It’s just past 11pm and I’m sipping prosecco in a Covent Garden spa — a blue-lit oasis tucked beneath an affluent street lined with upmarket bistros and bars. But this is no ordinary relaxation session. Around me are twerking middle-aged women. Buddha statues and bowls of condoms. Swirls of sequins and Speedos and stilettos and suits. Guests are snogging in the jacuzzi. Jacking off in the sauna. Going down on each other in open-door dark rooms. The one constant in this Dionysian portal of sex and sweat is that everyone is wearing masks.
This is Hedonism, a no-phones, Eyes Wide Shut-style soirée hosted by the London sex party institution Killing Kittens. Emma Sayle, a school friend of the Princess of Wales, launched the community in 2005 with the goal of empowering women to explore their sexuality without judgement (women have to make the first move at the parties). Things really heated up during the pandemic, when Sayle reported that she had received more than 40,000 membership requests from single women alone. Covid “was a wake-up call to a lot of people that you have one life”, she told me, “letting fear and shame hold you back is not an option.”
While we may be known for our prudish politeness, London’s sex party scene has never been steamier. An underworld of spicy shindigs hides in the city’s shadows, a constellation of sweaty basements and balls and bars where the usual rules don’t apply.
An underworld of spicy shindigs hides in the city’s shadows
Killing Kittens is just the tip of the iceberg in the capital’s post-pandemic sex party scene (tickets to one of Sayle’s parties start at £65 for single women and £160 for guests, so they tend to attract an older, more moneyed crowd). Sprinkled throughout the city (and into the suburbs) are swinger hotels and sexy saunas. Dungeons and debauched dinner parties. Dominatrixes and drag queens. Cake-sitters (which is literally what it sounds like) and circus performers. Shibari (Japanese rope bondage) artists and strippers. You just need to know where to find them.
Sober kink workspaces
On a sunny Tuesday morning, I take the train to Dalston to check out one of the newest additions to London’s kink scene, a co-working space and adult playground dreamed up by part of the team behind Klub Verboten. Around the corner from natural wine bar Dan’s, STÜCK is housed in an industrial grey building on a side street with no sign outside. After sending the venue a frantic Instagram DM asking for help finding the entrance, the door opens and I’m led inside.
I admit I was expecting to find the “third space” a little pretentious (the venue bills itself as an “interim space between home, work and Berghain”), but I feel instantly transported inside STÜCK’s concrete vortex. The building is a two-storey brutalist play den, with yellow latex curtains and an assortment of metal and silicone furniture (imagine a spaceship with the curved finishings of a 1970s bar — and the trippy liminal vibe of a David Lynch film). “It’s a quiet space. It’s really good to concentrate,” says co-founder Hanny Amin, who has silver chrome nails and a necklace that says “anal” on it.
She tells me that “the space itself is a bit of an icebreaker because not everyone knows what to do with the furniture.” While sex is allowed, it’s not the focus. She often sees guests playing “like children”.
Membership currently costs £45 per month, providing access to a varied calendar of events including handstand workshops and panel talks about supporting trans people. They’re also crowdfunding for a sauna. “This is kink for the future,” she tells me.
“No party is 100 per cent safe but I think having a party with no drugs and alcohol makes the whole thing just a bit safer”
Miss Masochist
STÜCK is part of a growing movement of sober play parties in the capital, providing a softer alternative to techno-thudding basements pounding with pills and powders. “No party is 100 per cent safe but I think having a party with no drugs and alcohol makes the whole thing just a bit safer,” says Miss Masochist, who founded the sober party Lucid (and also manages the parties Pinky Promise and Quench). Without substances in the mix, guests at one of Lucid’s dungeon parties can experiment with riskier sensory play, using everything from shibari ropes to spanking benches to needles for blood play. The venue also has a cage. “That’s good for if someone’s overstimulated,” Miss Masochist says.
Today, social media is integral to London’s kinky infrastructure. Fetish parties are advertised on Instagram, while invites to the capital’s most secretive events circulate on WhatsApp or Telegram. But London has a long, sordid history of horny parties.
Reshaping London’s historic underground sex scene
As far back as Roman times, Southwark’s streets were peppered with erotic temples, where sex gods were worshipped and boozy celebrations spiralled into public orgies. In the Victorian era, “pleasure gardens” emerged as spaces where naughty behaviour was overlooked Curator Danielle Thom describes the gardens as “a place where Londoners confronted their very best, and very worst, selves”. But it was less safe for women or queer people to explore their sexual desires in public spaces, with risks of harassment, imprisonment and even death.
London sex parties by numbers
£45 monthly membership fee for the club STÜCK
£17 for a pair of “I came at one night” panties
2019 Harpies launches Europe’s first LGBTQ+ strip club party in Bethnal Green
36 years Torture Garden has been running
28th of August for the next Killing Kittens hedonism party
90,000 number of people who follow Torture Garden on Instagram
Flash-forward to 2026 and you’ll find that many of the capital’s most exciting (and transgressive) play parties are pioneered by women and marginalised communities. Consent is integral at these events (many parties have vetting forms that explicitly ask guests about what consent means to them) and eroticism transcends the heterosexual mould. “It’s very queer, trans and non-binary focused, so that leads people to exploring different kinds of sex,” Miss Masochist says of their parties.
Among London’s menu of erotic FLINTA (female, lesbian, intersex, non-binary, trans and agender) parties is One Night, which is hosted in a private sex dungeon in north London — a pink-lit room filled with BDSM equipment such as a sex swing, a St Andrew’s Cross and bondage chairs.
At a Catnip party — where kinkwear (like leather, latex and harnesses) is mandatory — you can get a personal session with Mistress Stone, the house dominatrix, or watch a cake-sitting performance or a burlesque show led by a neurodiverse and disabled troupe.
“We always try to mix politics within our programming,” Maedb Joy, co-founder of the “multidisciplinary queer rave” Riot Party tells me. The party predominantly works with sex worker performers and POC FLINTA DJs, offering everything from talks about lesbian fisting to wax play demonstrations to erotic life-drawing. At one event, there were QR codes for a survey about how the Online Safety Act is impacting sex workers, who often have their accounts removed by social media platforms.
“They’re not trying to be palatable,” says Sasha (not their real name), a 29-year-old NGO worker and Riot Party regular. “Even on the walls at the party, they have: ‘zero tolerance for fat phobia’”, as well as performances by “really fat performers doing cake sits”. Sasha tells me that they were “a closeted trans guy” when they went to their first Riot Party event in 2023, but being at the parties helped them figure out their gender identity. “I wasn’t even really having sex at these parties. I think it was just a space where I could meet other non-binary and trans people,” they say. “It was more about finding out who I was as a person.”
True to Killing Kittens’ rules, only women approached me at the Hedonism party: a “kommunity kitten” who checked in with me to see whether I was OK after spotting me awkwardly circulating the jacuzzi alone, a recently single mum who wanted to explore her sexuality and two bisexual women who had brought along their male partners. “I’m not here for me,” one of these middle-aged men who worked in insurance told me, gesturing towards his wife. “I’m here for her.”
Leaving the party just after midnight, I thought about how the capital’s kinkiest corners and crevices were actually a lot more wholesome than I’d expected. Attendees were warm, consent was key and the desires of women, non-binary and LGBTQ+ people reigned supreme. I’d dipped my toes into the city’s underbelly — and I was ready for more.
The A-Z London sex party guide
A Club Antichrist is a “goth industrial metal fetish mayhem” club night that usually takes place in Kings Cross.
B Le Boudoir has been described as one of the capital’s most exclusive swingers’ clubs
C Catnip is a queer play party led by a trans, sex worker and POC inclusive team.
D Dominium Vita is a private members’ society “devoted to the art of hedonism”.
E Ethically non-monogamous is a relationship style where people have multiple romantic or sexual partners with the consent of everyone involved.
F The Fox Den is a sex positive community that hosts events ranging from erotic dinner parties to tantric workshops.
G A gloryhole is a hole in a wall for anonymous sex. Use your imagination…
H Named after the notorious 18th-century institution, the Hellfire Club is a swinging, fetish and BDSM club in Sunbury-on-Thames.
I Described as “Heathrow’s hottest layover”, Ignite is an adult spa only a stone’s throw from the airport.
J Joyride is a queer, sex-positive rave recently hosted at Corsica Studios.
K Killing Kittens is a shame-free community for dating, sex-ed and hedonistic events.
L Lucid is a sober social and play party for queer, non-monogamous and kink communities.
M Monogamish is a relationship style where a couple are mainly romantically and sexually exclusive… but exceptions are sometimes made.
N No strings attached is an arrangement involving physical intimacy without commitment.
O One Night is a FLINTA (female, lesbian, intersex, non-binary, trans and agender) event series dedicated to “pleasure, education, entertainment and liberation”.
P Pinky Promise is an event collective that hosts pleasure parties, intimacy workshops, cabaret shows and more.
Q Quench is a Vauxhall-based queer POC sex-positive party that plays dancehall, Afrobeats and R&B (essentially anything but techno).
R Riot Party is a politically focused queer sex-positive rave that celebrates marginalised communities.
S A new addition to London’s kink scene, STÜCK is a minimalist“third space” in Dalston where you can have sex.
T Torture Garden claims to be the world’s largest monthly fetish event, running events in London since 1990.
U A unicorn is someone who joins a couple for sexual or romantic adventures.
V Klub Verboten is a queer “pro-pervert” rave that champions Berlin-style electronic music.
W WAX is a social app for “pleasure-positive people” (you can find Killing Kittens parties on here).
X For an out of town adventure, Xtasia is a fetish club, hotel, spa and dungeon in the West Midlands.
Y YKINMKBYKIOK is a sex-positive phrase meaning “your kink is not my kink, but your kink is OK”.
Z A zapper wand is used for “electro-play” (small electric shocks that some find arousing).
