London's Oxford Street is going to close to traffic. Mayor Sadiq Khan has announced that the stretch between Marble Arch and Oxford Circus will be closed to cars and buses by summer 2027, according to Reuters. Instead of vehicles, the street will have outdoor cafés and restaurants, and people will be able to walk and sit comfortably.

Khan first introduced this idea in September 2024, BBC News reported, and the plan has been moving through the approval process. The biggest challenge so far has been figuring out where all the buses that currently run down Oxford Street will go instead. Earlier attempts to pedestrianise the street failed partly because no one could solve that problem.

Outdoor dining is part of Khan's bigger strategy for London. The Times reported in February 2026 that Soho will be the first neighborhood to get this new outdoor seating setup. Oxford Street's café plan comes after, once that pilot is proven to work.

Why does Oxford Street need this change? The street has been struggling for years. Since the mid-2010s, people have shopped more online instead of going to stores, and this problem got worse during the pandemic. Empty storefronts became common. Many European cities faced the same problem and fixed it by closing streets to cars and adding places to eat and sit—Barcelona and Paris did this successfully. The idea is that people will spend more time on the street, even if they don't buy much, and that helps nearby businesses overall. Whether this works on Oxford Street, where most stores are large international chains rather than local shops, is still unclear.

There are real challenges to getting this done on time. Summer 2027 is only about 12 to 13 months away, and building work on Oxford Street is complicated. The street has gas pipes, the Crossrail train tunnel runs directly underneath it, and there are more utility lines packed beneath the surface than almost anywhere else in central London. The city's transport authority, Transport for London, also needs to redesign all the bus routes, which usually takes a long time because officials must consult with the public first. Whether the buses can be rerouted smoothly will be the clearest sign of whether the 2027 deadline is realistic.

Another question is whether future governments will stick with this plan. Khan is in his third term as mayor, and if a new mayor takes over before the work is finished, they could change the dining and café parts of the plan, even if the physical street closure itself is already underway.

For businesses and property owners in the area, the outdoor dining rules Khan is rolling out elsewhere—starting with Soho—matter most. If that goes smoothly, it shows other parts of the city and future officials that outdoor seating can work in London.