Editorial
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.
East London has its own Pride weekend tradition — less parade-adjacent, more neighbourhood celebration. The bars here tend to be cheaper, less crowded, and run by people who have been part of the LGBTQ+ community in their area for years rather than weekends.
Beyond the obvious Soho circuit and the East London scene, there are bars across London that run exceptional Pride weekends in relative obscurity. These are the ones our editors return to when the main drag gets overwhelming.
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.