Central London now has two comic shops worth crossing town for and one specialist games shop, all within eight minutes' walk of each other around Cambridge Circus. Gosh! Comics is at 1 Berwick Street and opens seven days a week from 10.30am to 7pm; Forbidden Planet's megastore is at 179 Shaftesbury Avenue; Orc's Nest, for role-playing games and board games, is at 6 Earlham Street and has traded since April 1987.
That is a shorter list than it would have been five years ago, and this page says so rather than padding it. Several shops that appear in older guides and on map apps are gone: Orbital Comics on Great Newport Street has closed, Mega City Comics in Camden has been taken over by Forbidden Planet, and the dedicated plastic-kit model shops that London used to have are no longer trading in the city.
What is left is genuinely good, and it is unusually concentrated. You can walk the comics, the games and the board-game café in an afternoon without using the Tube. What follows is what each shop is actually for, what things cost, where to go if you want to play rather than buy, and which names to stop looking for.
The shops that are open, September 2026
- Gosh! Comics
- 1 Berwick Street, W1F 0DR. Open 7 days, 10.30am to 7pm
- Forbidden Planet London Megastore
- 179 Shaftesbury Avenue, WC2H 8JR. Check hours on the day
- Orc's Nest
- 6 Earlham Street, WC2H 9RY. Role-playing games, board games, miniatures
- Draughts, Waterloo
- Arch 16, Leake Street, SE1 7NN. Board game café, over 1,000 games
- Draughts, Stratford
- 5 Aquatics Walk, Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, E20 2AS
- Leisure Games
- 100 Ballards Lane, Finchley, N3 2DN. Board games, out of the centre
- Walking time
- Berwick Street to Earlham Street, about 8 minutes
- Nearest stations
- Leicester Square, Covent Garden, Tottenham Court Road, Piccadilly Circus
Gosh! Comics and Forbidden Planet: two shops, two jobs
They are seven minutes apart and they are not competing for the same customer. Knowing which one you want saves an hour.
Gosh! Comics, on the corner of Berwick Street, is the curated one. The ground floor is graphic novels and collected editions arranged by the kind of thing they are rather than by publisher, with a strong small-press and British section and a basement for children's comics and manga. The staff read what they sell and will answer a question like "I liked this one, what next" properly. It runs signings and a monthly reading group, and being open every day from 10.30am to 7pm makes it the easiest shop here to slot into a day.
Forbidden Planet's London megastore on Shaftesbury Avenue is the big one: two floors of comics, manga, collected editions, novels, figures, models, board games and licensed merchandise. If you want this week's single issues, a specific Funko or a kit, this is where the stock depth is. It is also where a teenager will want to spend forty-five minutes, which our guide to London with teenagers takes into account.
For original cartoon and comic art rather than books to buy, the Cartoon Museum near Oxford Street is the place, and its ticket lasts a year; see our page on the Cartoon Museum and comic collections.
Orbital Comics on Great Newport Street has closed. It was London's biggest back-issue shop and it is still listed on directories, map apps and in printed guides, and its website no longer resolves. If you are hunting specific back issues, do not plan a journey around it. Mega City Comics in Camden has also changed hands and now belongs to Forbidden Planet.
Orc's Nest: role-playing games, and the second-hand question
Orc's Nest, in a narrow shop on Earlham Street in Seven Dials, has been selling role-playing games since April 1987, which makes it older than most of its customers. It stocks the current editions of the big systems, a deep shelf of smaller and independent games, board games, card games, miniatures, dice and the accessories nobody else in central London bothers with.
It is not a large shop and it is not a browsing lounge: the aisles are narrow and the stock is stacked. The reason to come is the specific thing you cannot find at home, and the fact that a good deal of the range is marked on its own website as in-shop purchase only, which is a useful signal that the shelves hold more than the web pages do.
On second-hand role-playing books, be realistic. London no longer has a dedicated second-hand RPG shop. What turns up instead comes through charity shops, the general second-hand bookshops in our guide to London's bookshops, and occasionally the paper and ephemera stalls in our guide to antiques markets. It is luck rather than a plan.
Where to play rather than buy
Draughts is a board game café with two London venues and, by its own count, more than a thousand games. The Waterloo branch is in Arch 16 of the Leake Street tunnel, underneath Waterloo station, which puts it directly inside the legal graffiti tunnel: you walk past people spray-painting the walls to reach the door. The Stratford branch is on Aquatics Walk in the Olympic Park.
Both charge for table time as well as for food and drink, and both take bookings, which is the sensible approach on a Friday or Saturday evening. Both hold a food hygiene rating of 5 from the Food Standards Agency, inspected in April 2026 at Waterloo and July 2025 at Stratford.
Warhammer shops, run by Games Workshop, are the other place in London where you can sit down and play, and staff will teach a beginner a game for nothing. Branches move and open in shopping centres often enough that we do not list addresses here; use the company's own store finder for the current set. For the wider category of places built around games rather than shops selling them, see our guide to crazy golf, social darts and indoor games bars.
What things cost
These are bands we read on the shops' own websites in September 2026, not fixed prices, and none of them includes anything a shop might discount.
| Item | Typical price, September 2026 | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Graphic novel or collected edition | £13 to £32 | Signed and special editions sit at the top of the range |
| Single comic issue | Low single-digit pounds | Imported US issues cost more than the cover price |
| Mid-weight board game | £20 to £40 | The bulk of the shelf sits here |
| Large or deluxe board game | £50 to £70 | Heavy, and the item most likely to blow your luggage allowance |
| Role-playing core rulebook | About £40 | Hardback, and heavier than it looks |
There is no VAT refund on goods you carry home from Great Britain: the scheme was withdrawn in 2021 and has not returned, as our page on tax-free shopping in the UK explains. The only tax-free route is asking a shop to ship the goods directly to an address outside the UK, which some will do.
Buy the heavy things on your last day and ask for a bag with handles. A large board game weighs two to three kilograms and a hardback rulebook not much less. If you are flying with hand luggage only, a single deluxe box can cost you more in excess baggage than the game cost in the shop. Comics need a flat surface to survive the journey, so buy a bag and backing board at the same time.
The shops to stop looking for
A page like this is only useful if it is honest about what has gone, because the old names are still all over the internet.
- Orbital Comics, 8 Great Newport Street: closed. Its domain no longer resolves.
- Mega City Comics, Inverness Street, Camden: acquired by Forbidden Planet, and its website now redirects to that announcement.
- 30th Century Comics, formerly a shop in Putney: now a mail-order business working from a post-office box in Wembley. There is no counter to walk up to.
- Playin' Games, Museum Street, Bloomsbury: its website no longer resolves and we could not verify that the shop trades.
- Dark Sphere, the wargaming shop near Waterloo: same position, website not reachable, unverified.
- Dedicated plastic-kit model shops: the specialist that used to keep a London branch now lists only its Suffolk shop. Kits are bought at Forbidden Planet, at Warhammer branches or online.
If a shop matters to your trip, telephone it the week before. This is the corner of retail where a lease ending closes a shop between one guidebook edition and the next.
A half-day route, and where it fits
The three central shops are close enough to do on foot with time for lunch, and the walk passes through the most interesting few streets in the West End for this kind of shopping.
- Start at Gosh! Comics, 1 Berwick Street, from 10.30am. The market on the same street is out by then and the hot-food stalls start at about noon.
- Walk south-east to Earlham Street for Orc's Nest, about eight minutes through Soho. Earlham Street has its own small Camden-run street market, Monday to Saturday.
- Forbidden Planet on Shaftesbury Avenue is three minutes from there.
- Finish at Draughts Waterloo, twenty minutes' walk across the river, or ten minutes from Charing Cross.
The surrounding streets are covered in our guides to Seven Dials and Neal's Yard and shopping in Covent Garden. If you are shopping with children rather than for yourself, Hamleys and London's toy shops is the better page, and on a wet afternoon our list of things to do in the rain has more indoor options within the same few streets.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best comic shop in London?
Gosh! Comics at 1 Berwick Street for graphic novels, small-press work and staff who can recommend something, and Forbidden Planet's Shaftesbury Avenue megastore for stock depth, single issues, figures and models. They are seven minutes apart, so most people visit both.
Is Orbital Comics still open?
No. The shop at 8 Great Newport Street has closed, although it still appears on directories and map applications and its old listings are easy to find. If you are looking for back issues, ask at Forbidden Planet instead.
Where can I play board games in London?
Draughts has two venues, one in Arch 16 of the Leake Street tunnel under Waterloo and one on Aquatics Walk in the Olympic Park at Stratford, each with more than a thousand games and a charge for table time. Warhammer branches also let you play and will teach a beginner for nothing.
Where can I buy Warhammer in London?
At Games Workshop's own Warhammer shops, which have branches across London, and at Forbidden Planet on Shaftesbury Avenue, which carries a range of kits and paints. Warhammer branches open and move fairly often, so check the company's store finder for the current addresses.
Can I get a VAT refund on comics and games bought in London?
No. Great Britain withdrew its retail export scheme in 2021 and there is no high-street VAT refund for visitors. The only way to buy without UK VAT is to have the shop ship the goods to an address outside the UK, which not every shop will do.
Sources
- GOV.UK - Tax-free shopping (checked September 2026)
- Food Standards Agency - food hygiene rating register (checked September 2026)
- Camden Council - Visit Camden's markets (Earlham Street) (checked September 2026)
- The Cartoon Museum - Visit us (checked September 2026)