There is no London equivalent of a cat café for dogs – not really. The format that everyone means when they say “dog café” barely exists here, and the reason is regulatory rather than cultural.
If it is cats you are after rather than dogs, there are four rooms in London that will book you a session: Lady Dinah’s Cat Emporium on King William Walk in Greenwich, which reopened in April 2026 and does thirty minutes for £5 on a Wednesday; Java Whiskers, with lounges on Great Portland Street and at Westfield White City; Whiskers and Cream at 593 Holloway Road in Archway; and Cat-titude on St John’s Hill in Battersea, which is the one we would pick, because its eight cats live there permanently and have a garden and a cat-free bar to escape into. All four set a minimum age, and Lady Dinah’s will not admit anybody under twelve, so check before you plan a family trip around one.
Keeping animals for exhibition to a paying audience is a licensable activity in England under the Animal Welfare (Licensing of Activities Involving Animals) Regulations 2018. Your local council issues the licence and inspects the premises. It is a much bigger commitment for dogs – which need walking, training, rest and space – than for a handful of rescue cats who live upstairs. So the London market has split three ways.
There is one venue with resident dogs you can book time with, and it publishes its licence number. There is a Chelsea daycare that sells 45-minute petting sessions. And there are two national touring operators who hire a room, fill it with fifty dachshunds and sell tickets – except at those, you bring your own dog.
Then there is the much larger and far more useful category: places across London that genuinely welcome a dog you already own, with a bowl, a menu or a bed rather than a grudging nod at an outside table. Most of this guide is about those.
Where you can spend time with dogs that aren’t yours
CuppaPug, Hackney
Arch 187 Nursery Road, Hackney Central E9 6PB · booking at cuppapug.com · Thursday to Sunday
London’s only permanent resident-dog café of any real standing, in a railway arch in Hackney. You book a one-hour session; it includes unlimited time with the pugs, treats to feed them, and the run of a playground built for small dogs.
What we like about it: it states plainly on its own site that it operates under an animal exhibition licence, and it publishes the licence number. That is more transparency than most of this industry offers, and it is the standard to hold everyone else to.
It has since expanded to Manchester, Edinburgh and Brighton, and to California and Texas – which tells you how much appetite there is for a format London has essentially one of. Prices aren’t published on the open site; you’ll see them at the booking stage.
King’s Dog Daycare, Chelsea
177 Fulham Road, SW3 6JW · Mon–Fri 7am–7pm, Sat 9am–5pm · kings.london
Primarily a luxury daycare for small breeds up to 15kg, in Chelsea, with grooming attached. The bit that matters here is Pet-A-Pooch: a 45-minute petting session you can book without owning a dog.
It also runs dog-themed events – paint-and-sip evenings, dating nights – which is either charming or a sign of the times, depending on your mood. Note that the “& café” part of the old name has quietly gone; don’t turn up expecting lunch.
The touring breed cafés
These are the two big national operators, and the crucial thing to understand is that they are not places to meet dogs – they are places to bring one. If you turn up dogless you will be the only person there without one.
Pup Up Café
pupup.cafe · London venue: BOXPARK Croydon, 99 George Street, CR0 1LD
Breed-specific sessions – dachshund, pug, doodle, retriever, “handbag hounds” – plus open All Paws sessions, in hired venues around the country. A London dachshund session takes up to 50 dachshunds at once, which is exactly as much as that sounds.
Off-lead time with staff supervising, ball pits and toys, photographers working the room, unlimited puppuccinos, best-dressed prizes and stalls from local dog businesses. Booking goes through Fatsoma and sessions sell out fast.
One rule worth quoting: dogs go free but still need a ticket. Book one for the dog or you won’t get in.
Pop + Bark
popandbark.com · London venue: The Refinery at Bankside, 110 Southwark Street, SE1 0TF
Eighty-minute off-lead breed sessions with a mobile “pupuccino bar”, a doggy bakery and a lot of photo props. Their Halloween series at Bankside on 24 October 2026 runs nine breed cafés in a single day – golden retriever, corgi, cavalier, samoyed, beagle, cockapoo, cocker spaniel, pug and labrador.
Same model as Pup Up: dog tickets are free but compulsory, under-sixes go free, and there’s a £1 booking fee on each paid ticket.
Cafés where your own dog is the point
Paws for Coffee, Hampton Hill
41 High Street, Hampton Hill TW12 1NB · 9.30am–2.30pm daily
The most straightforwardly good version of this idea in London, and worth the trip out west. Two menus – one for humans, one for dogs – and the dog one is a serious document: sausages, calves’ hooves, puppuccinos.
It also does training, puppy socialisation and day school, which is the bit that separates it from a café that merely tolerates a lead under the table.
Verve London, Notting Hill
verve-london.com
Boutique, grooming parlour, café bar and dog hotel in one, in Notting Hill, with Italian leather collars at one end and organic grooming at the other. There’s a bar for you while your dog is being seen to.
It bills itself as the first venue in the world to combine all four. We can’t verify that, but it is certainly the only one on this side of London.
Love My Human Townhouse, Chelsea
lmhtownhouse.co.uk
A grooming and boutique operation that grew into a dog-friendly restaurant on the King’s Road, with a deli counter of treats, homemade dog bakes and frozen dog ice cream, plus canine massage, chiropractic and laser therapy upstairs.
Whether you find that delightful or absurd, it is a real place where your dog will be made a fuss of.
A word about puppy yoga
Puppy yoga has become a fixture of London’s experience economy, and it is worth being clear-eyed about it before booking.
Two petitions calling for a ban have gone to Parliament. The first closed in November 2025 with 43 signatures. The second, which called for a ban on “puppy yoga, puppy Pilates and other ‘puppy cuddle therapy’” and argued that puppies as young as eight weeks are being handled continuously by strangers for paying customers, closed on 10 September 2026 with 3,259 signatures. Neither reached the 10,000 needed to force a government response, so there is currently no official position and no change to the law.
What does exist is the licensing regime. Any business keeping or training animals for exhibition to a paying audience needs a licence from its local council, and that council inspects. If you are going to book one of these classes, the practical thing you can do is ask the operator which borough licenses them and what their licence number is, then check it on the council’s animal activity licensing register. Ask how old the dogs are, how many sessions they do in a day and where they go between them. A responsible operator will have answers ready.
The dog-friendliest corner of London
King’s Cross has quietly become the best place in central London to spend an afternoon with a dog, because the whole estate has decided to be good at it. Most venues keep bowls and will top up water without being asked. The standouts:
- Drake & Morgan, Pancras Square – keeps special crockery for visiting dogs and stocks dog-friendly snacks and drinks, including something billed as paw-secco.
- Redemption Roasters, Coal Drops Yard – treats kept behind the counter as standard.
- The Lighterman, 3 Granary Square – dogs welcome throughout all three floors, not just the terrace.
- El Pastor, Coal Drops Yard – covered outdoor space, which matters from October onwards.
- Beer + Burger, Morty & Bobs, Barrafina, Happy Face Pizza, Notes, Porte Noire, Spiritland and The Drop all welcome dogs.
- The exceptions, so you don’t get caught out: Arabica, BAO, Coal Office, Dishoom and Lina Stores are outside-only.
More places that genuinely welcome dogs
- The Milestone Hotel, 1 Kensington Court, W8 5DL – the most comprehensive dog welcome we’ve found in a London hotel: a dog menu, treats, toys, a first aid kit, bathrobes and leashes, a map of nearby walks, dog walking and sitting with 24 hours’ notice, grooming and a pet concierge. £50 a night, waived for service dogs.
- Morden Hall Park, SM4 5JD – a National Trust park where dogs on short leads are welcome inside the cafés, as well as the rose garden, the stableyard and the wetland boardwalk. Rare, and a very good south London day out.
- Uber Boat by Thames Clippers – dogs are allowed on board the river bus on a lead, the whole way from Putney to Barking Riverside. The best value sightseeing you can do with a dog in London.
- Young’s pubs – group-wide, dog-friendly rooms come with a bed or blanket, a bowl and treats, and there’s an optional VIPup package at £25 a night for up to two dogs. Check the individual pub before you book, as the offer varies.
And where dogs aren’t welcome
Kew Gardens does not admit pet dogs. Assistance dogs, including those in training, are welcome and should be identifiable by lead or harness; everything else has to stay at home. A surprising number of London dog guides get this wrong, and it is a long way to travel to find out.
More broadly: a lot of venues described online as dog-friendly say nothing about dogs on their own websites. Cubitt House’s eight London pubs, The Ivy Chelsea Garden and Borough Market all publish no dog policy at all. “Tolerated” and “welcomed” are different things, and it’s worth a phone call.
Closed since you last looked
- Mr & Mrs Small, Marylebone – the website no longer belongs to the business.
- Barkney Wick, Hackney Wick – site gone.
- Lady Dinah’s Cat Emporium has moved – it’s now at 29–30 King William Walk in Greenwich, not the East End. Sessions are £12 an hour or £18 for 90 minutes, with a £5 half-hour “Whisker Wednesday”, and there’s a minimum age of 12. More in our guide to cat cafés in London.
The London x London Take: If you want to spend an hour with dogs and you don’t have one, book CuppaPug or King’s. If you have a dog, skip the “dog café” idea entirely and go to King’s Cross, where an entire estate has decided to be good at this – Drake & Morgan keeps proper crockery for visiting dogs and serves something called paw-secco. And before you book any ticketed animal experience, ask the operator for its animal exhibition licence number. A good one will give it to you without blinking.
