’s thought that the art can be found underneath a building along Rue Félix Fregier in Marseille, France.
Why has so much of Banksy’s art been destroyed?
The rocketing price of Banksy’s work means that many of his pieces vanish without warning as building owners try to make a profit.
An entire section of a shop wall in Lowestoft that displayed an original Banksy was removed in 2021 and taken to a secret location.
In December 2023, a Banksy artwork in Peckham of three drones on a traffic stop sign was stolen less than an hour after it was put up.
A man with bolt cutters tore the piece down and another man on a Lime rental bike rode away with it.
One gallery owner told the BBC that the sign could be worth up to £500,000.
In other instances, though, Banksy’s work has been accidentally destroyed.
Also in 2023 builders unknowingly demolished a Banksy mural on the side of a derelict farmhouse in Kent.
‘It made me feel sick realising it was a Banksy – we were gutted. We started demolishing it yesterday,’ one of the contractors involved said.
‘The landowner watched us do it and didn’t know either.’
Why did Banksy destroy his own art?
In 2018, a Banksy painting called Girl With Balloon was sold for more than £1 million at auction house Sotheby’s – and was shredded just moments later.
The auctioneers were unaware that Banksy had installed a shredding mechanism into the painting’s frame.
Following the incident, Alex Branczik, Sotheby’s senior director, said: ‘It appears we just got Banksy-ed.’
The original buyer still purchased the artwork at the full original price, but the painting was renamed from Girl With Balloon to Love is in the Bin.
Then, in 2021, the painting was sold again – this time setting the record for the most expensive painting to be sold at auction at £18.6 million.
How much is Banksy’s art worth?
Banksy doesn’t sell his own artwork. However, pieces of his work owned by other people have fetched tens of millions at auction.
He gave the artwork Game Changer to Southampton Hospital in 2020 as a thank you to NHS workers. The painting was later sold for £16.8million, with the money going towards NHS causes.
A 2005 painting called Sunflowers From Petrol Station, which parodied Van Gogh’s famous sunflower paintings, fetched £10.7million in 2021 when it was sold by fashion designer Sir Paul Smith.
And the artist reportedly made £22.7million selling his prints in the year to April 2025.
Who is Banksy?
The mystery surrounding Banksy has, understandably, made people eager to find out his true identity.
Though nothing’s ever been verified, there have been a few rumours, clues, and hints as to who they actually are.
Of course, it’s thought that Banksy wants to keep their identity a secret, given that graffiti is a crime – but myths about their real name are common, often linking back to the beginning of their career, as well as those who have publicly ‘named’ them.
Banksy began their artistic journey as one of Bristol’s DryBreadZ Crew. They were influenced by others on the Bristol Underground Scene – including 3D, better known as Robert Del Naja, one of the members of the band Massive Attack.
Rumours that Banksy is Massive Attack’s Robert Del Naja have persisted. The performer identified himself as a personal friend of Banksy, and in June 2017, rapper Goldie referred to Banksy as ‘Rob’ when conversing about art in a podcast interview with Scroobius Pip.
Interestingly, the timing of Banksy’s past works across the world is in tandem with the touring schedule of Massive Attack.
However, Goldie may have been referring to Robin Gunningham, who was said to be Banksy by some former schoolmates from Bristol and associates in a 2008 Mail on Sunday investigation.
The suggestion that Robin Gunningham was Banksy was supported by the study of locations of Banksy’s art, which correlated with the known movements of Gunningham.
In an interview with a Bristol community magazine, Boundless, Banksy was asked about the Robert De Naja rumours. When asked if he would confirm the claim that he was indeed Robert, he said simply: ‘No, because I’m not.’
Speculation that Banksy is a group or collective of graffiti artists is fairly common, too, and in 2014 an internet hoax circulated that Banksy had been arrested.
This is an updated version of an article originally published in August 2023.
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.
For more stories like this, check our news page.