KOKO

KOKO occupies the former Camden Theatre on the corner of Camden High Street, a domed auditorium that W.G.R. Sprague designed and that opened at the end of 1900. Over the following century the room passed through several lives, as a BBC broadcast theatre, as the Music Machine, and as the Camden Palace, before a fire in early 2020 halted a restoration already under way. It reopened in April 2022 after a rebuild that ran to around £70 million, the Grade II-listed theatre returned to its red-and-gold interior and a private members' club, the House of KOKO, threaded through the surrounding building.

The auditorium is still the heart of it: a tiered room beneath the original dome, ringed by six balconies and served by a working Victorian fly tower and a full house sound and lighting system. Around it the House of KOKO runs to sixteen connected rooms, among them Ellen's, a jazz and blues club named for the actress who opened the theatre, a piano room and library, private vinyl booths, a penthouse recording studio, and a planted roof terrace restaurant looking over Camden. Five bars are spread across the floors, and one of London's larger contemporary art collections hangs throughout.

For a private event the whole venue is taken exclusively, Sunday through Thursday, which puts the stage, the balconies, the terrace and the bars in one hand for the evening. The auditorium seats 250, or 180 for dinner, and holds up to 1,500 standing, with the roof terrace and the ground-floor Café KOKO available in their own right. There is a resident DJ setup and a stage built for live performance, a late licence, and an in-house events team. Enquiries route through the house.