Café Hopper

About this place Café Hopper

Café Hopper is not an exclusively gay bar, but it belongs on any LGBTQ+ itinerary of Antwerp: it is one of the city's most genuinely welcoming spaces for queer people, with a decades-long reputation as the bar of choice for Antwerp's artistic, intellectual, and LGBTQ+ communities. The venue is on the Leopold de Waelplaats, adjacent to the Royal Museum of Fine Arts, and the artistic connection is genuine rather than decorative: the crowd includes gallery staff, museum curators, artists, architects, fashion designers — Antwerp's cultural sector — alongside a substantial LGBTQ+ proportion. The jazz programme (live music several evenings a week) is the best in Antwerp. The beer and wine selection is serious. The interior is the kind of slightly worn, extensively characterful space that cannot be manufactured and takes decades to develop. For LGBTQ+ travellers who want to engage with Antwerp's wider cultural life rather than only its gay bars, Café Hopper is indispensable.