The Winter Ball returns to The Dorchester on Saturday 28 November 2026, 6.30pm to 2am, with live and silent auctions in aid of Noah's Ark Children's Hospice.
Michael McInerney founded Noah’s Ark in 1999, after a child in his own family died in a local hospital and he found there was almost no paediatric palliative care available in the area. The charity took physical form in 2006 as a small office in London Colney offering hospice care at home, and the building it had been working towards, The Ark in Barnet, opened in 2019. It now supports children with life-limiting conditions and their families across north and central London.
Children’s palliative care is the least funded corner of the sector because it is the one nobody wants to think about, and a hospice of this kind draws only a small part of its income from the state. The rest comes from a supporter base that has to be rebuilt every year, which is what an evening like this is really for.
The 2026 Winter Ball takes The Dorchester on Saturday 28 November, from 6.30 until two in the morning, with dinner, live and silent auctions and a night of entertainment. A standing committee convenes it each year rather than an agency. The two o’clock finish is the tell: this is a ball rather than a dinner with speeches, and the one evening in the November season that is danced rather than sat through. The Ark itself is a purpose-built hospice rather than a converted house.