Riverside Raves and Jazz Legends: Six New London Nightlife Spots to Add to Your Hitlist

Much has been said about London’s ailing nightlife scene. But while an alarming number of clubs have closed in the UK (about a third since March 2020), excellent places continue to open – and they’ve got big ambitions. Some, like Altar and Coven: Headquarters, aim to become multi-faceted community spaces, with film screenings, talks and gigs; others, like Ironworks at Royal Docks or Lost, are taking advantage of brief windows of time when they can swoop into soon-to-be-developed sites for limited runs. Below, we’ve put together some of the most exciting recent nightlife openings; save this for the next time you’re craving the dancefloor.

Last week, buzzy east London neighbourhood Leyton gained a major new late-night venue. Altar is a two-floor bar and club situated directly opposite Leytonstone’s leafy 200-year-old St John’s Churchyard. It’s the brainchild of Luke Condell, bar director of the nearby dive bar Chop Shop Tavern, Leytonstone’s Shake The High Road Festival founder Simon Singleton, Dreamhouse Records owner Jon Clifford, and music industry mogul Toby L from Transgressive Records. Not only does it have a 100-capacity basement venue with a licence to open until 3am on weekends, but it will host film screenings, live music and arts events including an upcoming talk with Louis Theroux.

Exciting things are happening under a railway arch in Hackney’s Bohemia Place. It’s now home to London’s first community-owned queer pub and performance space, The Joiners Heart – the triumphant result of a decade of hard work by campaigners who managed to secure a new space for east London’s queer community after the original venue, The Joiners Arms, closed in 2015. The new spot has been designed with full accessibility in mind, and plans to host everything from queer craft fairs and karaoke parties to DJ sets and drag nights. It’s currently open on Fridays and Saturdays until 1am.

Some great things aren’t meant to last: and part of the magic of Ironworks – the new riverside club inside a former east London shipyard – is its impermanence. “Sometimes, knowing that you were there for a particular moment is part of what makes it memorable,” Paul Jack, director of Amaad, the major UK electronic music promoter and venue developer behind the project, tells Broadsheet. “The idea isn’t to overwhelm the area, but to enhance and breathe life into the area.” A “meanwhile-use project” which is part of a larger regeneration project, Ironworks’s raw industrial setting makes it perfect for banging techno and soaring progressive house by major names like Eric Prydz and Camelphat. Its final weekend will conclude with a Halloween special event with a DJ set by Groove Armada, then a day rave headlined by Charlotte de Witte. Final tickets are now on sale, and expected to sell out. Quality of the sound system was paramount for Jack and his team. “We use L-Acoustics … it’s an incredibly high-spec digital system, but it retains something of the warmth you associate with analogue sound.”

Life just got significantly better if you’re a jazz-lover in London. Blue Note Jazz Club – a world-renowned live music venue in NYC’s Greenwich Village – opened a London sister venue earlier this autumn. It’s already hosted some top-tier international talent and younger British names leading the nation’s current jazz resurgence, including Robert Glasper, Erykah Badu and Nubya Garcia. The 250-person space hosts two shows each night, and is open until 1am from Monday to Saturday. With its luxurious drapery, blue tables and jazz photography on the walls, it feels undeniably New York; all you need is a Martini to complete the experience.

A 6am license is a vanishingly rare thing in London – but dancing until dawn is on the cards at Peckham Palais, which opened in February. The first south-of-the-river project from the Night Group (Hackney’s Night Tales, NT’s Loft and Netil360) has amassed a dedicated following for its 500-capacity basement club championing primarily underground house and techno, with a no-phones policy. But it’s perhaps equally loved for its cocktail bar The Ballroom, which is free to enter and pared-back but considered drinks menu (go for the golden Margarita with Aperol and tangerine).

“The goal from the start has been to create something new, something different,” founder Rob Burn told Broadsheet. And so he has with Radial, a 250-capacity club with a top-of-the-range, custom-built sound system that, when paired with the club’s panelling, absorption and diffusion on the walls and ceiling, create what Burn calls “a very special listening experience”. DJ line-ups are curated by Burn’s Ten87 Studios in Tottenham, an independent London organisation that runs more than 50 studios – and will feature a mixture of bigger names and “under-represented people and burgeoning new genres”.

This summer, a beautiful queer phoenix rose from the ashes of G-A-Y Bar, the slightly tired LGBTQ+ landmark that closed in October last year. Coven: Headquarters is a new late-night spot that aims to bring something new to Soho’s queer nightlife. Founder Matthew Jacobs-Morgan told Broadsheet that he intends it to become an inclusive LGBTQ+ venue offering everything from daytime co-working to FLINTA raves.