30 OLD COMPTON STREET
(FORMERLY G-A-Y BAR)
COVEN CASTS ITS GREATEST SPELL YET:
A NEW QUEER SANCTUARY RISES IN SOHO
London’s queer nightlife and cultural collective COVEN will open COVEN: HEADQUARTERS at 30 Old Compton Street — formerly G-A-Y Bar — on 19th June 2026, marking the first anniversary of the project’s inception. This is the first new LGBTQ+ club on Old Compton Street in over a decade, and it arrives just in time for pride.
After sitting empty since October 2025, the historic site enters a new chapter under the stewardship of COVEN founder Matthew Jacobs Morgan, as the East London-born club night expands into a five-storey permanent home in the heart of Soho.
Some spaces are built. Others are summoned.
What began as a one-off Christmas party in Hackney Wick has rapidly evolved into one of London’s most distinctive queer cultural spaces — a hybrid of nightclub, performance venue, community hub and artistic sanctuary.
By day, the venue will operate as a café, artists’ salon and community space. By night, it will transform into a live music venue, performance space and nightclub, hosting an ongoing programme of club nights, cabaret, live performance, screenings, workshops and community gatherings.
The project has been supported by Soho Estates as part of a long-term vision to sustain and invest in queer cultural space within Soho.
COVEN’s move to Old Compton Street places it directly within one of London’s most historically significant queer neighbourhoods — continuing the legacy of a building that, for decades, served as an important meeting point for LGBTQ+ Londoners.
THE OPENING WEEKEND: A SOLSTICE TRILOGY
COVEN’s opening weekend coincides with the Summer Solstice and unfolds across three opening events:
• FANG — Friday 19th June
Line-up announced on the day.
• HORNS — Saturday 20th June
Line-up announced on the day.
• SOLSTICE — Sunday 21st June
A daytime midsummer gathering bringing together the full COVEN community.
THE COVEN COMMUNITY
Across its previous incarnations, COVEN has become a home for an expansive network of queer artists, DJs, musicians, performers, dancers, drag artists, poets and underground collectives.
King Princess, Bestley, Strapped, UK Black Pride, A24, Felt Soundsystem, Lexii, Drybabe and Zach Witness have all passed through its doors alongside QPOC-led club nights, sober dance spaces, live music, alternative drag, cabaret, D/deaf-centred rave experiments and multidisciplinary performance work.
People have cried here. Fallen in love here. Launched work here. Found family here.
The community that has gathered around COVEN over the past year is the true foundation of this new space — a growing network of artists, ravers, performers and outsiders who kept showing up for one another and proved that queer spaces can still be built from the ground up.
As queer venues continue to disappear across the UK, COVEN arrives as both celebration and act of resistance: a new permanent space dedicated to queer nightlife, culture, experimentation and connection.
As Matthew Jacobs Morgan puts it:
“We as queers can make space for each other in a cardboard box — but luckily, we now have a five-storey building with a W1 postcode.”
ABOUT MATTHEW JACOBS MORGAN
Matthew Jacobs Morgan is the founder and creative director of COVEN. He has personally built each iteration of the project from the ground up, establishing COVEN as one of London’s most community-rooted queer cultural spaces.He’s an actor (recently starring in CHARLI XCX’s THE MOMENT) and filmmaker, having won NewFest’s Emerging Black LGBTQ+ Filmmaker Award.
“When I was a baby queer, this building was the first gay bar I ever went to. I saw people who looked like me and moved like me, and it made me feel less alone.
The moment we are in right now feels incredibly important. Our trans brothers and sisters are being villainised. Loneliness is an epidemic. Substance use is pulling parts of our community apart at the seams. Spaces where people can come together safely, joyfully and truthfully matter more than ever.
I have to thank Soho Estates, and particularly Fawn James and Philip Thompson, for believing in our vision and helping make this possible.
More than anything, I want people to walk into COVEN and feel held, loved and part of something bigger than themselves. And of course — to have a banging night out.
Strap in for COVEN summer. We can’t wait to see you.”
THE FULL PROGRAMME
From 19th June onwards, COVEN’s programme will include club nights, live music, screenings, cabaret, workshops, sober events, experimental performance, artist development initiatives and accessible events including raves designed for D/deaf queer audiences.
This is a venue designed for multiple generations of queer people to exist side by side — where community is not an aesthetic, but the entire point.
PRESS CONTACT
info@worldwidecoven.net
ADDRESS
30 Old Compton Street
London W1D 4UR
OPENING NIGHT
Friday 19th June 2026
INSTAGRAM
@worldwidecoven
@covenhq
@jacobsmorgan_
PHOTOS
Available on request.
