This guide tracks Liverpool bars, craft beer venues, cafes and restaurants reported open during 2026, plus the late-2025 openings still worth knowing about. Each entry gives the address, opening date and a source so you can check the venue before making a special trip.
Last checked on 20 August 2026. I'll keep it updated as more open.
The short version
- Fourteen places opened across Liverpool in the first seven months of 2026, listed newest first.
- Ropewalks and the city centre took the bigger bars and restaurant groups: The Black Horse & Rainbow, Kiku Hifi, Shrimp & Co and McSwiggin's.
- Outside the centre the openings are smaller and daytime-first: Dock & Brew in Garston, Lane & Brew on Lark Lane, Bold Street Coffee at The Matchworks.
- Seven of them have a full entry in our independents directory, with addresses, food hygiene ratings and what they are actually like.
- Every entry here has a source link so you can check a venue before making a trip across the city for it.
- For beer specifically, the new places worth a trip are The Black Horse & Rainbow on Berry Street, McSwiggin's on Fenwick Street and Dead Crafty's second bar on Allerton Road.
- Opening dates and hours move. Our openings and closures tracker is the page to watch if you want this as it happens.
1. The Black Horse & Rainbow
Where: 21–23 Berry Street, Ropewalks
Opened: 24 July 2026
Type: Bar, beer garden and entertainment venue
More: full entry in our independents directory
The former Red Door building on Berry Street has reopened as The Black Horse & Rainbow after a £750,000 redevelopment. The three-storey venue has a beer garden with room for around 250 people, heated outdoor terraces and a separate function room, with continental beers, cocktails and a garden barbecue menu.
The name comes from the original Black Horse and Rainbow, which ran on Berry Street from 1990. The new venue is run by DGB Hospitality Group, which operates several other bars and cafés around Liverpool.
2. Kiku Hifi
Where: 40 Gradwell Street, Ropewalks
Opened: 23 July 2026
Type: Coffee shop and listening bar
More: full entry in our independents directory
Kiku Hifi is a Japanese-inspired café by day and a listening bar by night, built around vintage hi-fi equipment, records and resident DJs rather than a background playlist. It's from the team behind Suono, Liverpool's Tokyo-inspired listening bar. By day it serves speciality coffee and pastries from local roaster Little Moments; by evening the menu shifts to cocktails, wine and beer.
3. Shrimp & Co
Where: 50–52 Hanover Street, city centre
Opened: 21 July 2026
Type: Seafood restaurant
More: full entry in our independents directory
Shrimp & Co has opened its first Liverpool restaurant near Liverpool ONE. The menu centres on seafood boils, prawns, mussels and crab with a choice of sauces and spice levels, plus grilled dishes and sharing platters. It's the chain's fifth UK site, after Leicester, Birmingham and London.
4. McSwiggin's: House of Stout
Where: 25 Fenwick Street, city centre
Opened: 15 July 2026
Type: Irish pub
More: full entry in our independents directory
McSwiggin's has moved into Castle Moat House, the Grade II-listed building at the corner of Fenwick Street and Lower Castle Street, empty until now. The two-storey pub mixes traditional Irish drinking-house style with live entertainment and televised sport, with stout and Irish beers doing most of the work behind the bar.
5. Dock & Brew
Where: 352B St Mary's Road, Garston
Opened: July 2026
Type: Independent coffee shop
More: full entry in our independents directory
Dock & Brew is a new family-run coffee shop on the corner of St Mary's Road and Garston Old Road, converted from a former blinds showroom. It serves speciality coffee, cakes and changing daily specials, sit-in or takeaway. It's a genuinely local opening rather than another city-centre hospitality unit, which makes it one of the more useful additions this year if you're actually in Garston.
6. Lane & Brew
Where: 83 Lark Lane, Aigburth
Opened: Spring 2026
Type: Café and Mediterranean restaurant
More: full entry in our independents directory
Lane & Brew started as a breakfast and brunch café before extending into an all-day restaurant. Mornings are eggs Benedict, toast and sandwiches; later on, the kitchen turns Mediterranean and Turkish, with kebabs, pasta and seafood. It's family-friendly and dog-friendly, with evening service ending earlier than most conventional restaurants.
7. White Tiger
Where: King's Dock
Opened: 19 May 2026
Type: Contemporary Indian restaurant
More: full entry in our independents directory
White Tiger has opened on the waterfront with a menu split between what the owners call "Indian Soul" and "Hakka Fire", pairing traditional Indian dishes with Hakka and Indo-Chinese flavours. It was founded by Merseyside doctors Meenal Abhyankar and Dhanya Kalathil, who met at the school gates and bonded over Indian food and twenty years of building lives in Liverpool. It's a locally founded concept in an area otherwise dominated by hotels and arena visitors.
8. Crabbish
Where: 52 Duke Street, city centre
Opened: 21 April 2026
Type: Seafood-boil restaurant
Crabbish specialises in Louisiana-style seafood boils: seafood, potatoes, corn and seasoning cooked together and poured onto a paper-covered table, bibs and gloves provided, eaten with your hands. You can order smaller mixed-seafood bags or large group packages with lobster tails, prawns, mussels and clams. It's Crabbish's second UK site after its original in Manchester.
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