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London · Venue

The Old Blue Last

A compact Shoreditch pub venue with a 150-capacity upstairs live room and a history reaching back to an 18th-century public house.

Upcoming shows
46
Capacity
150
Address
38 Great Eastern Street, EC2A 3ES London
Phone
020 7739 7033
Next show
Fri, 9 Oct 2026
Official siteDirections
The Old Blue Last in London

About The Old Blue Last

The Old Blue Last is a 150-capacity live venue above a Shoreditch pub, built for close-range shows and late-night spillover. Its concrete distinction sits in the address itself: the present building dates to Truman’s 1876 rebuild, while the site had housed a pub called The Last since 1700. Today’s seven-day programme moves between live bills, DJs and parties, giving the room a deliberately mixed-use character.

A pub rebuilt for the next racket

The story begins in 1700, when a pub called The Last opened on the site. In 1876, Truman’s brewery took it over, demolished that earlier pub and built the current corner building as The Old Blue Last; the name refers to a shoemaker’s mould, fitting Curtain Road’s trade history. The building later passed through a strip-club period before Vice bought it in 2004 and turned the upstairs space into a regular platform for bands and club culture.

One defining Vice-era night came with The Horrors. In an account of the show, singer Faris Badwan recalled a crowd filling the room, people on the bar and stage, and pogoing during “Count In Fives”; the ceiling movement led to a closure of several months for rebuilding. That episode captures the venue’s early live reputation more sharply than a long roll call of alumni.

The room now

Expect a second-floor live room with an in-house bar, DJ booth, sound desk, backline and toilets, set above the ground-floor pub spaces. The 150-person limit makes the stage feel immediate, especially for guitar-led newcomers, while the programme also accommodates electronic nights, karaoke, private parties and weekend sessions. Artists and promoters can approach the events team for gigs, and club-night proposals have a dedicated submission route, so the booking model remains open to varied formats.

Sources

  1. The Old Blue Last — The Old Blue Last
  2. Hire our spaces — The Old Blue Last
  3. Old Blue Last, Shoreditch, London — CAMRA
  4. An Oral History of the Old Blue Last — Time Out
  5. The History of the Best Bar in London, Which We Happen to Own — Vice
  6. Contact — The Old Blue Last

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