Who We Are

Draughts is a board game kitchen and lounge in London. Two venues, over 1,000 curated games, and more than ten years of bringing people together.

We opened in 2014 in a boarded-up railway arch in Haggerston. No investors, no playbook, no big team just a belief that London needed a place where people could slow down and be fully present with each other. We found that in modern board games: clever, social, cooperative. Games that make people talk, laugh, and connect in a way that has become rare.

From that first arch, we grew into Waterloo’s Leake Street tunnel, Dalston’s old pie-and-mash shop, and now a riverside venue in Stratford’s East Bank. The spaces have changed. The reason we exist has not.

The games are the medium. The connection is the purpose.

We create spaces for people to connect through play, food and drink, face to face and fully present in a world that often feels more connected, yet less social. That’s what we’re here for.