Mac Rating: 5.00 | Votes: 1 | Date: 19/06/2026 21:20:00

A long-standing favourite of Southampton's student scene, Sobar is a late-night bar and club on Bevois Valley Road, a short distance from the city centre. Known for unbeatable drink deals and a famously large garden, it has become a fixture of the city's nightlife and a go-to for student nights, particularly its notorious Tuesday sessions. The venue is split into two main areas, a bar and a club, allowing visitors to choose between a more relaxed drinking space and a busier dancefloor depending on the night. With a capacity of around five hundred, it has the scale to host big student events while keeping the welcoming, unpretentious feel that has made it so popular. Its expansive outdoor garden is a defining feature, hosting covered open-air club events, live DJs and visiting names that lend the venue a festival-like atmosphere in the warmer months. Dance, house, pop and urban sounds dominate the programme, with regular nights and one-off events such as trance after-parties drawing dedicated crowds. Drink deals are central to the appeal, with cheap doubles and student-focused offers underpinning a reputation for value that keeps the venue busy midweek as well as at weekends. Although primarily a student bar, it welcomes ex-students and guests, and occasionally closes for private parties with a marquee in the garden during summer. Set among the cluster of late-opening pubs and bars along Bevois Valley, close to bus routes and within reach of student accommodation, Sobar is easy to get to. Combining keen prices, a large garden and a packed events calendar, it has earned its place as a Southampton student institution. The combination of cheap doubles, a sprawling garden and a packed calendar of student nights and visiting DJs has kept it at the top of the city's nightlife for years, drawing big midweek crowds as well as weekend revellers. For Southampton students in particular, a night at Sobar has become something of a rite of passage.