The Time Out London blog team

When Brewdog entered the beer scene way back in 2007, it seemed like a genuine breath of fresh air. A challenge to the brewing status quo from two 20-something-year-old Scots with a taste for quirky flavours and left-field marketing campaigns? It’s fair to say they turned some heads.  In 2026, when every pub has a roster of craft beers on tap and after Brewdog has been at the centre of a bunch of controversies, the brand no longer seems as ‘punk’ as its early days promised. Its sales have suffered in recent years, with the brewer closing 10 of its British boozers last July, including a flagship venue in Aberdeen. Then, just a month later, its beers were axed from nearly 2,000 venues across the country.  Brewdog has now been sold off to an American beverage and medical cannabis company in a deal worth £33 million. Tilray is the new owner of the global rights to the Brewdog brand name, as well as the chain’s UK brewing operations and 11 of its ‘BrewPubs’. Brewdog’s 38 other pubs across the UK are closing with immediate effect (you can find a full list here), including eight in the capital.  Luckily for London’s dad crowd, five of the venues which have been saved are in the capital, along with bars in Birmingham, Manchester, Edinburgh and Dublin. The doomed boozers have already poured their last pints, having closed with immediate effect on Monday (March 2) when the new deal was signed. Unite has called out Brewdog for treating its staff as ‘disposable pawns’. The move made...

These days, there’s an enormous bank of movies that we can stream from the comfort of our own homes at the touch of a button. But there’s still nothing like sitting back in a soft red chair, grabbing a cardboard tub of warm popcorn and watching a great film in a cinema. So, to celebrate those movie meccas, Time Out’s global film editor Phil de Semlyen, with the help of some of some other kino lovers from from around the world, has put together a list of the greatest cinemas on the planet right now.  Our roundup features a Berlin cinema with its own nuclear bunker, a Canadian theatre with just 12 seats, an open-air screen in Greece and a huge art-deco palace in India. Naturally, there are plenty of London cinemas on the list too. The capital’s top ranked kino was BFI Southbank, which landed in fourth place. Photograph: BFI / Luke Hayes Formerly the National Film Theatre, the cinema nestled beneath Waterloo Bridge became the BFI in 2007 and is a paradise for every serious film lover. It’s four screens are open seven days a week, showing hyped new releases alongside restored classics and slept-on gems from every corner of the globe and every year it hosts a range of niche and blockbuster festivals, from Woman With A Movie Camera and the Short Film Festival to BFI Flare (the largest LGBQ+ film festival in the UK), and of course the biggest of them all, the London Film Festival.  There’s also the library of film publications and the ‘Mediatheque’, a room full of...

Want to step inside an iconic rock’n’roll landmark? Next month you can do just that, as one of the capital’s oldest music venues, the Half Moon in Putney, is due to reopen after temporarily closing for refurbishment. The pub has existed in its current form since 1903 and began hosting live music in 1963, smack-bang in the heyday of British invasion bands such as The Rolling Stones, The Who and The Small Faces, all of whom have performed at the 250-capacity venue. A short walk from Putney Bridge and overlooking the Thames, the Half Moon closed its doors in mid-January for a huge makeover. In a statement released the previous November, the venue promised via a social media post: ‘While we’re modernising the space and adding an extra room, we’ll remain true to our roots and continue to build on our reputation as a legendary grassroots venue.’ It transpired that this involved extending the first floor to include a new terrace with a retractable roof and spiral staircase, plus a lick of paint and new equipment that would enable the owners to serve a wider range of food. The revamp was approved by Wandsworth Council in 2023, with planning documents explaining that the move would ‘reinvigorate the public house, improving its popularity and customer base, and ultimately securing its long-term viability’. While no specific date has been given for the relaunch, events are listed on the pub’s website from April 4, with rock’n’roll singer Laurie Wright performing as part of a day-long...