Looking for somewhere special to sink an eggnog or mulled wine with friends over the festive season? Try one of these Christmas pop-ups. Merry Hic-Mas! 🍸☃️
Champagne Chalet, King's Cross
Add some sparkle to your festive celebrations at the Champagne Chalet — a Perrier-Jouët pop-up in King's Cross rigged out in pine garlands/golden baubles/fake furs and fireplaces — and giving off a general après-ski ambience. Fizz isn't the only thing on the menu; there's also mulled wine (and mulled Guinness!) plus boozy hot chocolate. Food is cheesy/schnitzel-y, and there's live music every night.
Champagne Chalet, King's Cross, until 3 January 2025
Limin Winter Lodge, South Bank
How to spice up an après-ski lodge pop-up? Limin Winter Lodge does it with a generous dash of Caribbean vivaciousness. New for 2024, this winter-long offering comes with all the usual faux-fur furniture and snow-dusted pine backdrops, but then throws a curveball by lobbing in steel pan music, fire breathers and a candy cane limbo. The bar's pouring Winter Berry Mojito and Val-d'Isère Passion Fizz, as well as chef-owner Sham Mahabir's Caribbean adaptation on mulled wine. All of a sudden I've got this Lord Kitchener song in my head.
Limin Winter Lodge, South Bank, until March 2025
The Montague Ski Lodge, Bloomsbury
The Montague Ski Lodge transports Londoners to a wintry mountaintop by way of a mock-up ski lodge. There are lanterns, fairy lights, snuggly woollen blankets, ski equipment pinned on the walls — plus a menu of festive drinks featuring spiced cider and hot chocolate cocktails. Look out for snowmen too. Here's the rub: the Ski Lodge is for exclusive hire and hotel residents only. EXCEPT they occasionally also accept walk-ins. So if you happen to be in Bloomsbury and fancy a festive snifter, it's worth popping your head round the door and asking nicely.
The Montague Ski Lodge, Bloomsbury, 3 November-30 December 2024
Miracle at Henrietta hotel, Covent Garden
Travel back to the gaudy Christmasses of decades past, with Miracle's spec-tacky-ular pop-up at The Henrietta hotel. Slurp OTT mulled wine and eggnogs from ludicrous mugs (including a t-rex-shaped number), while admiring white plastic Christmas trees bespewed with gaudy tinsel. Our fave (and yes we have knocked back a few) is the Jingle Balls Nog, sloshed together with cognac, cream sherry, almond milk, cream, egg, vanilla and nutmeg. Don't forget to buy an armful of souvenir drinkware on the way out.
Miracle at Henrietta, Covent Garden, 11 November-23 December 2024
Après-ski Igloos at Coppa Club Tower Bridge
We all know the true meaning of Christmas: getting sick on Celebrations, watching Home Alone for the millionth time, and plonking yourself in a plastic igloo. The igloos at Coppa Club Tower Bridge are probably London's most famous, in no small part thanks to their plum position overlooking, uh huh, Tower Bridge. They're around all year, but over Christmas they're seasonally festooned — making for a memorable spot for a glass of fizz, cocktail — or a three-course Christmas dinner. In 2024, they have an après-ski theme, with seasonal foliage, fairy lights, and faux fur blankets. If that doesn't keep you warm, the Chocolate Orange negronis surely will.
The Igloos at Coppa Club Tower Bridge, Lower Thames Street, festive menu from 11 November 2024-31 March 2025. See the full list of igloos you can dine and drink in this winter.
Humbug, Brick Lane
Bar Humbug, indeed! In the Old Truman Brewery, a pop-up drinking venue shimmers bright. Humbug takes a dive bar, and stirs in a fistful of festive cheer. A 'Naughty and Nice' cocktail list starring drinks like 'The Grinch', and 'B'ah F*****g Humbug' will get you in the mood for role play with characters including a disgruntled waitress, a mailman who's lost all his letters, and the man in red himself. There's also live music, cabaret and circus. New for 2024 is a hectic mailroom, 'Santa's Grotto', a shrine to Mariah Carey, and a festive themed beer can bowling alley.
Humbug, Brick Lane, 14 November-31 December 2024
Deck the Halls @ Pergola Brixton
The aroma of Cinnabon Daiquiris, Figgy Pudding Highballs and 'Ho Ho Ho' Hard Hot Chocolates will lure you upstairs to Pergola Brixton's yuletide pop-up. As they put it themselves: "We've taken Santa, Candy Canes, Christmas Trees, Snow, Lights, Mistletoe and Mariah Carey, shaken it all up in a barrel of mulled wine and glitter and dropped it into Pergola Brixton for sack-loads of festive fun." There are various drinks deals, depending on the day of the week.
Deck the Halls @ Pergola Brixton, 14 November 2024-5 January 2025
Churchill Arms, Kensington
London's most instagrammable pub once again cracks out some 90 conifer trees, slaps them on the building's exterior and smothers them in fairy lights. We can only assume that the soaring leccy bills are cancelled out by the stream of punters pouring in through the doors. Though the Churchill Arms is not a festive pop-up per se, the pub's interior is also draped in garlands and twinkling fairy lights (plus the odd bonus tree because you can't have enough trees), and they serve mulled wine — a must-have on any festive drinking bucket list.
Churchill Arms at Christmas, Mid November 2024 (exact date TBC)-New Year 2025
