Where to find afters in London

Nobody advertises an afters. That's the first thing to understand about looking for one.

There is no listing, no ticket link, no venue page. An afters is a rumour with a location, and it usually only exists for about four hours. If you're looking for "afters in London", what you're really looking for is a way to be in the loop at 3am.

If you're not sure what the word means, we wrote what are afters for that.

And if you want to know what you're walking into, there are six types of afters.

When do afters happen in London?

Most central clubs empty between 3am and 6am, so afters start whenever the specific place you're in shuts. The pattern roughly goes:

• 2am to 3am — bar and small venue closes, someone suggests going on somewhere.
• 3am to 6am — late venues close in waves. This is prime afters recruitment time, usually in a smoking area.
• 6am onwards — Sunday morning territory. Either a flat, or one of the few licensed late spots.

Sunday is the real afters day in London, not Saturday. A Saturday night that ends at 6am on Sunday morning has an entire day ahead of it, which is how a two hour afters becomes a fourteen hour one.

Where do they actually happen?

Three kinds, in descending order of how likely you are to find one by searching:

1. Someone's flat. Most afters. Zero online presence. You get in by knowing someone. 2. A late licence venue. A small number of London spots run properly late, and they fill with people leaving other places. These you can find, because they sell tickets. 3. A one-off party in a space. Word of mouth plus a story or a link that appears an hour before, then disappears.

Searching a map for "after party near me" will not find category one, which is most of them. That's not a gap in the internet, it's the point.

How invites actually travel

This is where it goes wrong. The address gets said out loud, in a smoking area, over a bassline, to four people, one of whom is going home. Then:

• it goes into a group chat with 200 unread messages
• someone drops a pin, the plan changes, nobody drops the new pin
• half the group goes to one afters, half to another, both think theirs is the real one
• you find out on Sunday afternoon that you missed the good one by twenty minutes

The party is easy. The information is the hard part.

Afters etiquette, since we're here

Getting invited once is easy. Getting invited again takes some manners.

• Don't bring people the host has never met. Ask first, every time.
• Be silent in the stairwell and outside. Neighbours end afters, not police.
• Bring something. Anything.
• Don't touch the aux unless invited to touch the aux.
• Know when it's over. When the host starts tidying, it's over. When someone puts on a podcast, it was over an hour ago.
• Leave properly. Say thank you, take your cans.

How to actually hear about the afters

The realistic answer is: be out, be visible to the right people, and be easy to find at the moment plans change.

That's what aftrs is for. You set yourself to partying and the friends you choose can see you're still going. When the night moves to someone's flat, the people you want there can find the door without a chain of ten messages and a pin pointing at the wrong side of the road.

• See who's still out at 3am, live, not a plan from six hours ago.
• Show where you are to the friends you choose, or just your inner circle.
• Go invisible when you're done. You're invisible by default anyway.

It won't get you invited to an afters. Being good company does that. It just makes sure the invite reaches you before everyone's already there.

Find your friends. Keep the night going. Disappear when you're done. Get aftrs.