Cafes Open Late: What the Opening Hours Actually Say

Of the cafes in our catalogue, more than 1,100 are still open at 9pm on at least one day of the week, and 38 are open 24 hours. So the evening is better served than its reputation suggests, and the round-the-clock cafe is close to a myth: it is one venue in every seventy.

Those numbers come from reading each venue's own posted hours rather than from asking around, which matters here more than usual. Evening opening is the single most out-of-date fact on the internet about any cafe: hours changed during 2020, changed back unevenly, and the blog posts recommending a midnight spot have mostly not been touched since.

The cities are not close

The share of a city's cafes that stay open past 9pm ranges from a quarter to nearly six in ten.

City	Cafes read	Fast Wi-Fi	Laptop friendly	Open past 9pm
Canggu	377	78%of 251 rated	76%of 280	61%229 places
Madrid	195	67%of 39 rated	57%of 44	58%114 places
Barcelona	434	63%of 281 rated	60%of 248	57%249 places
Porto	189	82%of 33 rated	79%of 48	49%93 places
Valencia	188	77%of 30 rated	75%of 40	45%84 places
Lisboa	308	74%of 140 rated	64%of 213	34%105 places
Berlin	499	58%of 228 rated	58%of 358	28%140 places
Chiang Mai	286	81%of 180 rated	75%of 208	24%68 places
Bangkok	220	80%of 61 rated	81%of 105	15%33 places

Barcelona is the outlier among the European cities, with 249 of 434 places open past nine. That is a dinner culture showing up in a coffee dataset: in a city where people eat at ten, a cafe that closes at eight is leaving the evening on the table. Madrid at 114 of 195 says the same thing.

Chiang Mai runs the other way, with 68 of 286. It has the second-highest laptop friendliness in the catalogue and one of the earliest closing cultures, which is a genuinely awkward combination if you work European hours from Thailand.

What changes about a cafe after dark

The room gets better and the service gets worse, roughly.

Better: it empties. The lunch pressure that makes a long stay awkward is gone by eight, and nobody is waiting for your table. Evening is when the two hour session becomes a four hour one without anybody minding.

Better: the Wi-Fi improves. This is not a figure of speech. A cafe router is contended, and the contention is forty phones at lunchtime and six at nine in the evening. The same connection that dropped your call at one o'clock will hold it at nine.

Worse: the kitchen usually stopped hours ago. In most of the catalogue the food service ends between two and four hours before the door does, so an evening session means eating first or eating elsewhere.

Worse: the last hour is not really yours. Staff start cleaning, chairs go up, the machine gets stripped. Treat the posted closing time as forty minutes later than the time you should plan to leave, and you will never be the person being swept around.

Finding one without walking

Every city in the catalogue has a page listing only the places still open at 9pm or later, built from the same hours data as the numbers above.

• Barcelona, open late
• Berlin, open late
• Madrid, open late
• Lisbon, open late
• Porto, open late
• Valencia, open late
• Bangkok, open late
• Chiang Mai, open late
• Canggu, open late

About the 24 hour cafe

Thirty-eight of them, in a catalogue of more than two thousand. Canggu has the most at eleven, Berlin has eight, Valencia five.

They are worth knowing about and worth being realistic about. A cafe open at four in the morning is usually open because it serves a neighbourhood that is awake at four in the morning, and that is a different room from the one you would choose at four in the afternoon. Go for the fact that it is open, not because it is good.

If what you want is a long evening rather than a genuine all-nighter, the 1,115 places open past nine are the better list by a wide margin.

How many cafes stay open late?

In our catalogue of more than 2,000 cafes across nine cities, upwards of 1,100 are still open at 9pm on at least one day of the week, which is about four in ten. Only 38 are open 24 hours, roughly one in seventy.

Which city has the most cafes open late?

By share, Barcelona leads with 249 of its 434 cafes open past 9pm, and Madrid is close behind at 114 of 195. This tracks the local dinner hour rather than anything about coffee: in cities where people eat at ten, cafes stay open for it. Chiang Mai is lowest at 68 of 286.

Is cafe Wi-Fi better in the evening?

Usually yes, and for a mechanical reason. A cafe router is shared, and it is shared between forty phones at lunchtime and six at nine in the evening. The connection that dropped your call at one o'clock will often hold it fine at nine.

Can you work in a cafe until closing time?

Plan to leave about forty minutes before the posted closing time. The last stretch is when staff strip the machine and stack chairs, and in most places the kitchen stopped two to four hours earlier, so eat before you settle in.