156 Best Bars in England

A former Wesleyan chapel that was abandoned for more than four decades now houses one of the city's most exciting venues—a superb indie music hall and clubbing venue that retains such original features as an organ and stained glass windows.

Festooned with a chin-dropping array of old club ties, vintage celebrity-signed photographs, sporting mementos, model airplanes, and baseball caps, this sensational and usually busy hotel cocktail bar has superb martinis and Manhattans. The name dates from the 1930s, when hotel bars in London started to cater to growing numbers of Americans crossing the Atlantic on ocean liners. The collection of paraphernalia was started in the 1970s when a customer gifted a small carved wooden eagle. They serve great hot bar snacks and small dishes, too.

They don't take reservations at this jewel box of a cocktail bar at The Langham hotel, but you can order a drink while you wait for a chic mirror-top table surrounded by some of London's most beautiful people. The innovative, creative cocktails, involving exotic ingredients like aromatic bitters from Marrakesh, are simply unforgettable, if pricey. Service is also top-notch, making this a nightlife treat.

The beaux arts--style interior of this enduring and popular subterranean bar just north of Piccadilly Circus is so opulent that you'd be forgiven for thinking it had been here since the 1890s. In fact, it's a relatively new revival and has been a hit since it was reconverted in 2012, along with the cavernous Parisian-inspired Brasserie Zédel and the adjacent Crazy Coqs cabaret, which share the premises. The outstanding cocktail list covers Pre-Prohibition, Prohibition, and Post-Prohibition classics—ranging from an 1884 Turf Club vermouth to a 1948 Army & Navy gin—with additional special menus on occasion.

This distillery produces authentic English gin with the finest botanicals from across the world, including bitter orange and English coriander. The company has its own atmospheric gin bar on Queen Street, where you can try a range of gin-based cocktails and buy bottles to take home. There are more than 230 gins on the drinks menu, by a large range of distillers, so you're guaranteed to find something you haven't tried before.

Things could hardly get more glamorous than at the Savoy's lesser-known Beaufort Bar—a black-and-gold Art Deco–inspired spot with dramatic low lighting that specializes in vintage Champagne and an enticing spread of heritage cocktails. Dark and sultry, with a rising cabaret stage that was once graced by Gershwin and Josephine Baker, this venue has nightly live jazz piano music beginning at 7 pm.

A step from Blackfriars Tube station, this spectacular pub has an Arts and Crafts interior that is entertainingly, satirically ecclesiastical, with inlaid mother-of-pearl, wood carvings, stained glass, and marble pillars all over the place. Under finely lettered temperance tracts on view just below the reliefs of monks, fairies, and friars, there is a nice group of ales on tap from independent brewers. The 20th-century poet Sir John Betjeman once led a successful campaign to save the pub from demolition.

A relaxed café, book, and record store by day, and London's leading venue for experimental music by night, Cafe OTO is a Dalston institution. Its programming of free jazz, avant-garde electronica, and much more is enough of a draw that it regularly sells out, with music fans steaming up the windows and spilling out onto the pavement and road outside to smoke during breaks. Café customers are kicked out at 5 pm to make way for sound checks. It's open as a bar (no cover) on nights when no concerts are taking place.

On the corner of Greek Street, Soho's most famous pub is as authentic as they come, complete with light oak saloon bar screens, spittoon troughs, sturdy bar stools, and occasional singalongs around the upright piano. Established in 1840, this was once the haunt for a mélange of Soho's finest writers, journalists, and artists—from painter Lucian Freud to Welsh poet Dylan Thomas. Today, you can still down pints of London Pride beer and drink with the best of Soho's modern-day bohemians.

Before heading off to prime time, some of the United Kingdom's funniest stand-ups cut their teeth here, at what's considered the birthplace of alternative comedy in Britain. The Comedy Store Players, a team with six resident comedians doing improv based on audience suggestions, perform on Sunday. The King Gong open-mike is a brutal stage contest for 30 brave newcomers while Old Rope sessions showcase new material on Monday. Thursday, Friday, and Saturday have the best stand-up comedy acts. There's also a bar with food. Note that you must be over 18 years old to enter.

The walls are platinum silver leaf and everything's all buffed and burnished at this glamorous David Collins--designed 1920s cocktail lounge at The Connaught. Hail the famous martini trolley for a classic dry martini or sip signatures like a Ron Zacapa rum–based Vieux Connaught, which is presented on a mirrored tray with a swirl of saffron smoke.

A beautiful example of a High Victorian pub, the Dog and Duck has a majestic interior overflowing with thousands of ornate glazed tiles, etched mirrors, chandeliers, and polished wood, although it's often so packed it can be hard to get a proper look. There's a fine selection of cask ales at the bar and a restaurant serving superb pale ale–battered fish-and-chips with mushy peas. Originally built in 1734 and patronized by artists and poets like John Constable and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, the cozy upstairs dining room is named for writer and Dog and Duck regular George Orwell (who celebrated with a glass of absinthe here upon hearing that Animal Farm had won an American book prize). 

Read the list of famous ex-regulars, from Charles II and Nell Gwyn to Ernest Hemingway and Dylan Thomas, as you wait for a beer at this smart, comely, and popular 16th-century Thames riverside pub on the Upper Mall towpath in Hammersmith. If—as is often the case—The Dove is too full, stroll upstream along the bank to The Old Ship or The Blue Anchor.

East London’s coolest performing arts venue occupies two huge spaces (one standing, one with unallocated bench seating) in an old art deco movie theater. Original architectural details add to the shabby-hip feel of the place, while in EartH Kitchen, the bar and restaurant on the venue’s second floor, you’ll find Scandi-modern styling (along with delicious cocktails and reasonably priced dishes from a changing roster of pop-up chefs). The wide-ranging and very much on-trend program runs from world music and hip-hop to country, folk, and dance, with stand-up comedy and free sets by leading DJs in the bar.

It's easy to miss the unmarked shabby-chic black door with a scuffed wash of red paint on Chinatown's hectic Gerrard Street main drag, but once you find it and make your way past the sometimes hard-to-please doorman, you'll be in a secret three-floor speakeasy that is also one of London's coolest cocktail joints. With a lively crowd, heavenly cocktails, moody lighting, and a knowledgeable DJ spinning smooth jazz sounds, the vibe is sexy Parisian cool.

Nab a rickety candlelit table in the atmospheric, 1890s, low-slung, brick-vaulted cellar interior of what claims to be the oldest wine bar in London, or sit outdoors in the long pedestrian-only alley garden that runs alongside it. There are no reservations, so be prepared to line up outside during busy periods, like after work and on sunny afternoons. Either way, the mood is always cheery as a diverse crowd sips on more than 70 different wines, ports, and sherries. Tempting cheese and meat plates are great for sharing.

Offering arguably the best light show on any London dance floor, London's first and most famous gay club Heaven is unpretentious, loud, and lively, with a labyrinth of rooms, bars, and live music parlors. Set under the arches behind Charing Cross railway station and going strong since 1979, on Thursday through Saturday night it's all about the G-A-Y club and comedy nights. Check in advance about live performances—they can take place any night of the week. If you go to just one gay club in London, Heaven should be it.

If you want to know where locals come to hang, this is it. Held every Thursday through Sunday, it’s a collection of street food stalls—largely from homegrown cooks—and bars, all with a buzzy, fun vibe. There’s a heady mix of music too, on Friday and Saturday nights, and the occasional market. It even has its own record store. Originally held in the neighborhood of Digbeth (hence the name), it relocated in 2021 to a former printing works in Hockley. The organizers (Digby Dining Club) host similar events across the Midlands, including pop-ups everywhere from Warwick Castle to Coventry. It's about a mile from the Jewellery Quarter—get off at the Jewellery Quarter train station and walk 10 minutes. The same people run the equally popular Herbert's Yard, farther out of town.

Loved by Londoners and owned by the well-respected St. Peter's Brewery in Suffolk, The Holy Tavern is one-of-a-kind: small, historic, atmospheric, and endearingly eccentric. Antique Delft–style tiles meld with wood and concrete in a converted watchmaker and jeweler's shop dating back to the 18th century. The beer, both bottled and on tap, is some of the best available anywhere in London. It's often busy, especially after work, but well worth a visit.

The place to come for live music in the city is this excellent drinking, dining, and dancing venue, set across three floors. There's live jazz, soul, or funk most nights.

A long-standing hotbed of cool in Camden, the Jazz Café hosts top acts in mainstream jazz as well as hip-hop, funk, world music, soul, and Latin fusion. On Friday nights, DJs sample club music from around the world while on Saturday Soul City nights, they play disco, house, and soul. Book ahead if you want a table in the balcony restaurant overlooking the stage; otherwise you'll be standing (and probably dancing).

Once known as the Camden Palace, this legendary venue has lush red decor and gilt-trimmed boxes that recall its past as a Victorian theater, but now is the home of packed dance nights featuring everything from funky house, Afrobeat, and electronica to club classics and indie, in addition to concerts on the big stage. Headliners who have performed "secret" gigs here include Madonna, Prince, Kanye West, Bruno Mars, Dua Lipa, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Amy Winehouse, while recent gigs range from Jalen Ngonda to the Buzzcocks. A renovation following a 2020 fire has added a four-story extension to the original theater and two adjoining buildings, incorporating a good Italian-theme café/pizzeria. A membership gets you access to a cocktail bar in the large roof dome, a summer rooftop bar, an intimate jazz and blues bar, and a recording studio.

This refreshingly ungentrified 17th-century pub was once known as "The Bucket of Blood" because the upstairs room and front yard were used as a ring for winner-takes-all, bare-knuckle fights—a popular form of live entertainment back in the day. Now it's a much friendlier place, serving British food and real ale. It's on the edge of Covent Garden, up a hidden alley off Garrick Street.

On any given night, ace jazz player Trombone Shorty might work his way through this beyond cool New Orleans–meets-Paris cocktail lounge on the second floor of Louie restaurant. Even if Shorty's not there playing that night, the friendly staff dish out deviled eggs, truffle pizzas, and theme cocktails until 2 am five nights a week.

Tea shop meets bar and live music venue (with club nights) at this bohemian spot in a former Art Deco cinema.

This striking building has had two former lives: the first, from 1893 to 1934, was as a power station that generated light for nearby Liverpool Street Station, while the second, from 2000 to 2014, was as an iconic venue that exemplified the rise of Shoreditch as a nightlife destination. Now it's back, saved from demolition and again providing one of the most stylish drinking and dining options in this part of town. The best views of this gorgeous space, resplendent with original architectural details, are from the mezzanine Copper Bar, but there's really not a bad seat in the house.

Explorers of all stripes will be captivated by this Jules Verne--inspired cocktail parlor, which is chock-full of the weathered maps, hunting trophies, taxidermy, suspended penny-farthings, and Around the World in 80 Days globe-trotting items of eccentric fictional Victorian British adventurer Phileas J. Fogg. Expect Victorian tipples and gin-based afternoon "Tipsy Teas" from staff in bow ties and other old-fashioned getups.

Quaint and vibrant, this historic, ephemera-filled pub balances its ye olde heritage with a lively atmosphere, making it worth the short walk from the town center to Jericho. The French brasserie–style menu is well worth sampling for lunch or dinner.