Best-of list · Sports Guide
Ten ranked Minneapolis bars to watch the game, from 100-screen downtown rooms to the Nicollet Mall soccer pubs, with Vikings and game day tips.
The short answer
10 ranked rooms follow. How we picked is at the end of this guide.
Minneapolis watches the game close to the venues. Target Center and Target Field anchor downtown, U.S. Bank Stadium pulls the Vikings crowd, and the rooms cluster nearby. Downtown stacks the screens by the dozen, Nicollet Mall holds the soccer and rugby pubs that open early for European kickoffs, and the neighborhoods and breweries keep it local for the Vikings and Twins. A few of the best are Irish and British pubs built for the overseas game. These ten cover the city.
Downtown stacks the screens by the dozen near Target Center and Target Field, so they fill fast for a Vikings Sunday.
How we picked
Match the room to the code. For a full slate on the most screens, Tom's Watch Bar is the easy downtown pick, with Cowboy Jack's the loud Vikings room. For soccer and rugby, Brit's Pub and The Local on Nicollet open early and run every match. For craft beer with the game, Town Hall Brewery and The Freehouse win. Pick by sport and book a booth for a Vikings home Sunday.
Every bar on this list was checked against its own current listing plus at least one independent guide before publishing, and ranked on the game day specifics that matter: screen count and sight lines, the channels and feeds available, the leagues shown, the crowd, and how the room handles a marquee night. We exclude venues we could not verify as open and showing live sport. For the method behind every game day guide, see our pillar guide to watching the game.
Tom covers American sports bars from downtown to the neighborhoods, and has watched the Vikings, the Twins and a Premier League morning across the Twin Cities. His game day ranking weighs screen count and feeds first, then the crowd, then how a room handles a Vikings Sunday.
Last reviewed 2026-06-09 · The editors recheck hours and closures against current local coverage.