London date nights
25 dates to choose from
Do
DhanyaaSwingers West End
Crazy golf you can play with a cocktail in hand, plus a whole arcade of carnival games to keep the scoreline messy. Street food stalls if you get hungry mid-round. Loud, silly and impossible to be awkward at.
Owain UlyetAutm Haus
Autm Haus is tucked away in Hackney Wick and stays properly under the radar — warm low lighting, good music at a volume you can still talk over, and drinks that take themselves just seriously enough. The kind of place you go once and then feel weirdly protective of.
TixSPYGAMES
Get a spy profile, then 50 minutes and 12 game rooms to prove you're not useless under pressure. Designed by actual CIA and special ops people, so it's genuinely hard — which is exactly why it's a brilliant date. You'll find out fast who panics and who takes charge.
JennaClays Bar, Canary Wharf
Interactive clay shooting from your own semi-private peg, with food and drink ordered straight to you mid-game. Ninety minutes, a happy hour before, and an actual prize for whoever shoots best. Properly competitive without needing any skill to start.
Melisa YesilKinboru UK
Kintsugi is the Japanese art of mending broken pottery with gold, where cracks are celebrated, not hidden. Over a couple of hours in their Aldgate studio, you'll smash a ceramic piece (weirdly cathartic as a pair) and gold-weld it back together into something to keep. Calm, hands-on, and refreshingly screen-free.
shaymulaCrazy Boules
Ditch standard drinks for a chaotic, neon-drenched clash of crazy golf and boules near Elephant and Castle. Settle your rivalries, break out the measuring tape for close calls, and see which of you ends up on the podium.
katewinney_God's Own Junkyard
Wander through a massive gallery of vintage movie props and glowing signs before grabbing a drink at the bar. You two will look completely irresistible lit up beneath the giant glitter ball.
Tiny LondonerBarbican Conservatory
Tucked inside the Barbican's brutalist towers is a lush tropical glasshouse with trailing vines, exotic fish ponds, and a bar where you can sip a drink among the plants. Free, peaceful, wildly photogenic. Weekends only, and book a slot ahead.
steph 💗 london lifeQUEENS skate dine bowl
An underground Bayswater playground - ice rink, bowling, darts, pool, retro arcade games, plus a bar and restaurant to regroup. The date for when you'd rather do something than stare at a menu across the table. Skating's the highlight.
sabrinataylaBounce Battersea
ing pong, cocktails and pizza in a buzzy Battersea Power Station room. Competitive enough to break the ice, low-key enough to actually talk - a great early-date move.
Amelia | Travel Creator ✈️Fairgame
Canary Wharf's carnival for adults. Hook-a-duck, test-your-strength and other fairground games given a slick, competitive makeover, with a scoring card, cocktails in built-in holders and street food. Nostalgic, genuinely fun, and competitive enough to demand a rematch.
whitneyyyGutterball Ealing Broadway
A stylish West London games den - bowling, karaoke, shuffleboard, darts, pool and arcade, all done with real design flair. No full menu though, just snacks, so eat before you come. For a playful, competitive night out in Ealing, it's hard to beat.
Bianca’s Plates 🫒Pinot & Picasso - Sip and Paint London
A guided paint-and-sip in Shoreditch where a warm instructor walks you through a whole canvas step by step, drink in hand - a skyline, Mount Fuji, whatever's on that night. No experience needed, genuinely relaxing, and you both go home with a painting.
★ Holly Gardner ★Maison S.Sommet (studio)
A BYOB pottery class in a Bermondsey railway arch - two hours at the wheel, a bottle open beside you, clay everywhere. Messy, hands-on, quietly romantic, and you leave with a wonky bowl you made together (glaze and keep it for a few quid more).
Adriana❤️Avora London
Part cocktail bar, part immersive theatre - you're put in costume and led through three acts of a fantasy world, a themed (smoking, colour-changing) cocktail per act, actors drawing you into the story. Not a normal night out. Ticketed and timed, so book ahead.
ScoutFrameless
Floor-to-ceiling projections bring paintings to life at Frameless, an immersive art experience at Marble Arch. Four galleries reimagine works by Monet, Van Gogh and Klimt through animation and music, with a café bar for afterwards. Wander together at your own pace, then compare favourites over coffee or cocktail - a date with plenty to look at and talk about.
sineadtravels ☆Meiro Ceramics
A women-owned Holloway studio where pottery comes with a twist and something extra. Taste rare matcha then hand-build the bowl you'd whisk it in, bring a bottle for a relaxed BYOB painting session, or try your hand at the wheel. Whichever you pick, it's calm, hands-on and refreshingly screen-free, with tutors who actually teach.
Tania | London Guides ✨The Magicians Table
At The Magicians Table in Waterloo’s Vaults, magicians perform inches away at shared tables of ten. Live music and a fictional magician’s memorial weave the tricks into a theatrical evening. Expect cocktails and bar snacks, rather than dinner.
MissdemsxoEnigma Quests Holborn
Thirty tiny rooms, five minutes each, one hour on the clock - this is the escape room reinvented as a fast, silly, gloriously competitive dash. You'll dive through door after door tackling quick-fire challenges (dodge a giant Snake, survive the floor turning to lava) as a team of two, then reward yourselves with a proper cocktail from the bar. It's daft, it's frantic, and it turns out there's no better way to find out how you handle chaos together.
CORRINAOriental Food Cooking Class
Pick a dish and learn to make it properly at this much-loved Archway kitchen - hand-pulled noodles, dim sum, bao buns or a Korean bento, all from scratch under an expert's eye. Then you sit down and eat everything the two of you made. A hands-on, slightly competitive, deeply satisfying way to spend an evening together.
itsalexlately | 30s abroadImperfect Art Peckham
The whole point of this Peckham art café is that your art doesn't have to be good and neither do you. Drop in for a couple of hours, pick your medium (watercolour, charcoal, pastels, or upgrade to lino printing or clay), and just make something with your hands, no tutor hovering and no masterpiece expected. Tea, coffee and biscuits keep coming, phones stay down, and you'll each leave with a piece to take home. Refreshingly, joyfully low-stakes.
mollsinterludeThe Blues Kitchen Shoreditch
A converted Victorian warehouse in Shoreditch where the music's live most nights and the food comes straight from America's Deep South. Settle into a booth for slow-smoked BBQ, burgers and cornbread while resident musicians play soul, R&B and blues, then slip off to the hidden bourbon bar and its 100-plus bottles. It's loud, warm and high-energy.
JennaComptoir Bakery Bermondsey
A proper French bakery school tucked into a railway arch behind Maltby Street Market. Pick your craft - flaky croissants and pain au chocolat, delicate fruit tartelettes, or a loaf of real sourdough and spend a hands-on morning learning to make it from scratch alongside an expert. Aprons provided, no experience needed, and you both go home with what you baked (plus the recipes to show off later).
Social Pottery Balham
A laid-back BYOB evening of pottery painting, two minutes from Balham station. Choose from 300-plus blanks, bring your own drinks, and spend just under two hours decorating your piece - no skill required, staff on hand for tips. They glaze and fire it for you to collect later. Easygoing, a little silly, and made for a chatty date.
The Font Climbing - Wandsworth
Part bouldering gym, part café-bar and a refreshingly active date. Take on nearly 200 no-ropes climbing routes, cheer each other up the wall, then collapse into the on-site bar for craft beer, coffee and gourmet burgers when your arms give out. Competitive, a bit sweaty, and far more memorable than another dinner.