London Cocktail Week 2027: it has moved to March

London Cocktail Week has moved. After running in October for its whole life, the seventeenth edition takes place in the week commencing 15 March 2027. If you have been before and assumed October, that is the single most useful thing on this page.

How it works

You buy a festival pass and it gets you discounted signature cocktails at the participating bars for the week, several hundred of them across the city. The bars each put up one drink made for the festival, so it is a way into rooms you would not otherwise try and a way to drink well below the usual central London price.

Doing it properly

The mistake is treating it as a crawl. The good bars are busy every night of the week and the ones worth sitting in are not the ones with a queue outside. Book where you can, go early, and pick three bars in one area rather than six across the city.

Soho, Shoreditch and Covent Garden carry the highest concentration. The quieter and often better rooms are in Fitzrovia, Clerkenwell and along the south bank of the river.

The date change

March rather than October changes the character of it: the outdoor and rooftop bars that used to carry part of the programme are far less appealing in the middle of March, so expect the weight to shift indoors. The dates beyond the starting week were not published when we wrote this.