Christie's Lates returns to King Street on 11 September 2026 around the Johnny Marr collection. Entry is free and open to all, on registration.
James Christie held his first sale in London in 1766 and the house has been at 8 King Street in St James’s since 1823, which makes the saleroom older than most of what passes through it. It is now owned by François Pinault through Groupe Artémis and turned over 6.2 billion dollars in 2025. Two hundred and sixty years of that history sit in a building that most people walk past without ever going in.
Lates is the answer to that. It is Christie’s own alternative to the private view: the saleroom is hung with a sale that is about to be called, the programming is live rather than curatorial, and entry is free to anyone who registers rather than to anyone on a list. It is the shortest route there is to standing in front of a collection you would otherwise see only in a catalogue.
The 2026 Lates is on Friday 11 September, built around Marr’s Guitars: The Johnny Marr Collection, the single-owner sale called on the 17th. Attendees consent to being photographed and filmed on entry, which is worth knowing before turning up. A guitarist’s working instruments are an unusual thing to find hung in a St James’s saleroom, and the sale is a single-owner one, which means the whole collection comes from one man’s hands rather than from a consignment of many. Christie’s has done this with musicians’ estates before.