The fifth annual Craft Beer Festival takes over London City Island on Sunday 25 July from 1pm to 9pm, celebrating the best of East London’s independent brewing scene with tastings, meet the brewer sessions and free entry.
London City Island is one of those East London spots that most people have heard of but not quite got round to visiting. A former industrial peninsula on the Leamouth Peninsula, just where the River Lea meets the Thames, it went from a Victorian plate glass works to a margarine factory to, in recent years, the English National Ballet’s headquarters, the London Film School and one of the more architecturally distinctive waterside neighbourhoods in the city. The colourful towers, the waterside setting, the galleries and studios: it’s a genuinely good place to spend a Sunday, and this July it has a rather good reason to draw you out there.
The Craft Beer Festival returns for its fifth edition on Sunday 25 July, running from 1pm to 9pm, and it’s free. East London’s independent brewers and craft producers gather for eight hours of tastings and meet the brewer sessions, with the focus firmly on the neighbourhood’s local suppliers and the wider East London craft beer scene that has produced some of the most interesting brewing in the country over the last decade.
The East London brewing scene is worth knowing about properly. The area has become one of the most productive craft beer corridors in Britain, with names like Hackney Brewery, Beavertown, Pressure Drop, Five Points and Signature Brew all operating within a few miles of each other and producing beer that regularly draws national attention. A festival dedicated to bringing that community together in one waterside location, free of charge, is the kind of thing that deserves more attention than it tends to get.
Meet the brewer sessions are the real draw alongside the tastings: the chance to ask the people who actually made the beer about what they were trying to do with it is a different experience from standing at a bar and ordering a pint, and the conversations at events like this tend to be considerably more interesting than you’d expect.
The London x London Take: Five years in and still free, which is increasingly rare for an event of this kind. The setting alone is worth the trip out to E14, and the craft beer is a very good bonus. Book your free ticket in advance rather than hoping to walk up on the day.
Need to Know
- Where: London City Island, Leamouth Peninsula, London E14 0JW
- When: Sunday 25 July 2026, 1pm to 9pm
- Price: Free, tickets required via Eventbrite
- Nearest tube: Canning Town (Jubilee line and DLR), then a short walk across the footbridge
