In this guide
British alternative comedy started in a former Soho strip club in 1979, and the interesting thing about London comedy now is how little it costs. The best-value night out in this city is a comedy night, and several of the best ones are free.
The trade-off is not quality — it is certainty. A £30 ticket buys you a booked bill of professionals. A free ticket buys you five acts, two of whom are working something out, one of whom is about to be famous.
💡 The Short Version: The Comedy Store is where all of this began and still the benchmark. Angel Comedy runs free stand-up seven nights a week across two pubs and is the best value in London. Top Secret is the cheap central option where big names drop in unannounced. Always Be Comedy in Kennington gets the surprise guests. And the Comedy Store Players have been improvising on the same stage since 1985.
📘 How we choose these (editorial note). No paid placements. These are drawn from a wide spread of sources rather than any single list - the food and travel press, the big listings sites, independent blogs and specialists, video, and what Londoners recommend themselves - and cross-referenced against each other. Line-ups change weekly and rooms above pubs close without much warning; check before travelling.
Where they are
| If you are near… | Where to go |
|---|---|
| Soho & Piccadilly | The Comedy Store |
| Covent Garden | Top Secret Comedy Club, Covent Garden Comedy Club |
| Islington & Angel | Angel Comedy at The Camden Head, Angel Comedy at The Bill Murray |
| King’s Cross | The Harrison |
| Camden | Camden Comedy Club |
| Hoxton & Shoreditch | Comedy Cabin |
| Hackney | Knock2Bag at MOTH Club |
| Bethnal Green | Backyard Comedy Club |
| Waterloo & South Bank | Big Belly Comedy Club |
| South London | Always Be Comedy (Kennington), Happy Mondays (New Cross) |
Price guide: Free · £ under £8 · ££ £15–£30.
Where it started
The Comedy Store, Soho
££ · 3 min from Piccadilly Circus
Don Ward opened it in May 1979, in the old Gargoyle nightclub on Dean Street, after seeing what the new clubs in New York and Los Angeles were doing. What came out of it was British alternative comedy — observational, political, and aimed squarely at the Establishment.
It has moved since, and it is still the room every British comedian measures themselves against.
The Comedy Store Players have performed here since October 1985 — Paul Merton, Josie Lawrence, Neil Mullarkey, Richard Vranch, Lee Simpson and others. Whose Line Is It Anyway? took their short-form improv to Channel 4 in 1988, and Guinness confirmed in 2010 that it is the world’s longest-running comedy show with the same cast.
💡 The Players play Sundays and Wednesdays. If you only see one comedy show in London, this is the one with the strongest claim on your evening — it is improv rather than stand-up, and it has been running for forty years.
Top Secret Comedy Club, Covent Garden
£–££ · 4 min from Covent Garden
A basement in the middle of the West End running shows every day of the week at prices well below what the location suggests. Its reputation rests on unannounced drop-ins — established comedians working out material in a room of a hundred people who paid a few pounds.
It is two rooms, not one, and the tickets do not tell you clearly: 170 Drury Lane and 23 Kingsway, a few minutes apart. Check which address is on your booking before you set off.
Prices run £11 to £22, with concessions at £9 to £18, and they vary by slot rather than by night — the early 7pm show is typically the cheapest and the 9pm the dearest. Doors open an hour before most shows.
⚠️ It sells out, routinely and days ahead. Several shows on any given weekend are gone before the day. Book rather than turning up.
The bar claims the cheapest pints in the West End, from £4.20, which for Covent Garden is its own kind of headline.
Backyard Comedy Club, Bethnal Green
££ · 5 min from Bethnal Green
A purpose-built club rather than a room above a pub, founded by the comedian Lee Hurst. Proper sightlines, a raked floor, a real stage and booked bills — the east London answer to The Comedy Store, and the only venue in this guide east of the City built for the job.
That is the practical difference. In a pub room you take what seat you get and hope the person in front is short. Here everyone can see, which matters more than it sounds over a two-hour bill.
It is on Resolution Way at E2 0EL, about five minutes from Bethnal Green station, and the surrounding streets are quiet at night — the club is the destination rather than part of a strip.
Weekend bills are the main event and book ahead; midweek is cheaper and less predictable.
Free, and genuinely good
This is the part of London comedy that surprises visitors. These are not open-mic nights in the pejorative sense; they are free rooms with professional acts.
Angel Comedy at The Camden Head, Islington
Free · every single night
Free stand-up every night of the week, with no exceptions, in a pub near Angel — the best-value night out in London and not a lesser product for it, because Angel Comedy books working professionals.
The RAW nights on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday are where new material gets tested; Friday shows run at 7.15pm and 9.15pm and are the polished bills.
Between three and six consecutive shows run each night, so you can stay for one or stay for the evening — and because it is free, leaving early costs you nothing, which changes how you watch.
The Camden Head is at N1 8DY, on Camden Passage, three minutes from Angel station. It is a pub first: the bar is downstairs, the room is upstairs, and you are expected to buy a drink rather than obliged to.
⚠️ Free does not mean easy to get into. At weekends, arrive up to ninety minutes early to collect a stamp. This is the single most common way people miss out.
Angel Comedy at The Bill Murray, Islington
Free seats · seven nights
Angel Comedy’s second venue, a refurbished pub they bought and run themselves, five minutes from the first. It carries the heavier programme of the two — on a typical weekend it runs shows at 6pm, 5.30pm, 4pm, 7pm and 9.30pm across Friday to Sunday, which is four or five separate bills a day.
New-material nights, Edinburgh previews and professional shows, with at least a few free seats at most of them.
The Edinburgh preview season, roughly June to early August, is when this room is at its best: full-length hours for a few pounds, performed to a room of thirty, before the same show goes north and costs thirty.
It is at N1 8NQ on Queen’s Head Street, and unlike the Camden Head it is a dedicated comedy venue rather than a pub that hosts comedy — which means a proper room and a published schedule you can plan around.
Comedy Virgins
Free · four pubs across London
Free nights running at Signature Brew in Haggerston, The Railway in Putney, The Gipsy Queen in Kentish Town and The Wheatsheaf in Tooting Bec. Open-mic in structure but with a long-standing reputation, and much the most geographically spread of the free options.
That spread is the entire reason to know about it. Every other free night in this guide is in Islington or Hoxton; this one puts a room within reach of south-west and north London too, so there is usually one near wherever you are staying.
Open-mic means what it says. Five-minute slots, mostly people starting out, and the quality swings hard from act to act — which is a different evening from Angel Comedy’s booked professionals, and worth knowing before you judge it against them.
Check the night before travelling. Four venues on different days is easy to get wrong, and these are pub back rooms whose schedules move.
Comedy Cabin, Hoxton
Free Thursdays · around £5 otherwise
A small Hoxton room mixing established acts with new ones. Free on Thursdays, and rarely more than a fiver the rest of the time — which puts it among the cheapest comedy in London even on a paid night.
The mixed bill is the appeal. Rooms this size usually run either all-new-act open mics or all-booked professional nights; putting both on one bill means you get the polish and the risk in the same evening.
It is small, so the free Thursday fills — arrive early rather than on time, the same rule that applies at the Camden Head.
Hoxton and Old Street stations are both a short walk, and Comedy Cabin sits within ten minutes of Angel Comedy’s two venues and MOTH Club, which makes north-east London the densest patch for free and near-free comedy in the city.
Where the locals actually go
Cheap neighbourhood nights with line-ups that embarrass their ticket prices.
Always Be Comedy, Kennington
£ · a pub back room
Widely rated one of the best comedy nights in London, in a Kennington pub back room, and known for big-name special guests turning up unannounced alongside the booked bill. If you want the story of having seen someone famous in a room of eighty people, this is where it happens.
The unannounced guest is the whole model, and it has a consequence worth understanding: the line-up you book against is not the line-up you get, and the surprise act is never advertised in advance. You are buying the room’s booking record rather than a named bill.
It runs monthly rather than weekly, which is the thing that catches people out — this is not a night you can drop into on a whim, and dates go on sale in advance and sell.
Kennington and Oval stations are each about five minutes, and there is nothing else comedic within walking distance, so it is a destination trip.
The Harrison, King’s Cross
£ · around £4
Around four pounds for a bill mixing up-and-coming acts with comedians you will recognise from television — the cheapest good comedy in central London, in the back room of a King’s Cross pub.
The pub is genuinely good in its own right, which matters when you are arriving early for a seat: open every day noon to 11pm, food until 9.30pm, pints at £5, and 10% off food between noon and 4pm on weekdays with 20% for students.
There is also a pub quiz on Mondays, 7pm to 9.30pm, so check which night you are coming for — the back room does not run comedy every night of the week.
WC1H 8JF on Harrison Street, about seven minutes from King’s Cross St Pancras, on a quiet residential street rather than the station drag.
Happy Mondays Comedy, New Cross
£ · around £5
Some of the biggest names in British stand-up alongside newcomers, in a New Cross pub, for about five pounds — a Monday-night institution in south-east London and one of the best value-for-name ratios anywhere in this guide.
The name is the schedule. It runs on Mondays, which is the night working comedians are free and the night big names use to try things out, and it is why the bills are so much better than the price suggests.
A Monday in New Cross is a specific commitment, and that is the honest catch: it is a twenty-minute train from London Bridge, at the start of the week, in a part of London most visitors never reach.
New Cross and New Cross Gate stations are both close, and the Overground runs late enough to get back.
Knock2Bag at MOTH Club, Hackney
£–££ · Valette Street
Big names and hot new acts in the glittery ex-servicemen’s club that is one of the best small rooms in London for anything — comedy, music or otherwise. Tickets cost a little more than the pub nights and the line-ups justify it.
MOTH stands for Memorable Order of Tin Hats, a veterans’ association, and the club still operates as one — the tinsel-curtained stage and Artex ceiling are original fittings rather than a design decision, which is why no amount of money could reproduce the room.
It is on Valette Street in Hackney, about eight minutes from Hackney Central Overground, tucked in a residential block and unmarked enough that people walk past it.
Knock2Bag is sometimes listed as free. It is not — mailing-list subscribers occasionally get free or heavily reduced tickets, which is probably where the confusion comes from.
The rest of the circuit
Up the Creek, Greenwich
££ · around 275 · Thu–Sun
Founded in 1991 by Malcolm Hardee in an old church hall, and still the most gleefully hostile room in London — the heckling is part of the format rather than an interruption of it, and comedians either handle it or are eaten. It won the first ever Chortle Award for Best Large Venue in 2002.
Not the room for a nervous first-timer, and exactly the room if you want to see what stand-up is actually like without a net.
Doors open an hour or more before the show and their own advice is to arrive early for the best seats — this is unreserved seating in a room that fills, and where you sit matters more here than anywhere else in this guide, because the front rows are part of the act.
Typical timings are doors 7pm for an 8pm start, with earlier 7.30pm shows on some nights and a later 8.45pm on others, so check the specific date rather than assuming.
SE10 9SW on Creek Road, five minutes from Cutty Sark DLR and ten from Greenwich — easy to combine with an afternoon in Greenwich rather than a trip on its own.
2Northdown, King’s Cross
£ · 100 seats · 2 min from King’s Cross St Pancras
Opened in June 2017 and now one of the industry’s favourite rooms for previews and works-in-progress — the place comedians take a show that is not finished yet. A hundred seats, step-free from the street, and two minutes from King’s Cross St Pancras.
Work-in-progress is the whole proposition, and it cuts both ways. Tickets are cheap and you are watching people you would pay four times as much to see finished — but shows are unpolished by design, run from notes, and sometimes stop and restart. That is the deal, and it is stated up front rather than hidden.
The step-free access is worth flagging because almost every other room in this guide is a pub cellar or an upstairs function room. This is the accessible option in central London comedy.
Being two minutes from a mainline station also makes it the easiest late show to get home from.
Soho Theatre, Soho
££ · Dean Street
Less a comedy club than the room where comedy becomes a show. New theatre, cabaret and full-length stand-up hours, and the London stop for most Edinburgh transfers — so a show you missed in August turns up here between September and Christmas.
That is the practical use of it. Club nights give you five acts doing twenty minutes; Soho Theatre gives you one act doing an hour, which is a different art form and priced accordingly.
There is now a second venue, Soho Theatre Walthamstow on Hoe Street, E17 4QH — a restored art deco cinema, and worth the Victoria line trip for the building alone. The original is at W1D 3NE on Dean Street.
Book ahead. These are theatre runs with named performers rather than drop-in nights, and the good ones sell out weeks in advance. Tottenham Court Road is four minutes from Dean Street.
Camden Comedy Club, Camden Town
£ · above a pub
Above the Camden Head pub — not the Islington pub of the same name, which is where Angel Comedy runs, and the confusion sends people to the wrong borough regularly. This one is NW1 0LU, on Camden High Street.
A consistent programme of touring acts, previews and new-material nights in a small upstairs room, and it is the most reliable comedy in Camden.
It is upstairs above a working pub, so the room is small, the seating is unreserved and the sound of the bar carries — this is a pub gig rather than a club, and priced as one.
Camden Town station is two minutes away and the market, the canal and the Amy Winehouse mural are all within ten, which makes it the easiest club in this guide to build an evening around.
Covent Garden Comedy Club, Covent Garden
££ · central
A long-running central club that trades on convenience and a reliable weekend bill. Not the most adventurous room in London, and that is rather the point — it is the one you book when the evening has to work rather than surprise you.
It is at WC2N 6NG, in the streets between Covent Garden and Charing Cross, which puts it within five minutes of most West End theatres.
That proximity is the reason to choose it. A 6pm or late show either side of a theatre booking is genuinely practical here in a way it is not from Kennington or New Cross.
Charing Cross, Leicester Square and Covent Garden stations are each about four minutes, and the last trains from Charing Cross run later than the Tube.
Big Belly Comedy Club, Waterloo
£–££ · a vaulted cellar
In a brick vaulted cellar near Waterloo, and the room is a large part of the appeal — low arched ceilings, no natural light, and the kind of acoustics that make a small crowd sound like a big one.
It runs a proper weekend timetable: Friday shows at 7pm and 9pm, Saturday at 6pm and 8.30pm, so you can go before or after dinner rather than around it.
The midweek shows are the value. Their Midweek Madness nights start from £5, against weekend tickets that stay under £20 — a considerable difference for the same room.
Sunday is a new-act competition, five minutes each, which is cheap and unpredictable in roughly equal measure.
SE1 9LQ, a few minutes from Waterloo, and the last trains from there run late enough for the 9pm show.
Where the names play
Everything above is a club — a bill of several acts, most of whom you will not have heard of, which is the point of a club. If you want to see one specific comedian do one show, you are looking for a different kind of building, and none of the venues below is a comedy venue at all. They are theatres, churches and an arena that happen to book the biggest touring names.
| Venue | Where | What it books | Worth knowing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Eventim Apollo | 45 Queen Caroline Street, Hammersmith W6 9QH | The largest touring stand-up shows short of an arena | Bills itself as live music, comedy and theatre in equal measure. Seated for comedy, which the standing music layout is not |
| Leicester Square Theatre | 6 Leicester Place WC2H 7BX | Long runs and work-in-progress shows by names you know | The most central of these by a distance. Card only — it stopped taking cash, and there is no cloakroom |
| Museum of Comedy | The Undercroft, St George’s Church, Bloomsbury Way WC1A 2SR | Nightly shows, plus an actual museum of British comedy | Under a Hawksmoor church, and run by the same people as Leicester Square Theatre. The only venue here that is a museum by day and a club by night |
| Bloomsbury Theatre | 15 Gordon Street WC1H 0AH | Touring stand-up and student comedy on the same stage | UCL’s theatre, so the programme swings from a household name to a first-ever gig |
| Union Chapel | Compton Terrace, Islington N1 2UN | Comedy in a working Victorian church | The room is the draw. Pews, no bar in the auditorium, and remarkable acoustics |
| Clapham Grand | 21–25 St John’s Hill, Battersea SW11 1TT | Comedy alongside club nights, cabaret and drag | A restored 1900 variety theatre by Clapham Junction, and the only one on this list where the comedy shares a programme with a club night |
| Hackney Empire | 291 Mare Street, Hackney E8 1EJ | Touring comedy in a 1901 Frank Matcham theatre | The building Charlie Chaplin and Stan Laurel played. Comedy is a listed category in its own programme |
| The O2 | Greenwich Peninsula | Arena stand-up only — the very few comedians who can fill it | Book the lower tiers. Comedy is a talking-head artform and the upper bowl is a long way from a face |
The Roundhouse belongs here too, but only for one month of the year — see the festivals below.
Soho Theatre is the one that straddles both categories, which is why it appears in the club list above rather than this one. It books full solo hours by touring names the way a theatre does, at prices closer to a club.
💡 The practical difference. Clubs are decided on the night and cost between nothing and £30. These venues go on sale months ahead and sell out, and a returns queue is not a reliable plan. If a specific comedian is the reason you are going out, buy the ticket the week it is announced.
Comedy festivals
London’s comedy festivals are almost entirely a July and August phenomenon. All four below run inside a six-week window, and outside it the city has no comedy festival at all — which is the single most useful thing to know about them, because it means the answer to “what’s on” in February is always the clubs.
| Festival | 2026 dates | Where | What it is |
|---|---|---|---|
| Greenwich Comedy Garden | 15–19 July | Old Royal Naval College SE10 9NL | Five nights of touring headliners in a tent in the grounds, with street food and a bar. Calls itself London’s biggest comedy festival |
| Ealing Comedy Festival | 23, 24, 30 and 31 July | Big Top, Walpole Park, Mattock Lane W5 5EQ | Four nights inside the wider Ealing Summer Festivals. Now in its 32nd year, and programmed by Headliners Comedy Club |
| Roundhouse Comedy Festival | Throughout August, closing 18 August | Roundhouse, Chalk Farm Road NW1 | A month of one-off shows in the main space. The 2026 edition opened with Frank Skinner and closed with Joe Lycett, with Katherine Ryan, Sara Pascoe, Ed Gamble, Fern Brady, Adam Buxton and Alexei Sayle in between |
| Camden Fringe | 3–30 August | 39 venues across Camden | 450+ shows, open access, an hour each. Not a comedy festival strictly — theatre, improv, opera and a gameshow too — but the Evening Standard called it the closest thing London has to one |
⚠️ VAULT Festival is gone. It ran under Waterloo station from 2012 and its final festival was in 2023; its own site now reads as an archive. A lot of London guides still list it as an annual fixture. It is not coming back in that form.
The two August festivals are opposites and they overlap. The Roundhouse books people off the television into a seated room, at theatre prices, one night each. Camden Fringe is open-access, so anyone can apply, in pub rooms a few streets away — and its own pitch is that many tickets cost less than a pint. You can do both in the same week for wildly different money.
The Greenwich and Ealing ones are outdoor and summer-dependent, in a tent and a Big Top respectively, which is a real consideration in a British July. Both put the food and bar operation on a par with the bill.
💡 The Roundhouse runs a second festival. Its Three Sixty Festival also carries comedy — Channel 4 programmes a new-talent showcase inside it — so a Roundhouse comedy listing is not automatically part of the comedy festival.
One thing none of them publishes clearly: 2027 dates. The pattern is stable — mid-July for Greenwich, late July for Ealing, all August for the Roundhouse and Camden — but the actual dates land four to six months ahead, and the Roundhouse’s on-sale is the earliest of the four.
What to know
- The free nights are the best value in London, and they are not a lesser product — Angel Comedy books professionals.
- Arrive early for anything free. Ninety minutes at The Camden Head on a Saturday is not an exaggeration.
- June to early August is Edinburgh preview season. Full shows, small rooms, a few pounds, before the same show costs three times as much at the Fringe.
- Front-row seats get spoken to. At every club on this page. Sit further back if that is not what you want.
- Most pub nights are cash-light but card-friendly, and the ticket price does not include a drink.
- Check the line-up the same week. Comedy bills change constantly and a name announced a month out is not a guarantee.
- Angel Comedy is free seven nights a week at The Camden Head, but The Bill Murray also runs paid shows — the two venues are not the same offer.
- Festivals are a July and August thing only. Greenwich, Ealing, the Roundhouse and Camden Fringe all fall inside six weeks. The rest of the year, the clubs are the entire scene.
- VAULT Festival ended in 2023. Ignore any guide still listing it.
Continue planning your London trip
- 🎵 The Best Live Music Venues in London
- 🎬 The Best Cinemas in London
- 🍸 The Best Cocktail Bars in London
- 💷 London on a Budget
- 🌙 Late-Night Eating in London
- 🎭 Islington Area Guide
Common questions
What is the best comedy club in London?
The Comedy Store in Soho is the institution — it opened in 1979 and effectively started British alternative comedy. For value, Angel Comedy runs free stand-up seven nights a week across two Islington pubs, and the quality is far higher than free implies.
Is there free comedy in London?
Yes, and a lot of it. Angel Comedy at The Camden Head is free every single night of the week, and its sister venue The Bill Murray keeps free seats at most shows. Comedy Cabin in Hoxton is free on Thursdays. Turn up early — free does not mean empty.
How much is a comedy night in London?
Free to about £8 at a pub night, £15–£30 at a dedicated club like The Comedy Store or Top Secret. The Harrison in King's Cross charges around £4 and Happy Mondays in New Cross around £5, both with acts you will later see on television.
Where do comedians try out new material in London?
Angel Comedy's RAW nights at The Camden Head, and new-material nights at The Bill Murray. Big names use small rooms to work up Edinburgh shows, which is why a £5 ticket sometimes buys you someone who sells out theatres.
Do I need to book comedy in London?
For The Comedy Store and Top Secret, yes. For the free nights you cannot book — you queue. At The Camden Head on a weekend, arrive up to ninety minutes early to be sure of getting in.
Are there comedy festivals in London?
Four, and they all run in the same six weeks. Greenwich Comedy Garden is five nights in mid-July at the Old Royal Naval College, Ealing Comedy Festival is four nights in late July in a Big Top in Walpole Park, the Roundhouse Comedy Festival runs through August, and Camden Fringe puts 450+ shows into 39 venues across August. Outside July and August, London has no comedy festival. VAULT Festival, which many guides still list, ended in 2023.
Where do famous comedians play in London?
Not in the clubs, mostly. Touring names play theatres — Eventim Apollo in Hammersmith, Leicester Square Theatre, the Bloomsbury, Union Chapel, Hackney Empire and the Clapham Grand — and the handful who can fill an arena play The O2. Soho Theatre is the crossover, booking full solo hours at closer to club prices. Club nights are where you see people before that happens.
What are the Comedy Store Players?
The improv troupe that has performed at The Comedy Store every Sunday, and later Wednesday, since October 1985 — Paul Merton, Josie Lawrence, Neil Mullarkey and others. Guinness confirmed it in 2010 as the world's longest-running comedy show with the same cast.
