Olympia London, sometimes referred to as the Olympia Exhibition Centre, is an exhibition centre, event space and conference centre in West Kensington, in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, London, England. A range of international trade and consumer exhibitions, conferences and sporting events are staged at the venue. There is an adjacent railway station at Kensington (Olympia) which is both a London Overground station, and a London Underground station. The direct District Line spur to the station only runs on weekends. Background The complex first opened in 1886. The Grand Hall and Pillar Hall were completed in 1885. The National Hall annexe was completed in 1923, and in 1930 the Empire Hall was added. After World War II, the West London exhibition hall was in single ownership with the larger nearby Earls Court Exhibition Centre. The latter was built in the 1930s as a rival to Olympia. In 2008, ownership of the two venues passed from P&O to Capco Plc which sold it off as a going concern, while Earls Court was being demolished in 2014 as part of an ambitious regeneration scheme to create more luxury housing. In 2012, Olympia celebrated 125 years of events by commissioning British artists Peter Blake, Rob Ryan, Sanna Annukka and Paul Hicks to create their interpretations of the venues. In January 2013, a £40 million investment was completed and the company re-launched with a new brand; subsequently the business was awarded the Best Marketing Campaign at the Exhibition News Awards 2014. BBC Good Food Show Olympia London International Horse Show London Chess Classic Pure London Spirit of Christmas International Art & Antiques Fair Marketing Week Live Great British Beer Festival Salon du Chocolat UCAS Design Your Future National Wedding Show Toy Fair In May 2021, demolition work started at the site as part of a significant overhaul of the complex, which includes new construction and refurbishment of listed historic aspects. History Olympia was originally conceived in the early 1880s as the National Agricultural Hall, a larger version of the Royal Agricultural Hall (1861–62, Grade II) in Islington. The project of building a National Agricultural Hall was conceived by Edwyn Sherard Burnaby (1830-1883), MP for Leicestershire North, who primarily wanted to see shows such as the military Royal Tournament, held at the Royal Agricultural Hall in Islington since 1880, staged on a much larger scale and made more easily accessible by railway from