Activity Bars in London That Are Actually Good

Junkyard Golf Club’s London location page now sends you to a different company. Follow it and you land on Ted’s Crazy Golf, which now gives a date: it opens on 16 October 2026 at 78 Great Eastern Street in Shoreditch. Junkyard’s own front page still lists London alongside Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Newcastle and Oxford.

If you booked Junkyard Golf in Shoreditch on the strength of a guide written last year, that is the kind of thing worth knowing before the group arrives.

The competitive socialising boom has given London a lot of activity bars: places where you throw something, hit something or roll something while holding a drink. Most of them are a pub with a gimmick bolted on and a queue for one machine. A few are genuinely well run and worth booking, and the venues turn over faster than anything else in this guide.

The difference is almost always the same thing: whether the venue was designed around the game or the game was added to a venue. This is what is worth your evening, sorted by activity.

Darts

Flight Club invented this category and still does it best. Automatic scoring, so nobody argues about arithmetic, oches arranged around a private booth, and food and drink brought to you rather than queued for. Its London sites are Bloomsbury, Islington, Shoreditch and Victoria, so if you have read that there is one in the City, there is not. Book a booth by the hour, bring six to eight people, and note that the automatic scoring makes it genuinely playable for people who cannot throw darts.

The important detail: this is not a darts venue that serves drinks, it is a bar with darts as the reason to stay at the table. That distinction is what most imitators get wrong.

Shuffleboard

Electric Shuffle, from the same people as Flight Club, takes the same approach to a considerably more forgiving game. Shuffleboard has the advantage that anyone can play it immediately and it does not require a throwing arm, which makes it the safer choice for a mixed group.

Three London sites: King’s Cross, London Bridge and Canary Wharf. It publishes its entry price, which most of this category does not: from £10 per person for groups of 2 to 32, across four games with food and drink brought to the table. The bottomless brunch, with pizza, Prosecco, beer, shuffleboard and DJs, is from £38 per person. Groups of 33 to 400 go to semi-private spaces or full venue hire.

Crazy golf

Swingers is the grown-up version, with courses in the City and West End, a clubhouse aesthetic, proper cocktails and street food traders inside. It runs an age policy in the evenings, and because operators keep changing theirs, check the specific site and time before you book a group with anybody under 18 in it.

Junkyard Golf Club is on its way out of London and Ted’s Crazy Golf is taking the ground. Ted’s is at 78 Great Eastern Street, EC2A 3JL, opposite the Hoxton Hotel, three minutes from Old Street and ten from Shoreditch High Street or Liverpool Street, and it opens on 16 October 2026. Its published hours are 4pm to 11pm Tuesday to Thursday, 4pm to 11.30pm on Friday, midday to 11.30pm on Saturday and midday to 8pm on Sunday, with the last golf an hour before close. Two nine hole courses and a diner, and no price published yet.

It is the same loud, scrappy register rather than the polished one: two nine hole courses, Bad Bones and Toys Bite, gargoyles and vampire teddy bears, with a retro diner called the Deadbeat Diner doing pizzas, hot dogs, milkshakes, themed cocktails and a full bar. Open Tuesday to Thursday 4pm to 11pm, Friday 4pm to 11:30pm, Saturday noon to 11:30pm and Sunday noon to 8pm, with last golf an hour before close. That last hour catches people who book a late table and then want to play.

Puttshack sits between the two, with tech-scored holes and a more corporate feel. Good for a work thing, less good for a night out.

Ping pong and bowling

Bounce in Farringdon and Old Street does ping pong on tables with tracking tech, and has the advantage of being genuinely central. Lane7 does bowling plus karaoke, darts and pool in one building, which makes it the most flexible option if the group cannot agree.

The more unusual activity bars

Clays does virtual clay pigeon shooting in the City and Moorgate, which sounds ridiculous and turns out to be the most fun on this list. Teams, scoring, actual skill involved.

Sixes does cricket nets with a bar attached, which works far better than it should even for people who do not follow cricket.

F1 Arcade in St Paul’s puts you in a racing simulator with a drink holder. Competitive, and the closest thing on this list to an actual sport. It is also the one on this page that is not an adults only venue: all ages are welcome, racers must be at least 7 years old, and under 18s can stay until 6pm. If you have a group with teenagers in it, this is the daytime answer, and almost every guide files it as a night out.

Open Monday to Wednesday noon to 11pm, Thursday and Friday noon to 1am, Saturday 10am to 1am and Sunday 10am to 11pm. On race weekends it runs Watch Parties with three ticket types: Grandstand with unlimited food and drink, Pit Wall seats showing live data from the race, and general admission. Those are a different proposition from booking a sim, and worth checking against the calendar before you pick a date.

Hijingo in Shoreditch is bingo rebuilt as a light show with a soundtrack. Ludicrous. Extremely good for a large group that needs something to do with no skill floor at all. Over 18s only, at every hour it is open, which is the opposite arrangement to F1 Arcade.

It is closed on Mondays, which is the detail that wastes a journey. Tuesday and Wednesday 5pm to 10pm, Thursday 4pm to 11pm, Friday 5pm to midnight, Saturday 11:30am to 12:30am and Sunday 1pm to 6pm, with longer hours on bank holiday Sundays and over Christmas. Sunday sessions are £10, and Friday at 8pm is its £5,000 jackpot game, which is the cheapest and the most expensive thing on this page depending on how it goes.

Cocktail making classes

A slightly different proposition, and better than it sounds if you pick the right one. The good ones are run by actual bars rather than events companies, which means you learn something and the drinks are worth drinking. Several of London’s serious cocktail bars run classes in their quiet hours, which is the version worth seeking out: a professional bartender, a real bar, and four drinks you made yourself.

The ones run in function rooms by companies with no bar attached tend to be a lot of sugar and a certificate. Ask where it is actually held before booking.

Booking and practical notes

Book, always. Every venue on this list works on timed slots and walk-in availability on a Friday is essentially zero. Two weeks ahead for a group of eight on a weekend.

Know the minimum spend. Most of these charge per person per hour for the activity and then have a food and drink minimum on top. A group evening at one of the polished venues adds up faster than people expect.

Check the age policy, because there is no pattern to it. Hijingo is over 18s at every hour it opens. F1 Arcade welcomes all ages until 6pm, with racers 7 or over. Others switch to over 18s later in the evening. Three different rules across one page, so read the venue rather than the category.

Group size matters more than venue. Darts and shuffleboard are best at six to eight. Crazy golf works at four. Bingo and cricket scale to much larger groups. Pick the activity to fit the party, not the other way round.

One activity, then go somewhere else. Ninety minutes is the right length. These venues are designed to keep you in them all evening and the drinks are rarely good enough to justify it.

The one activity that breaks the ninety minute rule is karaoke, because you are hiring the room by the hour and the prices are quoted four different ways, from five pounds a head for a booth to a thirty five pound minimum spend with dinner attached.

The free version of all this is the pub quiz, and the numbers behind it are worth knowing: across 140 London pubs on one circuit, not a single quiz runs on a Friday or Saturday, and Tuesday takes the most.

The comedy clubs are the cheaper alternative on the same nights, and London after dark covers what stays open once all of it finishes.

Which is the useful part: treat this as the first half of the night. When it is done, the best bars in London covers where to go next, and the cocktail bars list is there if the group wants something better than the venue was pouring. The whole evening sits inside our main London guide.

The prices, opening hours, age policies and venue lists above were taken from each operator’s own published pages and rechecked on 28 September 2026. Flight Club, Electric Shuffle, F1 Arcade, Hijingo and Ted’s all publish enough to quote. Swingers, Puttshack, Bounce, Lane7, Clays and Sixes did not publish a comparable price where it could be checked, so none is given for them here rather than an estimate being dressed up as one. This is the fastest moving category on the site, so confirm before you book a group.

Padel in London is the outdoor version of the same booking problem, and a sharper one: no London club publishes an hourly court price, and at Rocks Lane a non member can book one day ahead against twenty eight days for a member.

The board game cafes are the cheap end of the same format: admission at Draughts is 7.95 off peak against 10 pounds a head for darts, and it is capped at three hours.

Activities for adults covers the wider category these sit inside.

Questions we get asked

How much do activity bars cost in London?

Less than people assume at the entry level and more than they assume once the food and drink minimum is added, which is the part that catches groups out. Electric Shuffle publishes from 10 pounds per person for groups of 2 to 32, and from 38 pounds per person for its bottomless brunch. Hijingo runs 10 pound Sunday sessions. Most venues charge per person per hour for the activity and then apply a separate food and drink minimum, so ask for both numbers rather than the headline one.

Which London activity bar is best for a group with under 18s?

F1 Arcade in St Paul’s. It welcomes all ages until 6pm, with racers at least 7 years old, which makes it the exception in a category that is mostly over 18s. Hijingo in Shoreditch is over 18s at every hour it opens, and several other operators switch to over 18s later in the evening, so check the individual venue and the time rather than the brand.

What happened to Junkyard Golf in London?

Junkyard Golf Club’s London location page now redirects to Ted’s Crazy Golf, a different brand, which says it is opening at 78 Great Eastern Street in Shoreditch in October 2026. Junkyard’s own homepage still lists London alongside Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Newcastle and Oxford. Ted’s runs two nine hole courses, Bad Bones and Toys Bite, with a diner attached, and takes its last golf booking an hour before closing.

How long should you book an activity bar for?

Ninety minutes is the right length. Less feels rushed once you have sorted drinks and worked out the format, and more is longer than most groups sustain enthusiasm for. Book the ninety and go somewhere else afterwards rather than extending.

Are London activity bars worth it?

A few are genuinely well run and worth booking, and the rest are a bar with a gimmick attached. The useful question before booking is where the activity is actually held, because several operators run under one brand in venues of very different quality, so ask about the specific site rather than the name.