Pub quiz nights in Birmingham: where to play

Birmingham doesn't get talked about as a quiz city the way London or Glasgow do, but it should. There's a proper mix here: a real ale pub in the city centre with more handpumps than most people have opinions about beer, a Kings Heath boozer with a genuine slice of music history, and a couple of Jewellery Quarter locals that pack out on a weeknight. Below are the ones we could actually verify are running, checked against each venue's own site rather than just a listings page.

A quick caveat before you plan your evening around any of this: quiz nights are one of the first things to change when a pub gets a new manager or a quizmaster moves on. We've checked every venue below against its own website as of publishing, but that's no guarantee it'll be exactly the same by the time you read this. Ring ahead, check the venue's Instagram, or look at their site again before you commit to a Wednesday out. It's a five-minute check that saves you turning up to a dead room.

City centre

The Wellington, Bennetts Hill

The Wellington is Birmingham's dedicated real ale pub, a genuine institution with somewhere around 17 real ales and 150-odd whiskies on at any one time, and its Sunday night quiz has been running long enough to be treated as part of the furniture. It starts at 7.30pm, costs £2 a head with a maximum of six to a team, and the pub's own site frames the prize structure as a shot at "the treble": two cash prizes plus a gallon of real ale for the winning team. There's no kitchen here beyond cobs (bring your own food if you want more, they'll provide plates), so it's one for people who came for the beer and the quiz rather than a big meal out.

Source: The Wellington, events

The Victoria, John Bright Street

Just off New Street, The Victoria runs its quiz every Wednesday from 7.30pm, with entry at £2 a head and complimentary samosas thrown in while you wait for the first round. It's a proper independent pub with a reputation as one of the city centre's better live music venues too, so the quiz sits alongside a fairly packed weekly calendar rather than being the only thing going on.

Source: The Victoria, pub quiz

If your own local doesn't run a quiz yet, it's worth floating the idea to whoever's behind the bar. It costs next to nothing to set up, especially with a tool that handles the questions and scoring for you. Or skip the pub altogether and build your own quiz for a night in with mates instead.

Jewellery Quarter

The Actress and Bishop, St Paul's Square

Tucked just off St Paul's Square, the Actress and Bishop has been one of the Jewellery Quarter's established live music venues since 2003, and its Monday night fixture, billed simply as The Big Quiz, runs from 8pm to 11pm. It's a phone-based quiz rather than pens and paper, described on the venue's own site as "fast-paced" and "brain-melting", which tracks for a bar that's usually built around gigs and DJ sets rather than quiet trivia. The venue's events page doesn't list an entry fee, so it's worth checking on arrival or via their Instagram if that matters to you.

Source: The Actress and Bishop, events

The Lord Clifden, Great Hampton Street

The Lord Clifden is a genuine Jewellery Quarter fixture, a pub with over 160 years of history named after a 19th-century racehorse, and it reopened under new management in early 2026 after a spell shut. Its own site confirms a Wednesday quiz night, run as a SpeedQuizzing smartphone quiz and hosted by Stoo Pittaway. Because the pub only recently changed hands, the site doesn't yet list an entry fee or prize structure for the new era of the quiz, so this is one where a quick call or Instagram check before you go is genuinely worth doing rather than just a formality.

Source: The Lord Clifden

Kings Heath

The Hare and Hounds, High Street

The Hare and Hounds is a Grade II listed pub with Art Nouveau tilework dating back to 1907, and it holds a specific piece of local history: it's where UB40 played their first ever gig in 1979, a fact the venue's own site is happy to point out. It's become one of the more important music venues in the city since 2007, and it runs two weekly quizzes rather than one: Wednesday from 8pm, with teams of up to four and £3 a head, cash only, and a second on Sunday from 7.30pm in the Saloon bar. Neither listing on the venue's own site gives out prize details, so don't go in expecting a jackpot, just a good pub with a decent pedigree.

Source: The Hare and Hounds, the venue

Five venues is a smaller list than you'll find on some of the generic "best pub quizzes in Birmingham" roundups, and that's deliberate. Birmingham's quiz scene is bigger than this, there are quizzes advertised at pubs all over Harborne, Moseley, Digbeth and beyond, but plenty of those listings turn out to be stale the moment you check the pub's own page, or the venue itself has since closed. We'd rather give you five we could actually stand behind than pad the list with ones we couldn't confirm.

If none of these are near you, or you fancy running your own night rather than crossing town for someone else's, our quiz creator makes it easy to put a proper set of rounds together in minutes. And if you want tips on pacing a night, setting difficulty, and keeping a room's attention for a couple of hours, we've written a longer guide on how to run a great pub quiz.