London's Saunas Are Becoming Its Best Social Spaces

Something is shifting in how Londoners spend time together. Not at the pub. Not at a restaurant. In a room heated to 80 degrees, sitting on a wooden bench next to a stranger, sweating.

It sounds uncomfortable. It is, for about three minutes. Then something happens. The heat strips away the usual social armour. Nobody's checking their phone (it would melt). Nobody's performing. You're just there, breathing, existing in shared discomfort that slowly becomes shared calm.

London's sauna scene has been growing fast — the number of public sauna sites in the UK jumped from 45 in 2023 to over 147 today, according to the British Sauna Society. But the more interesting shift isn't about numbers. It's about what people are doing once they get there.

They're socialising.

The Research Says So Too

This isn't just anecdotal. A study published this month in Social Science and Medicine by researchers at the University of Greenwich and the University of Oxford found that shared sauna rituals significantly boost wellbeing through social connectedness, belonging, and emotional synchrony. Weekly sauna sessions produced better outcomes than monthly visits. And people who felt the strongest sense of connection to their sauna community experienced the greatest benefits.

Here's the part that matters most: participants from lower socioeconomic backgrounds reported the highest improvements in how they felt after a communal sauna session. Other marginalised groups disproportionately benefited too. The researchers suggested communal sauna bathing could be an underutilised tool in social prescribing — the NHS practice of connecting people with community activities to improve health.

In other words, sitting in the heat together isn't just nice. It's measurably good for you, and especially good for people who need it most.

Where It's Happening

London now has a proper circuit of saunas designed specifically around communal experience. These aren't the leisure centre health suites your dad used after swimming (though those are great too). These are purpose-built social spaces.

Community Sauna Baths

Community Sauna Baths is the clearest example of the movement. Co-founded by Charlie Duckworth in 2021, it started as a modest experiment in Hackney Wick with sessions starting at £8.50. Five years later, it runs five sites across London — in Hackney Wick, Stratford, Ruskin Park, and Walthamstow.

Wood-fired saunas, cold plunges, and events that range from breathwork to sauna meditation to queer poetry readings. They run a Social Prescribing Scheme offering 10 free sessions to anyone referred through NHS link workers or trusted charities. It's not-for-profit, and it works.

The Hackney Wick flagship has seven saunas and an array of cold plunges including whisky barrels. The Walthamstow site has a social firepit. These are places designed for lingering, not just sweating.

Sauna Social Club, Peckham

Sauna Social Club in Peckham occupies a railway arch on Brayards Road and takes the social element further. They run two saunas — one for chatting, one for silence — plus four ice baths. But the real draw is the programming: guided sauna sessions with live DJ sets, spoken word performances, and storytelling nights.

The name isn't an accident. It's a social club that happens to have saunas, as much as a sauna that happens to be social.

&Soul, Shoreditch

The newest entry is &Soul in Shoreditch, which opened inside a former Victorian textile warehouse. The centrepiece is a 40-person circular Aufguss sauna designed with Katie Bracher from the British Sauna Society. Temperatures range from 60 to 90 degrees. There's an alcohol-free bar, plant-based dining, and a regular programme of sound journeys, ritual circles, and immersive events.

Memberships start at £99 per month, which positions it as a premium offering. But the model is interesting — it's trying to be a cultural hub that centres around heat, not a gym that happens to have a sauna bolted on.

The Traditional Spaces

London's older communal bathing venues are part of this story too. Ironmonger Row Baths in Islington, a 1930s Turkish bath, was recently restored with a juniper sauna and salt sauna. Porchester Spa in Bayswater has been running its Turkish bath circuit since 1929 — a Tepidarium, Caldarium, Laconicum, and plunge pool — and it still draws a fiercely loyal crowd. York Hall in Bethnal Green, one of London's last remaining Victorian Turkish baths, has had a major renovation.

These places have been social for decades. What's new is that the rest of the city is catching up with them.

The Aufguss Effect

One trend accelerating the social shift is Aufguss — a sauna ritual with roots in Germany and Austria that's now growing fast in the UK.

Here's how it works: a sauna master adds water or ice infused with essential oils to the heated stones. Steam rises. The sauna master then uses rhythmic towel movements to circulate the scented heat around the room, often choreographed to music. It sounds theatrical because it is. It turns a sauna session into a shared, multisensory experience.

The British Sauna Society is hosting the 2026 UK Show Aufguss Championships in April, a competitive event with two categories: Performance Aufguss and Modern Classic. Several London venues now run regular Aufguss sessions, including Community Sauna Baths at Ruskin Park and &Soul in Shoreditch.

The Greenwich University research singled out Aufguss as particularly effective at building a sense of unity and belonging among participants. It makes sense — it's hard to feel like a stranger when someone is waving eucalyptus-scented steam into your face while Finnish folk music plays.

Sober Socialising

There's a broader cultural thread here. London's sauna boom is arriving alongside a wider shift away from alcohol-centred social life. The sober curious movement, the rise of alcohol-free bars, the growing sense that spending four hours in a pub isn't actually that fun — all of this feeds into sauna culture.

A sauna session is inherently alcohol-free. You can't drink in 80 degree heat (well, you can, but you'll regret it). And yet it provides many of the things people go to the pub for: warmth, company, a sense of belonging, something to do on a cold evening that isn't sitting at home.

The difference is you leave feeling better than when you arrived. That's a hard thing for a pub to match.

What's Coming

The pipeline keeps growing. Sea Lanes Canary Wharf is set to open in June 2026 at Eden Dock — a 50-metre freshwater swimming pool floating on the dock with two glass-fronted saunas overlooking the water. It's being operated by the National Open Water Coaching Association, the same group behind Sea Lanes Brighton.

Arc at Crossrail Place already runs the UK's largest communal sauna, seating up to 65 people with structured classes and cold plunge sessions. When Sea Lanes opens nearby, east London's Docklands will have one of the densest clusters of social sauna infrastructure in the country.

Meanwhile, National Geographic named Rooftop Saunas Hackney as one of the top 20 global travel adventures to book in 2026. London's sauna scene isn't just growing — it's becoming a destination.

Why This Matters

The UK is in the middle of a loneliness crisis. A third of adults report feeling lonely at least some of the time. Traditional social infrastructure — pubs, community centres, religious institutions — has been declining for years.

Saunas won't fix loneliness by themselves. But they offer something that's increasingly rare: a physical space where people of different ages, backgrounds, and incomes can sit together and share an experience. No screens, no status signalling, no transaction. Just heat, cold, and the slow realisation that the stranger on the next bench over is having the same experience you are.

The Greenwich University researchers called it "emotional synchrony." The Finnish word for it is probably something unpronounceable. In London, we're still working out what to call it. But more people are finding it every week.

Go Find It

Browse our full map and directory to find a social sauna near you. If you've never been to a communal session, start with one of the venues above. Sit in the heat. Talk to someone, or don't. Come back next week.

The regulars will be there.