10 perfect places to play board games in London

London Bridge’s Bad Moon Café’s might have a more modestly-sized games collection than other popular gaming café’s around the city, but its 150-plus collection is packed with gems. With bespoke tables for playing Warhammer and regular tournaments for fans of Magic: The Gathering, Flesh and Blood and Warmachine, this venue is one for the real RPG geeks. And if you’re looking for something to take home to continue the fun, they also have a selection of games for purchase too. Be sure to check out the café’s events schedule online here. 

If the phrase ‘Let’s play Seven Wonders’ means more to you than a Fleetwood Mac-related DJ request then you’re going to be pretty darn excited at the prospect of Draughts, a bar and café with more than 500 board games available to play at customers’ leisure. Access to the games library is available from £7.50 per person for up to three hours of gaming. The library includes everything from Articulate and Cranium to newer (and more complex) classics Carcassonne and Pandemic Or if you can’t decide what to play, a resident ‘game guru’ is on hand to offer guidance on which will suit your group best and how the rules work, while an online catalogue is arranged into categories as niche as ‘American Revolutionary War’, ‘Space Exploration’ and ‘Zombies’, and can be filtered by number of players. The bar serves up a range of craft beers, cocktails and wine, plus coffee from Ozone, Good and Proper Tea and a great no- and low-alcohol selection, while the all-day food menu features burgers, tacos and sharing options. There’s also a second location in Waterloo. 

If you’re a keen player of tabletop roleplaying games, you’ll probably be familiar with the term ‘arcanist’ already. With immersive fantasy decor and a themed drinks menu (Druid’s Tincture, anyone?), this Shoreditch gaming café might be London’s best spot for a game of D&D. Fans of the OG roleplaying game should check out the venue’s immersive booths featuring hidden sound dampening, built-in dice rollers, and a privacy curtain. Seating up to 8 players, they’re available to hire in four-hour blocks from £21 for three players, and £7 for each additional player. Not up for a marathon session? Head to the Apothecary instead to discover your new favourite board game from a curated library of over 300 titles, which you can access for £7 (check out the full catalogue here.) And if you’ve worked up an appetite with all that dice-throwing, they also serve up a menu of toasties and pizzas, each of which comes with a side of lore.

Open seven days a week, and til 11pm on weekends, this Croydon high street gaming venue might well boast the largest collection of board games in London. For £7 each, players can access over 1000 titles ranging from stacking games for toddlers up to enormous strategy games with hundreds of individual pieces, while guests can also enjoy pizzas, paninis, cakes, hot drinks and draught beers while playing. Gaming sessions last for three hours during the day, with no limit on sessions from 6pm til close, and with discounts for under 16s and extended opening hours during school holidays, this is a venue for gamers of all ages. Check out the full list of available games here. 

Loading Bar is one of London’s longer-running board game bars, having first opened its doors in 2010. Come down to battle your way through the collection of 80+ board games while sipping themed cocktails (we particularly like the sound of the ‘Alien: Inebriation’, which comes with a Kinder egg plonked in a shot glass) then, if you fancy a change of pace, head to the arcade den, play table football or play a range of video games on Nintendo Switch, N64, PS4 or Xbox One X. It also hosts occasional events, including karaoke nights, Beyblade tournaments and wrestling watch parties. And unlike a lot of London’s other board game venues, there’s no entry fee, so all a visit will set you back is the cost of the food and drink you consume while playing.

Looking for people to play Magic: The Gathering with IRL? Rogues Quarter hosts regular events focused on the game, so come here to find your people. Open til 11pm five nights a week, the Kentish Town café also home to some massive gaming tables perfect for wargaming, while its extensive library of almost 600 games has plenty to discover elsewhere. Rental of a game costs £6 per person for up to three hours (plus £2 per additional hour) and comes with the caveat that you must purchase food and/or drink to access the library. The menu includes snacks, burgers, and tapas treats, so come hungry.

This Richmond games café has a selection of hundreds of games, with the stacks growing all the time, plus a bar serving everything from beers to absinthe. One session per person is £6.50 and there's a minimum spend of £15, but it's easy to hit that when there's so much choice of games to let yourself get lost in.

The Horatia might be large, but it’s also remarkably cosy – all the better for holing up in and playing a round (or several) of the board games on offer here. It’s best to check the fixtures at nearby Emirates Stadium before you pop down, though – it’s a hotspot for Gooners on match day, so it gets pretty busy.

Escape Bar has all the classic board games you could hope for, and a whole host of more unusual options too. Come for Catan, Articulate and Operation; stay for Bucket Of Doom, Rhino Hero and many more.

Beautiful Norfolk Square Gardens, tucked just off the main road in front of Paddington Station boasts formal lawns, floral beds and ornamental shrubs. Also, a giant chess set. Will playing with rooks that come up to your knee help your strategy? Possibly not, but at least you’ll get a bit of fresh air out of it.