Macmillan Cancer Support holds the Macmillan Ball at the Victoria and Albert Museum on Thursday 19 November 2026. Table packages start at £6,000.
Douglas Macmillan founded what became Macmillan Cancer Support in 1911, at Castle Cary in Somerset, after watching his father die of cancer and finding there was almost nothing available to help. It was the Society for the Prevention and Relief of Cancer, then the National Society for Cancer Relief from 1924, and it has carried his name only since 1989. It has spent a hundred and fifteen years on the same problem: the practical business of living with a diagnosis rather than the laboratory science of curing it. Macmillan nurses are the visible part of that.
The charity raises almost all of its income from the public rather than from government, which is why an evening like this one is not a decoration on the accounts. A ball at a national museum brings in a category of donor that a street collection cannot reach, and the money funds nursing posts, benefits advice and helpline staff.
The 2026 ball is at the Victoria and Albert Museum on Thursday 19 November. Table packages start at £6,000 and a limited number of individual tickets are released separately, which lets a guest come without a host, and the charity takes both directly. It is one of a small number of London balls where the beneficiary publishes the date, the room and the price in full.