Hackney for a night out: the Overground, the night buses and the Empire

Does Hackney have a Tube station?

No. TfL lists no Underground station within 2 kilometres of Hackney Central; the nearest are Bethnal Green on the Central line, about 2.2 kilometres to the south, and Stepney Green and Mile End, about 2.9 kilometres [1]. The area is served by the Overground instead [1][2]:

The Mildmay line runs from Hackney Central east to Homerton, Hackney Wick and Stratford, and west through Dalston Kingsland and Highbury & Islington to Camden Road and on to Richmond or Clapham Junction [2]. The Weaver line runs from London Fields south through Cambridge Heath and Bethnal Green's rail station to Liverpool Street, and north through Hackney Downs to Chingford, Enfield Town or Cheshunt [2]. A walkway opened in July 2015 links Hackney Central with Hackney Downs, so you can change lines without going out to the street [6].

TfL's fare zones set what you pay to travel. MYSOVA's zones are a separate map: areas where a clock-in in the app earns a multiplier.

Why it is called Hackney

The name comes from a Saxon settlement of the 5th or 6th century, Haca's ey, meaning raised ground in marshland, near the Hackney Brook [7]. Hackney is not named in the Domesday Book; at that time it was part of the manor of Stepney [7].

Where the MYSOVA zone runs

The Hackney zone covers 0.78 square kilometres, about 950 metres from west to east and 1,020 metres from south to north [3]. Hackney Central station sits just inside its northern edge, and London Fields station about 220 metres inside its southern edge [1][3].

All 15 venues on the map inside the zone lie within about 530 metres of one of those two stations, and 13 of them within 400 metres [1][4]. By their nearest postcode, 12 are in E8 and 3 in E9, all in the London Borough of Hackney [8]. Dalston's zone, at 1.4×, starts about 370 metres to the west, and Shoreditch's, at 1.5×, about 1.5 kilometres to the south-west [3].

What kind of places are there?

MYSOVA gives each venue one category. Of the 15 venues inside the zone on the map [4]:

Treat the table as a sample, because the map only holds venues we can place from open data [4]. A venue placed in the wrong category would shift these counts. Another 12 venues on the map sit within 300 metres outside the zone's edge, 5 of them pubs and 1 a club [3][4]. The server reads the zone from your phone's location when you clock in, so at those venues the 1.2× applies only if you are standing inside the boundary [12].

This post gives no opening hours, so check with the venue before you go. To find how late a venue may serve, see how London's licensing hours work. The Hackney zone page lists the venues by name, the Hackney guide covers the wider area, and the London nightlife map shows where the zone runs.

The Hackney Empire

The Hackney Empire on Mare Street was built in 1901 as a music hall, to designs by the theatre architect Frank Matcham, and is a grade II* listed building [9]. Charlie Chaplin, Stan Laurel and Marie Lloyd performed there in its music-hall years [9]. From the mid-1950s ATV used it as a television studio, broadcasting shows such as Take Your Pick live, and from 1963 to 1984 the Mecca Organisation ran it as a bingo hall [9]. In 1984 Mecca offered it to CAST, a satirical touring theatre company led by Claire and Roland Muldoon, whose variety nights brought in alternative comedians such as Ben Elton, Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders; in 1986 Roland Muldoon began a campaign to buy the freehold and reopen it as a theatre [9]. It closed in 2001 for a £17 million refurbishment and reopened in 2004 [9]. On MYSOVA's map it is filed as live music, about 180 metres from Hackney Central station [1][4].

Oslo and MOTH Club

Two more of the zone's live-music venues sit within about 200 metres of Hackney Central station [1][4]. Oslo occupies the old Hackney station building on Mare Street, designed by Edwin Henry Horne and opened in 1870, which the railway no longer uses [6][10]. It is one of two examples of North London Railway architecture still in place; the other is Camden Road, still a working station on the same Mildmay line [6]. MOTH Club opened in August 2015 in a pub first called the General Browning, and takes its name from the Memorable Order of Tin Hats, whose Hackney headquarters it was [11].

Getting home

No night trains. The Mildmay and Weaver lines are not on TfL's night network, so there is no all-night train from any Hackney station [2]. On Friday and Saturday nights, the nearest all-night trains are the Windrush line at Dalston Junction, about 1.3 kilometres west of Hackney Central, and the Central line at Bethnal Green, about 2.2 kilometres south [1][2].

Night buses. TfL runs buses through the night on all seven nights, not only on Friday and Saturday [5][13]. Six routes have a timetabled bus in every hour from 01:00 to 04:59, on all seven nights and in both directions, from stops inside the zone [5]:

All six run only at night, and the N253 also runs through MYSOVA's Camden zone [5]. Journey Planner and the TfL Go app plan the trip, and TfL's website shows when the next bus is due at your stop [13].

Cabs. Hail only a black cab, and book any minicab in an app, by phone or at the operator's office. TfL calls an unbooked minicab illegal and uninsured for passengers [13]. Our Soho guide sets out the rest of TfL's rules.

Hackney on MYSOVA

MYSOVA is a London social passport: clock in at bars, pubs and clubs, earn XP and meet people where you go. Hackney's zone carries 1.2×, level with Elephant & Castle and South Bank [3]. At most venues a clock-in on the Free plan starts from 25 XP, and the zone turns it into 30; the paid Explorer (£7.99 a month) and Icon (£14.99 a month) plans multiply it again [12]. How clocking in and XP work covers the rest of the sum, and Shoreditch for a night out covers the zone to the south-west.

Your first clock-in starts your passport.

Free · UK App Store and Google Play · 18+

Sources

All fetched or read on 27 October 2026, except the venue map, whose data is dated 20 October 2026.

1. TfL Unified API, StopPoint?lat=51.54348&lon=-0.05691&radius=2500&stopTypes=NaptanMetroStation,NaptanRailStation: fare zones, lines and positions for Hackney Central (910GHACKNYC), London Fields (910GLONFLDS), Hackney Downs (910GHAKNYNM), Dalston Junction (910GDALS), Haggerston (910GHAGGERS) and others; StopPoint?lat=51.54348&lon=-0.05691&radius=4000&stopTypes=NaptanMetroStation&modes=tube for the nearest Underground stations, including Bethnal Green (940GZZLUBLG). Distances in straight lines.
2. TfL Unified API, Line/{mildmay,weaver,windrush}/Route/Sequence/outbound (regular services; the night requests for Mildmay and Weaver return not found), Line/{windrush,central}/Route/Sequence/outbound?serviceTypes=Night and Line/Mode/tube,overground,elizabeth-line/Route?serviceTypes=Night; Transport for London, "The Night Tube": https://tfl.gov.uk/modes/tube/night-tube.
3. MYSOVA zones: the site's copy of the production zones table (id, multiplier, polygon), read on 21 October 2026. Area, extents and distances measured from the zone polygons, in straight lines.
4. MYSOVA open-data venue map, as published at /map-data/venues.json (data as of 20 October 2026): 2,315 London venues placed from Overture Maps Places (CDLA-Permissive-2.0; Apache-2.0 for Foursquare; CC0-1.0 for AllThePlaces) and OpenStreetMap (© OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL 1.0), with the FSA Food Hygiene Rating Scheme (Open Government Licence v3.0) for outward postcodes. Categories are MYSOVA's own. Zone membership by point-in-polygon against source 3.
5. TfL Unified API: StopPoint?lat=51.54348&lon=-0.05691&radius=450&modes=bus (17 bus stops); Line/{route}/Route for each route's end stops; Line/{route}/Timetable/{stop} for each route's timetable at each of those stops, in both directions.
6. Wikipedia, "Hackney Central railway station" (revision 1360425717, 21 June 2026): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackney_Central_railway_station.
7. Wikipedia, "Hackney Central" (revision 1361697991, 29 June 2026): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackney_Central.
8. postcodes.io, reverse geocoding of each venue point to its nearest postcode and that postcode's local authority.
9. Wikipedia, "Hackney Empire" (revision 1372184675, 30 August 2026): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackney_Empire.
10. Wikipedia, "Oslo (club)" (revision 1372223676, 30 August 2026): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oslo_(club).
11. Wikipedia, "MOTH Club" (revision 1378100247, 2 October 2026): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOTH_Club.
12. The MYSOVA app's source at origin/main (e57b7fad2): secure_checkin_v2_core_streak and quote_checkin_xp_v1 (supabase/migrations/20260729180000_event_bonus_display_tier.sql) for the zone lookup from your location, the 25 XP venue line and the plan multipliers; plan prices from the shared tier constants.
13. Transport for London, "Safer travel at night": https://tfl.gov.uk/travel-information/your-safety-and-security/safer-travel-at-night.

Powered by TfL Open Data. Contains OS data © Crown copyright and database rights 2016 and Geomni UK Map data © and database rights [2019]. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Venue data © OpenStreetMap contributors, available under the Open Database Licence.