Best-of list · Occasion Guide
The best bars Pride London offers — from Soho institution to East London newcomers. Our editors' guide to where to drink across Pride weekend in the.
The short answer
9 ranked rooms follow. How we picked is at the end of this guide.
London Pride brings out the best bars Pride London has to offer — and the worst, if you end up in the wrong part of Soho at the wrong time. We have spent several Pride weekends working through every corner of the capital to separate the genuinely good from the merely convenient. This is the list we return to year after year: bars that hold their standard during one of the city's busiest weekends, where the staff do not look exhausted by 7pm and the drinks do not decline in quality as the queue outside grows.
Soho remains the epicentre of London Pride and the bars here have learned to handle it — some better than others. The ones worth seeking out are the places that earn their place in the LGBTQ+ history of the area rather than capitalising on it.
How we picked
London Pride works best when you treat it as a neighbourhood tour rather than a single destination. Start in Soho for the parade atmosphere, move east in the early evening when the Soho crowds peak, and end the night in Vauxhall or Hackney Wick if you want to stay out late without paying Mayfair prices.
The bars that fail during Pride weekend are the ones that treat it as a commercial opportunity and underdeliver accordingly. Everything on this list has the opposite problem — they are genuinely good bars that happen to be excellent during Pride, not venues that put on a face for one weekend a year.
Sofia covers the European bar scene with particular focus on London, Paris, and Amsterdam. She has attended London Pride as a journalist and as a participant since 2014 and knows which bars can tell the difference.
Last reviewed 2026-03-05 · The editors recheck hours and closures against current local coverage.