The O2 Arena
Peninsula Square, London SE10 0DX
The O2 Arena sits at the centre of the entertainment district built inside the former Millennium Dome on London's Greenwich Peninsula, and opened in its present form in 2007. With a capacity of around 20,000 and a configurable floor that switches between concert, ice rink and exhibition use, it is among the largest indoor venues in the UK and was, in its first full year, the world's busiest music arena. The roof was constructed on the ground and lifted into place, the building deliberately designed to tame the echo that plagues older arenas.
Its roll-call of headliners reads like a survey of modern pop: Beyonce, Prince, Madonna, Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish, Olivia Rodrigo and many more have played the room. Michael Jackson's planned fifty-night This Is It residency was due to begin here in 2009 before his death. Beyond music it has hosted the 2012 Olympic gymnastics, the ATP Finals from 2009 to 2020 and the C2C country festival, confirming its place as one of the busiest arenas on the planet.
O2 Academy Brixton
211 Stockwell Road, London SW9 9SL
O2 Academy Brixton, known to most simply as Brixton Academy, is a mid-sized concert hall in south London, opened in 1929 as the Astoria cinema and reborn as a venue in 1983 when Simon Parkes famously bought it for one pound. With a general-admission capacity of around 4,300 and a raked, sloping floor beneath an art deco proscenium, it has become one of London's leading rooms, voted best venue many times over and the site of more than fifty live albums.
The history written into its walls is considerable: The Smiths played their final gig here in 1986, Leftfield set a live decibel record in 1996, and acts from The Clash, The Prodigy and Arcade Fire to The xx and LCD Soundsystem have stacked up multi-night residencies. The venue closed after a fatal crowd crush outside an Asake show in December 2022 and reopened, under new licensing conditions, in April 2024.
Roundhouse
Chalk Farm Road, London NW1 8EH
The Roundhouse in Chalk Farm, north London, is a Grade II* listed former railway engine shed, built in 1846 and 1847 as a circular building housing a locomotive turntable. It served its original purpose for barely a decade, spent fifty years as a gin warehouse, and reopened as a performing arts venue in the 1960s before a multi-million-pound restoration brought it back in 2006. The renovated room holds up to 3,300 standing or 1,700 seated beneath its distinctive conical roof and ring of cast-iron columns.
Its cultural pedigree runs from the 1966 launch party for International Times, with Pink Floyd and Soft Machine, through appearances by The Doors, Jimi Hendrix, The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, The Clash and the Ramones. Since reopening it has hosted the iTunes and Apple Music festivals and live recordings by Adele, Ed Sheeran, Lady Gaga and many others, while also running a substantial creative programme for young people.
O2 Forum Kentish Town
9-17 Highgate Road, London NW5 1JY
The O2 Forum Kentish Town occupies a 1934 art deco former cinema on Highgate Road in north London, designed by J. Stanley Beard and Grade II listed since 1990. After its cinema days it passed through stints as a bingo hall and the Forum Dancehall before becoming a live venue, most famously as the Town and Country Club, whose final show was Van Morrison in 1993. A 2007 refurbishment lifted its capacity to 2,300, and Live Nation rebranded it under the O2 banner in 2015.
The stage has a long history under its various names, from David Bowie, James Brown, Nina Simone and Prince to Radiohead, Oasis, Pixies, Suede and Bjork, who played her first solo concert here in 1993. It remains one of London's most reliable mid-sized rooms for touring bands stepping up from the club circuit.
MOTH Club
Old Trades Hall, Valette Street, London E9 6NU
MOTH Club is an intimate music venue in Hackney, east London, that opened in August 2015. It takes its name from the building's former life: the pub, once the General Browning, served as the Hackney headquarters of the Memorable Order of Tin Hats, and the venue has kept the glittery, faintly surreal old-boys'-club character that goes with it. The room is small, which is precisely why it has become a destination.
That intimacy has drawn a string of secret shows from far bigger names: Lady Gaga played here in September 2016, and Suede appeared in September 2022 under the alias Crushed Kid. It sits firmly within London's grassroots circuit, a venue whose size is its selling point, though it has had to campaign against nearby development to protect its future.
Eventim Apollo
2 Queen Caroline Street, London W6 9QH
The Eventim Apollo in Hammersmith, west London, is still known to many simply as the Hammersmith Odeon. It opened in 1932 as the Gaumont Palace cinema, an art deco building now Grade II* listed, and has run through a parade of sponsor names since. With seated capacity of around 3,600 and standing capacity of roughly 5,000, plus a restored 1932 Compton pipe organ still in place, it is one of London's grandest mid-to-large rooms. A major refurbishment preceded its reopening as the Eventim Apollo in 2013.
Few venues have been documented on record so often: live albums and films have been captured here by Queen, Black Sabbath, Dire Straits, Bruce Springsteen, Kate Bush, Duran Duran, David Bowie and Iron Maiden, whose affection for the room ran to repeat live recordings. The Who put it on the cover of Quadrophenia. It is a venue thick with rock history.
The Lexington
96-98 Pentonville Road, London N1 9JB
The Lexington sits between King's Cross and Angel in north London, an early Victorian building with a ground-floor bar known for its deep range of American bourbon and craft beer, and a 200-capacity music venue up a flight of stairs. It is an 18+ room, the gig space compact enough that bands and crowd are practically on top of each other, with an in-house backline and a kitchen that currently turns out pizza.
The combination of bourbon downstairs and live music upstairs has made it a fixture of the city's small-venue circuit, the kind of room where the bill runs from touring guitar bands to DJ nights and a Monday quiz. Its scale is modest by design, which is exactly what keeps it a favourite for new and cult acts.
Rough Trade East
Dray Walk, 91 Brick Lane, London E1 6QL
Rough Trade East is the flagship London shop of the Rough Trade chain, which traces its lineage to the original record shop opened by Geoff Travis in Ladbroke Grove in 1976. Opened in July 2007 in a courtyard off Brick Lane, in the former Truman's Brewery, the space was designed by David Adjaye and pairs an exhaustively annotated stock of vinyl and CDs with a cafe and browsing area. It is as much a hangout as a retailer, built on the conviction that record-buying should be an experience rather than a transaction.
Its stage hosts in-store gigs for an audience of around 300, typically tied to the purchase of an album and ticketed through the DICE platform. The format has made it a reliable first London date for emerging acts and a launch venue for new records, part of a wider Rough Trade family that now stretches from Nottingham and Bristol to Berlin and New York. A Denmark Street branch opened in 2024.
KOKO
1A Camden High Street, London NW1 7RE
KOKO is a 1,500-capacity music venue in Camden Town, London, housed in a Grade II-listed theatre that opened in 1900 as the Camden Theatre, designed by W. G. R. Sprague. The building has lived several lives, as a BBC recording studio where The Goon Show was taped, as The Music Machine in the punk and new-wave years, and as the Camden Palace, where Madonna gave her first UK performance. Restored and renamed KOKO in 2004, its ornate interior lends a sense of grandeur to a gig.
That reputation survived a serious fire in 2020; following a multimillion-pound refurbishment it reopened in 2022 with Arcade Fire. Over the decades its stage has carried everyone from The Clash and Prince to Coldplay, Amy Winehouse, Lady Gaga and Ed Sheeran, and it remains one of London's premier rooms for both billed shows and the secret album launch.
Royal Albert Hall
Kensington Gore, London SW7 2AP
The Royal Albert Hall stands on the northern edge of South Kensington, a domed Victorian concert hall opened by Queen Victoria in 1871 and built as part of a memorial to Prince Albert. With a seating capacity of 5,272, it is one of the most recognisable rooms in the world, staging more than 390 shows a year in its main auditorium across every genre, from the BBC Proms, held there each summer since 1941, to rock and pop, ballet, opera and film with live orchestra.
Its history is woven through British public life as much as British music, having hosted suffragette meetings, speeches by Churchill and Einstein, and boxing alongside the concerts. Regular performers have ranged from Eric Clapton and Shirley Bassey to a vast roster of visiting artists, and a date here remains a career landmark for any musician.
Windmill Brixton
22 Blenheim Gardens, London SW2 5DA
The Windmill is a pub and live venue in Brixton, south London, built in 1971 for the neighbouring Blenheim Gardens estate and named after the nearby working windmill. It spent its early years as a local bar before shifting decisively to live music around 2002, and has since earned a reputation as one of the most important small rooms in the country for new and adventurous guitar music. Unpretentious to a fault, it once had a Rottweiler living on its roof as an unofficial mascot.
It is best known as the cradle of the so-called Windmill scene, the wave of south London bands that came up playing there, among them Black Country, New Road, Squid, Shame, Fat White Family and Black Midi. The wider roster of acts to have passed through takes in Bloc Party, Hot Chip, Stereolab and The Vaccines, confirming its standing as a venue where the next thing tends to appear first.
The Lower Third
26 Denmark Street, London WC2H 8NJ
The Lower Third is a live music venue at 26 Denmark Street in London's Soho, part of the Outernet development on the lane long known as Tin Pan Alley. Its name nods directly to the street's history: David Bowie recruited his mid-1960s backing band, The Lower Third, on Denmark Street, and the venue draws on that lineage in a quarter that has been central to British popular music since the 1950s, home to the publishers, studios and shops where the Rolling Stones, the Kinks and the Sex Pistols all worked.
A modern basement room rather than a historic one, it opened as part of the regenerated Denmark Street and has hosted an array of contemporary acts including Romy, Sam Fender and d4vd. It functions as an intimate Soho stage for showcases, launches and one-off shows, trading on a famous address while serving the current generation of artists.
Scala
275 Pentonville Road, N1 9NL
Scala sits in King's Cross in a building that opened in 1920 as a cinema and spent seventy years cycling through mainstream, art-house and rather less salubrious programming, including a famous run of horror all-nighters in the 1980s. The cinema closed in 1993 after Warner Bros. successfully sued over an unauthorised screening of the then-withdrawn A Clockwork Orange, and the building reopened as a club and live venue in 1999. Spread over four floors, it now holds around a thousand.
The room has hosted a strikingly broad span of artists since reopening, from Foo Fighters, Nine Inch Nails and Sonic Youth to Ed Sheeran, Bastille and Lana Del Rey, alongside its weekend club nights. Its cinema past lends it an odd, vertical character that sets it apart from the standard London box, which is part of its appeal.
O2 Shepherd's Bush Empire
Shepherd's Bush Green, London W12 8TT
The O2 Shepherd's Bush Empire is a Grade II-listed theatre in west London, built in 1903 as a variety house for impresario Oswald Stoll and designed by Frank Matcham, the era's pre-eminent theatre architect. It spent decades from the 1950s as a BBC television studio, home to programmes including The Old Grey Whistle Test, before reopening as a live venue in 1994. It holds around 2,000 standing, and a refurbishment in 2025 brought new sound and lighting while leaving the Matcham bones intact.
Its second life as a music room began fittingly with a Soundgarden show in 1994, and the balconied auditorium has since become one of London's most coveted mid-size stages, the rung bands aim for once the clubs are behind them. Its history as a broadcast studio only deepens the sense of a building that has spent more than a century watching performers work.
The Garage
20-22 Highbury Corner, N5 1RD
The Garage is a live venue in Highbury, north London, opened in 1993 in a building that began life as a Temperance Billiard Hall. The main room holds around 600, with a smaller 150-capacity space, The Grace, added upstairs in a 2017 revamp after DHP Family took the venue over. For much of its life it has been spoken of as one of the capital's essential indie and rock rooms, the kind of stage bands treat as a rite of passage.
The list of acts who have played it bears that out: Oasis, Muse, Green Day, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Franz Ferdinand, Arctic Monkeys, Paramore and My Chemical Romance among them. A spell in the late 2000s saw it branded the Relentless Garage under a drinks sponsorship, but it has since reverted to its plain, well-earned name.
Omeara
6 O'Meara Street, London SE1 0AB
Omeara is a 350-capacity live venue, bar and performance space in Flat Iron Square, in the arches near Borough Market and London Bridge, founded by Mumford and Sons' Ben Lovett. Spread across some 9,000 square feet, it gathers a main live room in a central arch with several bars, dressing rooms and a roof garden, and forms part of the wider Low Line development beneath the railway. It was built, in other words, by a musician with a clear idea of what a good small room should feel like.
That intent shows in the design: terraced viewing platforms, a stage set into a brick arch and the sort of sightlines that make a few hundred people feel like a proper crowd. As one of the newer additions to the London Bridge area's nightlife, it sits at the intimate end of the city's circuit, a deliberate counterweight to the barns.
Islington Assembly Hall
Upper Street, London N1 2UD
Islington Assembly Hall is a Grade II-listed Art Deco room on Upper Street, part of the Islington Town Hall complex, built in 1929 and opened in 1930 for dances, variety shows and civic occasions. It closed in the 1980s and stood largely dormant for nearly thirty years before Islington Council restored it in 2009, keeping its sprung dance floor, tiered balcony and wood panelling intact. It holds around 950, split between a standing floor and a balcony.
That preserved 1930s character is precisely what makes it work as a live venue: a handsome, balconied hall of a size that flatters both performer and crowd. It has settled into the north London circuit as a mid-size room with a good deal more atmosphere than its capacity alone would suggest, the dance-hall bones doing quiet work behind the modern bookings.
Alexandra Palace
Alexandra Palace Way, London N22 7AY
Alexandra Palace, Ally Pally to everyone who has ever climbed the hill to it, is a vast Victorian leisure palace perched above north London. Opened in 1873 as a People's Palace, it promptly burned down sixteen days later and was rebuilt by 1875, went on to host the BBC's first regular high-definition television broadcasts in 1936, and survived a second major fire in 1980. Today it is a sprawling, multi-hall events venue running something like 250 events a year, with views that on a clear night take in half the city.
For gigs, the cavernous Great Hall is the headline act, holding upwards of 10,000 and lending itself to the grand statement; smaller spaces, including the restored Alexandra Palace Theatre, handle more intimate bills. Led Zeppelin, The Who, Black Sabbath and Queen have all filled the room over the decades, and the BBC Proms have decamped here too. It is the kind of venue where the building competes with the band for your attention, and frequently wins.
