London’s first dive bar festival is coming to Hackney

You know your borough’s doing something right when it decides to throw a full-blown dive bar festival. Not a polished food market, not a craft beer expo with tasting notes and mood lighting. Proper dive bars. Sticky floors, loud music, questionable lighting. The lot. And of course, it’s Hackney leading the charge.

Hackney Altfest is being billed as London’s first dive bar festival, and it is taking over Mare Street, Morning Lane and Lower Clapton Road from the 4th to the 10th of May. Across the week, eight venues will be hosting everything from live music and DJ sets to tastings, talks and the sort of late-night chaos that usually just happens organically after two pints too many.

The line-up leans heavily into the borough’s alt DNA. You have got the beautifully strange The Absinthe Parlour inside The Last Tuesday Society, hosting a “Trippy Tuesday” drink and draw session, which feels about as Hackney as it gets. Then there is Blondies offering £4 pints all night, which in 2026 is like finding a pot of gold.

Over at Easy8, they are giving away free tacos to early birds who grab a drink, while Helgi's is going full volume with live sets from Norwegian metal band Zebulon, followed by DJs until the early hours. And if your brain is still functioning by the end of the week, Saint Monday Brewery is wrapping things up with a heavy metal pub quiz.

There is also a bigger idea behind it all. Backed by Hackney Council, Altfest is part of a wider push to get people back into neighbourhood high streets, alongside things like upcycled fashion pop-ups, plant swaps and community workshops happening across the borough. So yes, you can spend your day at a wormery workshop in Hackney Wick and your night necking cheap lager under a strobe light. Balance.

The festival comes with a stamp card system, which turns the whole thing into a week-long crawl. Hit all eight venues, collect your stamps, and you might walk away with a prize. Or at the very least, a decent story and a mild hangover.

If you miss it, the good news is these places are not going anywhere. Hackney’s dive bars have been doing their thing for years without much fuss. This is just the week they get to shout about it a bit louder than usual. You can check out the event here. where you can also grab tickets. The different events have different tickets so you can pick and choose which ones you attend on the website.

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