Where to watch football in London, and how to get in

London is a good city for watching football in a pub and a bad one for turning up on the night and expecting to get in. For an England game, a final or a London derby, the places worth being in are full an hour before kick-off and many are taking bookings weeks ahead.

How to read this list. Every venue below publicly advertises showing live sport, and the details are taken from the venue’s own listings, checked in September 2026. That is a statement of fact about what they do, not a verdict on the pint. Where someone here has actually watched a game in a place, the entry says so. Broadcast rights and opening hours change, so check for your specific match before you travel.

The big-screen venues

The Greenwood, Victoria

170 Victoria Street, SW1E 5LB. Two floors of screens and a large LED wall, and the closest thing central London has to a purpose-built match venue. It fills for anything major and takes bookings. Victoria station is a two-minute walk, which also means it is heaving before kick-off.

Flat Iron Square, London Bridge

Arches and a covered yard off Union Street with screens inside and out, showing both Sky Sports and TNT Sports. Being partly outdoors makes it a better bet in summer and a colder one in February. Good for a group because there is more than one room to spread into.

Famous Three Kings, West Kensington

171 North End Road, W14 9NL. A long-standing sports pub with screens on every wall and a reputation to match; it has won sports-pub awards more than once. West Kensington on the District line, and walkable from the Fulham and Chelsea grounds, which tells you what it is like on a home matchday.

The Faltering Fullback, Finsbury Park

19 Perth Road, N4 3HB. An Irish pub ten minutes from the Emirates, with a beer garden built as a multi-level warren of benches and booths that is genuinely one of the odder and better places to drink in north London. Busy for Arsenal, and the garden means it works when the rooms are full.

The chains, which is not an insult here

For a tournament, a chain sports bar is often the right answer: they are built for it, the sound is on, and they will be showing whatever is biggest.

BOXPARK runs sports bars at Shoreditch (2 to 10 Bethnal Green Road, E1 6GY), Wembley, Camden (192 to 198 Camden High Street) and Croydon. Big rooms, many screens, street-food traders rather than a kitchen. Walk-ins are welcome but for a major match they release free or paid tickets for guaranteed entry, and those go. Wembley’s is a short walk from the stadium, which makes it the obvious pre-match option and the busiest.

Belushi’s has sites at London Bridge, Shepherd’s Bush, Hammersmith and Greenwich, all advertising multiple screens, and the Hammersmith one runs three big projectors. Greenwich is next to the station. They advise booking for big fixtures.

Walkabout is the Australian chain, which means rugby as well as football and a crowd that arrives early. The Temple site is at Temple Place, WC2R 2PH and takes reservations; Putney advertises two big screens plus fifteen televisions through the venue.

How to check for your specific match

This is the part that saves a wasted journey. Rights are split between Sky Sports and TNT Sports, and a pub with one subscription cannot show the other’s games. Rather than guess, use a fixture-level finder:

FANZO lists pubs by fixture for both Sky and TNT and is the most complete. WheresTheMatch and UseYourLocal do the same job. The big pub companies also publish their own: Greene King and Fuller’s both have live-sport finders covering their London houses. Any of them beats ringing round, and all of them are more current than any list, including this one.

Getting a seat

Book if the venue takes bookings, and book the week before for anything at the level of an England knockout game, not the day before. Most of the larger places ask for a deposit or a minimum spend, which is worth it.

If you have not booked, arrive ninety minutes early and expect to stand. The second half of a busy pub is worse than the first, because nobody leaves at half time. A venue with several rooms or an outdoor area beats a single room with one projector, however good the projector.

Two things people get wrong

A pub showing the game with the sound off is using it as wallpaper, not hosting it; if the sound matters to you, ask before you commit. And kick-off times move for television, sometimes at a few days’ notice, so check the fixture the day before rather than trusting a time you noted a month ago.

Getting home

An evening kick-off finishing around ten is comfortable on any night of the week. A late European kick-off finishing near eleven is tight midweek for the outer ends of most lines. The Night Tube runs on Friday and Saturday only, on the Victoria, Jubilee, Central, Northern and Piccadilly lines, plus the Windrush line on the Overground. Our Night Tube guide has the gaps in it.

Our rule for this page

We take no money to list a venue and there are no affiliate links here. Venues appear because they publicly advertise showing live sport and we could verify the details from their own listings. Screenings we have confirmed for specific fixtures appear in the listings on this site as they are announced.