Bars and pubs open near me: how late London actually drinks

Searching for bars near me gives you a list ranked by distance, and in London that is close to useless, because whether somewhere is still serving at midnight depends on the borough and the street rather than on how far away it is.

Here is the version that helps: where London drinks late, where it does not, and how you are getting home.

The areas that go late

Soho is the densest and the most reliable, though it is not the latest; many Soho licences stop at three and a lot stop at midnight midweek. Shoreditch and Dalston run later, particularly along Kingsland Road, and Dalston is the one that genuinely goes until the small hours on a weeknight.

Peckham starts later than central London and finishes later still. Elephant and Castle has the club licences rather than the bars. Vauxhall runs all night at weekends. Camden is busy and earlier than its reputation suggests.

The City is the opposite: excellent pubs, most of them shut by nine and many closed entirely at weekends. It is the most common mistake visitors make.

The bit that matters more than the bar

How you get home. 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. That is why Brixton, Camden, Dalston and Elephant and Castle work at two in the morning and large parts of west and south London do not.

Night buses run every night and go everywhere, which is the thing people forget at midnight on a Wednesday. Our Night Tube guide has the lines and the gaps.

Last orders, and what it really means

A London pub advertising midnight closing usually calls last orders twenty to thirty minutes before, and drinking-up time is about twenty minutes after that. If you arrive at a midnight pub at half eleven you are getting one drink, not an evening.

Anywhere still admitting people after one is operating a late licence, which normally means a door charge, ID whatever your age, and a policy on trainers. None of that appears in a maps listing.

Sunday, which is its own problem

Sunday is the hardest night to drink late in London. Most pubs shut at half ten or eleven, clubs are limited, and the Night Tube does not run. Soho and Dalston are the two areas with a real Sunday, and even there it thins out by one.

Where the listings are

We list what is actually on rather than what is merely open: late night is everything still going after eleven, clubs covers the nights themselves, and tonight is the whole evening in time order.

For a specific venue, the venue’s own page is the only reliable source for tonight’s hours. Bank holidays, private hire and staffing change them constantly, and no aggregator keeps up, including this one.

For a specific fixture rather than a general night out, our guide to watching the football names the venues that advertise live sport and the finders that tell you who has your match.