The best singles events in London for tech people, ranked

London tech is a small town pretending to be a city and most of the dating that happens within it happens at events that are not, technically, singles events. The hackathon afterparty, the Anthropic happy hour, the EF London alumni drinks — that is where the actual conversations happen.

This list is the working ranking for spring 2026 of events where you can plausibly meet someone if you work in tech. Some are explicit singles events, some are tech events with a properly social back half, and a couple are the afterparties that are the real thing.

For the full schedule of tech and AI events in London this week, the AI events feed is the place to scan.

1. Tech Run Club Singles

Run club, 5K conversational pace, pub afterwards. The Thursday Hyde Park edition skews properly tech — mostly engineers and PMs from the obvious companies — and the post-run pub bit is where the real chat happens. The ratio is the best of any event on this list.

The "I do not want to talk about my startup" energy is genuinely refreshing.

2. AI House Singles Socials

AI House on Shoreditch runs monthly singles nights in the same space that runs AI events the rest of the week which means the crowd is properly AI-adjacent — researchers, early-stage AI founders, ML engineers from the labs and from Anthropic and OpenAI. The mix is 50/50 hetero/queer which is rare in this category.

3. Founders & Friends Mixer

Founders, early-stage operators and a chunk of finance-tech crossover. The Soho House and EastWorks variants are the most consistent. Skews 28-38 and the conversation is properly real — the kind of "what are you actually building" chat that is more interesting than the standard "what do you do".

4. Hack Night Afterparty

The afterparty of a hackathon — once the demos are done and the pizza-and-drinks bit kicks in — is genuinely where most of the founder-engineer dating happens. The trick is staying for the social bit which most people leave before. Pick a 24-hour hackathon and stay for the Sunday-evening winddown.

5. EF London Alumni Drinks

Quarterly, EF-alumni-adjacent, properly serious founders and engineers. Skews 26-34. The ratio in tech-leaning founder spaces is what it is — heavily male — but the EF crowd is in my experience pretty self-aware about it.

6. Female Founders Wine Night

Mostly women in tech, a chunk of allies, structured wine tasting. This is the best women-leaning option in the category and the one I will recommend to friends moving from a more 50/50 industry.

Bermondsey arches venues run the best ones monthly.

7. Designer / Engineer Drinks

Cross-discipline drinks night. Sounds gimmicky but actually works because the shared work-frustration is the icebreaker. Designers complaining about engineers and engineers complaining about designers is a 30 minute conversation by itself.

Shoreditch and Old Street pubs do the best ones.

8. Anthropic / OpenAI / DeepMind crowd parties

Not officially singles events. The after-event drinks at the AI lab parties — when there is a paper drop or a launch — are where a properly large chunk of the AI scene dating happens. You have to know someone in to get in. Worth knowing one.

9. Tech Pub Quiz Singles

Pub quiz with a singles framing. Teams of four, you get assigned, the questions are tech-leaning. Skews 25-32. Old Street pubs run weekly editions.

10. Climbing Wall Singles

Bouldering attracts a properly tech-heavy crowd in London anyway — VauxWall on a Tuesday is mostly engineers — and the singles nights at The Castle and VauxWall are properly fun. The shared "I am bad at this" energy is the icebreaker.

What did not make the list

I have left off the dating apps holding events because they are usually lead-gen exercises in disguise. I have left off AI Tinderbots because I am not endorsing that. And I have left off conferences pretending to be singles events because they are conferences.

I have also avoided the obvious "founder dating" branded events because the few I have been to skewed too transactional.

How I use the list

If you are an engineer not founder: Tech Run Club or Climbing Wall Singles. If you are a founder: Founders & Friends or EF Alumni Drinks. If you work in AI specifically: AI House Singles Socials. If you are a woman in tech: Female Founders Wine Night. If you are properly social-shy: Tech Pub Quiz, the team format does the work.

For the wider schedule of tech meetups, hackathons and AI happy hours — which is where most of the dating actually happens — the London AI events feed is the place.