Bukowski opens at 4pm and runs to 6am every day of the week, with the night's best value landing in the 11pm to midnight happy hour.
Bukowski sits at Siebensterngasse 8 in Neubau, the 7th district, a few steps off Mariahilfer Strasse in Vienna's most relaxed bar quarter. Vienna Würstelstand files it under the city's "grungy dive bars," and that is the honest pitch: low light, worn surfaces, and a room built for late conversation rather than for design photos. It is named for the writer Charles Bukowski, and the mood matches, unpretentious, a little rough at the edges, and open long after the polished first-district rooms have locked up.
For a night that needs a last stop rather than a first one, few Vienna addresses keep the door open as late or as cheaply.
The room
The space is small, dim and intimate, the kind of bar where you end up talking to the table next to you by the second round. Offbeat Budapest describes it as a cosy, low-lit joint made for late-night conversation, and the crowd skews to locals, students and night-shift hospitality staff who treat it as a reliable after-hours base. There is no dress code and no velvet rope; the appeal is that it stays open and stays cheap when the rest of the centre is winding down.
What to order
The list runs to about 20 cocktails from 7.50 euros, with long drinks from 6.90 euros, which makes it one of the better-value bars in the district. The smart play is the 11pm-to-midnight happy hour, when cocktails and beers run two-for-one, per Vienna Würstelstand's guide to the street. Keep the order simple here, a Gin Tonic, a Cuba Libre, a classic the bartender can build fast on a busy night, rather than expecting laboratory mixology. This is a volume room, not a precision one, and the pricing tells you exactly what to expect. A late beer alongside the cocktail is the local move. The kitchen is not the draw here, so come for the drinks, the price and the hours rather than the food.
The crowd
The crowd is young, local and unfussy: students from the nearby university quarter, off-duty bar staff closing out their own shifts, and night owls who have run out of options elsewhere. Tripadvisor reviewers single out the late hours and the cheap rounds as the reason they keep coming back. The energy builds steadily through the night and peaks well after midnight, once the happy-hour wave has passed and the room settles into its proper late shift.
Who it is for
Bukowski is for the late, easygoing drinker: the after-hours nightcap, the student round, the group that wants somewhere loud-ish and cheap when it is already past midnight. It is less for a quiet date or a spirits-forward tasting; for that, our guide to the best cocktail bars in Vienna lists the city's specialists. A few streets away, the inventive Moby Dick in Vienna handles the drink-first end of Neubau, while the all-night Wirr in Vienna pairs a bar with a basement club nearby.
Best time to go
Come after 11pm to catch the happy hour and the room at its best; earlier evenings are quiet and the energy only builds as the night runs long. Because it is open until 6am daily, this is the address for the night that refuses to end, any day of the week. For more of Neubau and the city, start with our Vienna bar guide and the broader cocktail bar collection.
Sources: Bukowski Instagram (@bukowski_the_pub, 2026); Vienna Würstelstand grungy-dive-bars guide; Offbeat Budapest & Vienna; The Vienna Review; Yelp listing, Siebensterngasse 8.
