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The Best Bars and Pubs in Birmingham: Where to Drink, Area by Area
Drinking in Birmingham divides by district as clearly as eating does, and the districts have genuinely different temperatures.
One is a strip, one is a courtyard, one is a working trade quarter, one is canalside and one is a spread of warehouses out east that runs later than any of the rest.
Knowing which is which saves an evening. The busiest part of the city is not the part with the best pubs, and the most pleasant setting is also the most expensive, so the useful question is what kind of night you actually want and not simply where the crowd is.
Broad Street bars
Running west from the centre towards Five Ways, Broad Street is still the busiest strip in the city and by a distance the loudest on a Friday or Saturday. It held the densest concentration of large nightclubs in Birmingham through the 1990s and 2000s, and the volume has outlived them.
What it offers now is bars and restaurants at scale, with the ICC and Symphony Hall anchoring the eastern end.
It is the obvious choice for a large group who want everything within fifty yards, and the obvious thing to avoid altogether if you happen to be sleeping anywhere nearby.
The Arcadian courtyard bars
Ten minutes south in Southside, an enclosed courtyard ringed by balconies with the Chinese Quarter around it and the Hippodrome directly behind. Because everything opens onto one space, a group that cannot agree where to go does not have to at all, and that in the end is the courtyard's real advantage.
It also runs later than much of the surrounding centre, which matters after a performance when other parts of town are closing.
Individual venues set their own hours and those change, so a plan that depends on a late finish deserves a call ahead to the venue, not mere optimism.
Jewellery Quarter pubs
Twenty minutes north-west on foot, or a short tram ride from Grand Central.
Converted workshops and older corner houses in a district that still works for a living and remains residential enough to stay calm, which produces an evening there that feels nothing whatever like the middle of town on the same night.
This is where most people who live in the city would send you for pubs, not bars.
The rooms are smaller, the volume is lower and the area has its own station and tram stop, so getting back into the centre afterwards is no harder than from Broad Street.
Canalside and Digbeth bars
Brindleyplace and Gas Street Basin put terraces on the water with the towpath running between them, which is the best setting in the centre on a warm evening and the priciest per head of any district here. On a wet evening, though, that appeal drops away from it almost entirely.
Digbeth is the opposite proposition: warehouses, the Custard Factory, street food and much of the city's music programming, fifteen minutes out and running later than the centre.
It is informal and spread out and not walkable in a single circuit, so an evening out there needs a little more planning.
Questions about drinking in Birmingham
Where is the main nightlife in Birmingham?
Broad Street, running west from the centre towards Five Ways, remains the busiest strip and the loudest on a weekend. The Arcadian courtyard in Southside is the alternative for an evening that has to accommodate a group, and Digbeth handles the later and the considerably less formal end of it.
Which part of Birmingham has the best pubs?
The Jewellery Quarter, where converted workshops and older corner houses sit in a district that is still residential enough to stay calm. It is about twenty minutes on foot from New Street or a short tram ride, and an evening spent tthere feels nothing at all like an evening on Broad Street.
Where can I drink by the canal in Birmingham?
Brindleyplace and Gas Street Basin, where terraces sit along the water with the towpath connecting them. It is the pleasantest setting in the centre on a warm evening and correspondingly the most expensive per head, which is the trade that this particular stretch of the city quietly offers a visitor.
Is Digbeth good for a night out?
It suits a particular kind of one. The Custard Factory and the warehouses around it carry much of the city's music and club programming, and the area runs later than the centre proper, but it is informal and spread out rather than being any kind of single walkable strip of bars.
Where should I drink before the theatre in Birmingham?
Southside, because the Arcadian courtyard sits directly behind the Hippodrome and the bars there are used to a curtain-up deadline. Saying what time you need to leave at the point of ordering is the difference between comfortably making the performance and missing the greater part of the opening act entirely.