Mac Rating: 5.00 | Votes: 1 | Date: 03/07/2026 17:32:00

The tiered seats are a cinema's, the teak walls are irreplaceable, and the name comes from the Irish Sugar Company upstairs. The Sugar Club, at 8 Lower Leeson Street on the corner of St Stephen's Green, opened in 1999 in the auditorium that had been the Irish Film Theatre, the Arts Council's art-house cinema from 1977 to 1984 in St Stephen's Green House, then headquarters of the state sugar company. The conversion kept what mattered - the tiered cinema layout and the Burmese teak wall panels - and swapped the seats for plush velvet banquettes, creating the seated music room Dublin did not otherwise have: 150 seated, up to 350 with standing. The Irish Times verdict became the venue's calling card - a venue to die for, wood-panelled walls, plush banquette seating and a pristine sound system rendering the rest of Dublin's nightlife cruddy in comparison - and the room was voted IMRO Best Live Music Venue in 2018. The stage history matches the decor: Hozier, Thundercat, Sinead O'Connor and Erykah Badu are among the names on the books, alongside two decades of jazz, soul, electronic and world-music bookings that suit a listening room better than a standing barn. The cinema roots stay in active service - a laser projector and a 4.5 by 3 metre screen keep film screenings in the programme - and the calendar folds in live podcasts, comedy, theatre, panel discussions, science shows, conferences and private parties. The infrastructure list runs deep for a room this size: Funktion-One sound, full in-house DJ rig, a large outdoor terrace with its own catering and DJ setup, and a pizza kitchen serving ultra-thin-base pies to the banquettes. A quarter century in, the Sugar Club remains sui generis in Dublin - the only room where the same seat serves a gig, a movie, a podcast taping and a dancefloor, all under the same teak.