Bingo Nights Out

A bingo night out used to mean one thing. It was an evening at your local club.

Now it can just as easily mean a three-hour show with dance-offs, a rave interval and a pink Henry Hoover for the full house. The two have drifted toward each other, too, with big-hall chains putting on drag and garage nights, and a party bingo brand now playing in a building that spent decades as a bingo hall.

Here’s what each kind of night is like, what it costs and how bingo picked up a younger crowd along the way. These are all adult nights out. Bongo’s, for one, makes every ticket buyer confirm they’re 18 or over.

Why Bingo Got Younger

For years, bingo had an image problem. People saw it as a night out for your nan, and the halls were closing. Our Bingo Hall Census found 232 traditional halls still trading in July 2026, compared with roughly 1,360 in the 1980s.

But the people who still turn up have changed. In September 2025, Buzz Bingo’s chief executive Dominic Mansour told City AM that more than half of the company’s new members over the previous year were under 35, and said younger players were drawn by “affordable, light fun” and by bingo’s reputation as “a safe place to hang out”. In 2023, a Mecca caller told Time Out that the 18-to-25 age group had been growing at ordinary sessions, not just themed events.

The party nights helped. Bongo’s Bingo started in 2015 and turned the game into a club night, and others followed with their own versions. The halls noticed. Buzz says its refits are about “modernising bingo” for a new generation, as we covered in our look at Buzz Bingo’s £25m makeover, and both big chains now run event nights built around music and drag acts rather than the jackpot.

Bingo Nights at Your Local Hall

The traditional bingo night is still the easiest to find. Clubs run sessions all day, with paper books or electronic tablets and a caller at the front, and no show to sit through between games.

It’s also the cheaper night out. When we worked out what a bingo night costs, an evening session at Mecca, played on paper, came to just under £20 in 2026.

Our bingo halls directory lists every open club by area, with separate guides for Mecca clubs and Buzz Bingo clubs.

The Halls’ Own Party Nights

The chains haven’t left the party crowd to the newcomers. Mecca’s events page currently lists four event nights at selected clubs, with tickets from £11 to £16.50:

• House of Drag, hosted by queens from RuPaul’s Drag Race UK.
• UK Garage Bingo Night, with garage music and a special guest.
• Reggae Reggae Bingo, a touring night with live DJs and MCs.
• Anyway Up Bingo with Crissy Rock, which follows the bingo with a stand-up set and a DJ.

Buzz Bingo runs a longer list. Its flagship is Bada Bingo, which it calls “a massive bingo rave in a real retro bingo hall”. Alongside that are an 80s and 90s night, an ABBA celebration, a country and western night, the WildWest show with the Rodeo Romeos, the 24K Magic Men dance show and Beat the Beast, a quiz night with Mark Labbett from The Chase.

The appeal is obvious. You get the party in a proper bingo hall with a proper caller, and Mecca’s event tickets cost less than any Bongo we found.

The Party Bingo Brands

These are the names you’ll see on posters and ticket sites. Each one runs its own show, and the details below come from their own websites.

Bongo’s Bingo calls its Liverpool shows “the party that started it all”. A show runs for three to three and a half hours from the first game, and the prizes are kept secret, though the brand’s own page mentions giant pink unicorns, cash and its “legendary pink Henry Hoover”.

Bingo Loco bills itself as the world’s largest bingo rave, with sold-out shows in 200 locations across Ireland, the UK, Europe, North America, Australia and Dubai. Prizes range from air fryers and lawnmowers to holidays and cars, and tickets include a bingo book.

Bingo Lingo has run bingo raves for nearly a decade, with a long list of towns, universities, and festivals behind it. It promises prizes throughout the show, from a fiver up to a holiday.

Hijingo is a permanent venue, not a touring show, at 90 Worship Street in Shoreditch. It runs themed shows, a weekend bingo brunch, £10 Sunday Sessions and £5k Fridays with a £5,000 jackpot.

Old Skool Bingo is a music bingo night built on R&B, hip-hop and throwback tracks, and says it runs more than 50 events a month across 50 cities.

Drag Bingo and Disco Bingo

Drag bingo is exactly what it sounds like. A drag queen calls the numbers, and the patter in between is half the fun. Local pubs, bars, and promoters run it, not one big brand, so check local listings, though Mecca’s House of Drag nights bring the format into the halls.

Disco bingo, or DJ bingo, usually means a version where songs replace the numbers and the DJ plays a clip of each one. If you fancy running one yourself, our guide to music bingo covers how many songs you need and the licence most hosts forget.

What a Bingo Night Out Costs

Prices vary widely by brand, city, and date, so treat these as examples from the operators’ own pages rather than fixed rates.

Estimated Costs

What you’re paying for differs, too. Bongo’s terms split each ticket into two parts. The gambling stake covers your bingo book and pen, and every penny goes into that event’s prize fund. The rest of the ticket pays for the show itself.

Is Party Bingo Real Bingo?

Yes, and it’s regulated like it. Bongo’s Bingo holds a Gambling Commission operating licence, and so does Hijingo. Bongo’s requires every ticket buyer to confirm they’re at least 18, can ask to see photo ID (a UK driving licence or a passport) at the door, and runs a Challenge 25 policy at its venues.

The prizes are real, but you can’t swap them for cash. Bongo’s terms say you won’t get the monetary value of a prize under any circumstances, so if you win the Henry Hoover, you take the Henry Hoover home.

If you’d rather run your own night than buy a ticket to someone else’s, the rules for home, pub, club and charity games are in how to host a bingo night.

Bingo Back in a Bingo Hall

One date in the Bongo’s calendar sums up how far this has come. On 24 October 2026, the show plays LiveHouse in Dundee. When we traced what happened to Britain’s closed bingo halls, we found LiveHouse was the former Mecca club inside Dundee’s Green’s Playhouse building, reopened as a music venue in May 2025.

So a building that stopped calling numbers is calling them again, just with dance-offs and a rave interval this time.