Search for burlesque in London and you will be pointed to two venues that no longer exist. This is not an exaggeration: the two most frequently recommended names in every listicle have both closed, and large ticketing and listings sites still carry pages for them.
So before anything else, here is what has gone, and then what is genuinely running.
Rechecked on 28 September 2026
This page exists because burlesque listings in London are unusually unreliable, so it gets rechecked rather than reprinted.
The two closures below still stand, and the business that replaced one of them has now closed as well. Of the venues listed as running, Underbelly Boulevard, Crazy Coqs, Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club, the Clapham Grand and The Box were all confirmed open and programming, and the Cocoa Butter Club has dates announced into December.
The two that have closed
Café de Paris
Closed permanently in December 2020, after 96 years, when its operating company went into liquidation. The Coventry Street site reopened in February 2023 as Lío London, a different business run by the Pacha Group, and Lío’s own site now says its London chapter has come to a close.
It remains in guides constantly, partly because its history is genuinely remarkable: it was bombed during the Blitz in March 1941, killing at least 34 people, and stayed shut until 1948.
Proud Embankment
Also closed, and this is the one that catches people out, because its listings outlived it.
It opened in 2018 in the arches under Waterloo Bridge at 8 Victoria Embankment and was the default answer to “where do I see burlesque in London”. Its own website no longer resolves, the parent company’s domain now redirects to a Brighton venue, and the listings site DesignMyNight states plainly that it is closed.
When this page was rechecked on 28 September 2026, Skiddle still had a venue page for it, with no events listed, and older ticket links still turn up in search. Check before you buy anything.
What is actually on
Underbelly Boulevard, Soho
6 Walker’s Court, W1F 0BT. Nearest Piccadilly Circus.
A flexible theatre seating up to 200, run by Underbelly since October 2023 in the old Boulevard Theatre, which reopened in 2019, and it has become the serious home for theatre, comedy, variety and cabaret in central London. There is a cocktail bar attached.
The address is the point. Walker’s Court was home to the Raymond Revuebar, the Soho strip venue that effectively defined the street’s reputation, and this building began in the late 1950s as its sister venue. The Revuebar’s neon sign still hangs above Brewer Street. A proper cabaret theatre in that alley is the most interesting thing to have happened to Soho nightlife in years.
Programming is seasonal and runs in blocks rather than as a permanent revue, so check what is actually on rather than turning up. It is confirmed programming well ahead: when this page was rechecked its board ran from a magic show at the end of September to a Christmas run booked to 10 January 2027, in blocks of a week to several weeks each.
Crazy Coqs, Piccadilly
20 Sherwood Street, inside Brasserie Zédel. Nearest Piccadilly Circus.
A small art deco room doing jazz, song, cabaret and occasional magic. The box office opens at 3pm daily.
Worth understanding the format: this is not a dinner show. You book a seat, the maître d’ allocates the tables for each show, and you order cocktails, wine and snacks to the table from a waiter or by QR code. If you want dinner, eat in the brasserie downstairs first, which is one of the better value grand rooms in London.
The most grown-up option on this page, and the one to choose if the idea of a compère shouting at the audience fills you with dread.
Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club
42 to 46 Pollard Row, E2 6NB, just off Bethnal Green Road. Nearest Bethnal Green. A real working men’s club since 1953.
The spiritual home of London’s alternative cabaret scene, and it very nearly went. In 2024 the club’s committee served notice on its programmers with a view to selling to developers.
It survived. In January 2025 Tower Hamlets granted it recognition as a cabaret theatre in planning terms, which means the council will not support a development that fails to retain the venue. That is an unusually strong protection and it is why the place is still standing. The building is also listed as an Asset of Community Value, and the Friends of BGWMC raised £44,598 in 2025 towards a community bid for it.
The club does not behave like somewhere that considers itself safe. Its own site, rechecked on 28 September 2026, still leads with the words “WE ARE OPEN, THE FIGHT IS ON” and asks people to come to events while they can. The planning protection is real and so is that message. If seeing alternative cabaret in the room where London’s scene grew up matters to you, go this season rather than next.
Expect a genuine working men’s club interior, cheap drinks and performers who are considerably better than the surroundings suggest.
The Cocoa Butter Club
Not a venue but a company, which is why you will not find an address.
Founded in 2016 by the cabaret star Sadie Sinner, it calls itself a performance company celebrating performers of colour, and a clap-back to cultural appropriation and a lack of representation in a scene that has historically not made room for them. The bills mix burlesque with drag and live music, and it runs the Black Burlesque School alongside the shows.
They play all over: this autumn’s dates run from The Yard Theatre, 1 to 17 October, to the Lyric Hammersmith on 24 October and Crazy Coqs on 4 December. Dates are occasional rather than weekly, so buy when a date is announced rather than hoping to find one.
If you want to see where the form is actually going rather than a 1940s pastiche, this is it.
The Clapham Grand
21 to 25 St John’s Hill, Battersea, SW11 1TT. Nearest Clapham Junction, which is directly opposite.
A variety theatre that has been going since 1900 and still bills itself as London’s palace of variety. It hosts burlesque within a broad programme of club nights, comedy, cabaret and drag, including Mx Burlesque UK, the national competition, which it staged on 20 September 2026. Not a permanent burlesque venue, but the room is splendid and worth watching the listings for.
One practical note: its website was returning a server error for a spell in September 2026, and was back by the 28th. That was a hosting fault rather than any sign of a closure, so if the site will not load for you, check a ticketing platform rather than assuming the venue has gone. The mirror image of that mistake, trusting a live page for a dead venue, is how the two closed venues at the top of this page ended up still being sold.
The Box, Soho
11 to 12 Walker’s Court, W1F 0BS. A few doors from Underbelly and about as different as two venues can be.
Open from Wednesday evening to Saturday, and dark from Sunday to Tuesday. Book a table through its site, or by phone or WhatsApp to the front desk. Without one, the venue’s own answer on whether you will get in is a formula of vibe and style divided by the size of your group, so treat the door as selective and dress for it.
Two honest warnings. The performance is deliberately transgressive and explicit, and considerably more confrontational than anything else on this page, so it is not a substitute for a cabaret evening. And it is expensive, though the venue does not publish its table prices, so ask when you book rather than trusting any figure you read, here or anywhere.
Burlesque is not stripping, and the law agrees
This distinction gets waved away as a matter of taste. It is actually a matter of licensing, and the line is drawn in statute.
A Sexual Entertainment Venue is premises where “relevant entertainment” is provided before a live audience for the financial gain of the organiser or performer. These are licensed separately by the local council under Schedule 3 of the Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1982, as amended by section 27 of the Policing and Crime Act 2009.
The definition of relevant entertainment is the part that matters:
any live performance or any live display of nudity which is of such a nature that, ignoring financial gain, it must reasonably be assumed to be provided solely or principally for the purpose of sexually stimulating any member of the audience.
The test is purpose, not nudity. That is why a lap dancing club needs an SEV licence and a cabaret theatre generally does not: theatrical burlesque, with narrative, costume, choreography and usually a good deal of comedy, is not reasonably assumed to exist solely or principally to sexually stimulate the audience. It is licensed as ordinary regulated entertainment like any other theatre.
There is also an infrequent use exemption, which explains why pubs and arts venues can run occasional nights without an SEV licence. Broadly, premises are exempt where relevant entertainment has been provided on no more than eleven occasions in twelve months, with at least a month between occasions, none of them lasting more than 24 hours.
Worth knowing that councils have wide discretion here. Several London boroughs, Islington and Richmond among them, have adopted nil policies that set the appropriate number of sex establishments at none, though each application is still judged on its merits, and Westminster, which covers Soho, may refuse an application where it considers the locality already has enough.
Practical notes
Check the venue is open before you buy. The whole point of the first section. Ticketing platforms do not reliably remove closed venues, and a live checkout page is not evidence that a venue exists.
Work out which format you are buying. A seated theatre show, a dinner and show package, and a late club night with performances are three different evenings at similar prices. Crazy Coqs is seated with table drinks. The Box is a nightclub. They are not interchangeable.
Most of this is not weekly. London burlesque runs on one-off and short-run dates rather than a permanent resident show. If you want a specific night, book when it is announced.
Dress properly. Not because anyone will stop you at most of these, but because the audience makes the room and an underdressed table is obvious.
Everything here was checked against venue and council sources, and rechecked on 28 September 2026. Programming changes constantly, so confirm before travelling.
Where to go next
For the rest of an evening built around one of these, the best cocktail bars in London covers where to drink first, and London after dark covers what stays open once the show ends.
The comedy clubs are the other live room worth booking, and they have the same problem in reverse: not closures, but prices that treble between a Thursday and a Saturday for the same bill.
If dinner is the anchor, the best restaurants in London has the rooms, and our main London guide has everything else.
Questions we get asked
How do you book burlesque in London?
It depends on the venue, and one of the best known is not a venue at all but a company, which is why you will not find an address for it. At the seated venues you book a seat and order cocktails, wine and snacks to the table during the performance. One box office opens at 3pm daily, so that is the hour to call rather than the morning.
What time does burlesque start in London?
It depends on the format. Seated shows start at the advertised time, and at Crazy Coqs the doors open just before it. Club nights run late and the entry rules matter more than the start: at Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club an advance ticket for a club night is only guaranteed until 11.30pm and last admission is midnight, so arriving at half past twelve is arriving too late whatever your ticket says.
Is burlesque in London a sit down show?
At most of the venues, yes: you book a seat at a table and order drinks and snacks through the performance rather than standing at a bar. The address is often the point, since several of these rooms are in buildings worth seeing in their own right, and one of the best known operates as a touring company without a fixed address at all.
Written by Robert J Wills, no. 30 in the guide.
Last checked 28 September 2026 against the venues' own published information. Nobody pays to appear here and we take no bookings.
