London Has 252 Saunas and You've Probably Only Been to Three

Happy Valentine's Day. While half of London scrambles for a restaurant reservation, we'd like to suggest an alternative: get extremely hot with someone you love. Or alone. Alone is also excellent.

We're The London Sauna, and we've just spent an unreasonable amount of time cataloguing every single sauna, steam room, and thermal experience in this city. The final count? 252 venues. Two hundred and fifty-two places where you can walk in cold and walk out transformed.

And you've probably only been to three.

The Number That Surprised Us

When we started mapping London's saunas, we expected maybe 80. A hundred at a push. We knew about the obvious ones — the hotel spas in Mayfair, the leisure centre steam rooms you walk past on the way to the pool, maybe a banya if you're adventurous.

But 252? That's more saunas than Tube stations on the Central line. More than the number of Pret A Mangers in Zone 1 (we think). London doesn't just have saunas — it's quietly become one of the great sauna cities of Europe, and almost nobody has noticed.

It's Not What You Think

Here's what most people picture when you say "London sauna": a damp wooden box in the corner of a gym, set to a temperature that couldn't melt butter, with a sign saying the maximum occupancy is 4 but really it's 2 because someone's lying across the entire bench.

That's one kind. But the London sauna scene in 2026 is wildly, almost absurdly diverse. We're tracking:

• Hotel spas like the Berkeley Health Club & Spa in Knightsbridge and Akasha Holistic Wellbeing on Regent Street, where the sauna is just one stop on a multi-hour thermal journey
• Social saunas like Banya No.1 near Old Street, where you'll get beaten with birch branches by a large man named Dmitri (this is a good thing)
• Boutique wellness spots like bhuti in Richmond, tucked inside a gorgeous riverside building with two saunas and cold plunge
• Recovery hubs — a category that barely existed three years ago — like Arc Canary Wharf and Bermondsey Wellness, built for the post-workout, cold-plunge-obsessed generation
• Community leisure centres that cost £5 and have steam rooms that could strip paint off walls (complimentary)
• Ancient bath experiences like AIRE Ancient Baths in Covent Garden, doing the Roman thing with considerably more candles

And that's before we get to the barrel saunas popping up in pub gardens, the floating saunas on the Thames, and whatever's happening in Peckham on any given Saturday.

Why Now?

Something shifted in London's relationship with heat around 2023-2024. The cold plunge craze — driven by Wim Hof, Andrew Huberman, and a thousand Instagram reels of people screaming into ice baths — accidentally created a generation of people who discovered that the sauna bit was actually the good part.

Then the social sauna movement arrived. Places designed not as afterthoughts to a gym membership, but as destinations in their own right. Spaces where you could bring friends, stay for hours, and — radical concept — actually enjoy the experience rather than endure it.

The result is a city where you can now find a sauna experience for every budget, every mood, and every postcode. From the £3.50 steam at your local leisure centre to the £300 thermal journey at a five-star hotel. From a quick 20-minute blast before work to an entire Saturday afternoon of heat, cold, rest, repeat.

What We're Doing About It

We built a map. Every venue. Every sauna, steam room, and cold plunge in London, plotted so you can find what's near you right now. We've got a full directory with details on each one — what facilities they have, what kind of experience to expect, and whether you need to sell a kidney to afford it.

This blog is where we'll go deeper. Expect:

• Honest takes on venues (we have opinions and we're not afraid of them)
• Scene reports on what's opening, closing, and changing
• The best sessions for every scenario — date night, solo reset, group hangout, post-run recovery
• The weird stuff — and London's sauna scene has plenty of weird stuff

We'll also be running a newsletter on Substack for weekly roundups of the best sessions and sauna news.

A City That Doesn't Know Itself

The thing about London is that it's too big to know completely. There are 252 saunas in this city and we guarantee there are Londoners reading this who live within walking distance of five of them and don't know any exist.

That's what we're here to fix.

So on this Valentine's Day, consider this our love letter to London's heat. All 252 degrees of it.

Go get warm.