The best rooftop bars in Shoreditch

If you’ve spent any time in Shoreditch, you’ll be well acquainted with the two graffitied tube carriages that sit on the roof of gig venue Village Underground. They used to be the offices for the Village Underground team until they decided to turn them into a great, quirky cocktail bar. Inside, the locomotives are minimally decorated with mid-century style seating. You can even step inside the driver’s cab and go to town on the buttons and levers. On the spacious lower level there are bigger tables, the bar and a kitchen courtesy of Time Out-favourite Bad Boy Pizza Society. 

Clamber up to the very top of the sleek, Scandi-style One Hundred Shoreditch hotel and you'll find a lush rooftop retreat called Kaso. Up on the seventh floor it's all terrazzo tiles, panoramic views, and of course cocktails. Chef Ilknur Celik serves up dishes inspired by Istanbul and drinks fit nicely; there's a Margarissa with tequila, harissa, lime and agave, and a Kasonist with Greek wine, vodka, watermelon shrub and soda.

A sprawling bar-club hybrid, with a rooftop that gets a new, ever-more-vibrant theme with every changing of the season. For 2026 it’s a Caribbean BBQ vibe, with the Rum Shack dishing out frozen cocktails, spicy rumaritas and strawberry daiquiris, as well as food from Bajan kitchen take-over Barbs, with burgers, roti wraps, fishcakes, sweetcorn fritters and pudding & souse.

Culpeper – named after Nicholas Culpeper, the seventeenth-century English herbalist, who lived in nearby Spitalfields – is a tonic for any East Ender. A gastropub which grows its salads and herbs in planters on the roof garden, you can sit up there too, and eat from a seasonal menu under the sun while sipping wine. Ideal.

This unsurprisingly popular spot also contains a hotel, restaurant, and a ground-floor brasserie. Aside from the wood-burning fire and the dramatic panorama of the City skyline after dark, there’s a weather-proof orangery with floor to ceiling glass walls, allowing the dining area to stay open in all weathers. 

This Camra award-winning boozer with a traditional feel serves up craft beer and modern food – and it has a relatively green roof terrace hidden above it. 

This dizzyingly high viewing platform-meets-cocktail bar can be found up in the Heron Tower, also home to Duck & Waffle. The outdoor terrace is a sight to behold, with an enormous tree sculpture that sparkles after sunset.

Formerly a bog-standard boozer, now a wannabe-boho hangout off Hoxton Square, with pizza on the menu and beer-engulfed benches on the roof. Compared to some of Shoreditch’s busier,  rooftop hotspots, this one is a bit more down-to-earth.

This 10th floor bar-restaurant with a roomy open-air terrace at Finsbury Square’s Montcalm Hotel has killer panoramic view, and was once hugely popular with the post-work crowd. Cuddle up on modernist furniture and sink spritzes till the sun don’t shine.