Rock Bars in Vienna: The Complete Guide

Until the mid-1990s the Gürtel arches were a red-light district and a place respectable Vienna drove past quickly. The change has one clear starting point. On 8 June 1995 the Chelsea moved out of its cellar in the eighth district and reopened inside three of Otto Wagner's arches; B72 and rhiz followed in 1998, and the strip filled in from there. Today the arches from roughly number 22 to number 100 hold a dozen bars and small clubs, and the Gürtel Nightwalk on the last Saturday of August turns the whole stretch into an open-air festival.

Practical note before you start: the arch numbers are their own address system. A venue at "Stadtbahnbogen 39" is in the viaduct itself, on the inner (1080/1090) side. Venues with a normal street number on the Lerchenfelder Gürtel are on the outer (1160/1170) side of the road. You will cross the traffic several times in a night; use the pedestrian crossings, because the Gürtel is a genuine multi-lane arterial.

Chelsea — the one that started it

Lerchenfelder Gürtel, Stadtbahnbogen 29–30, 1080 Vienna | OPEN

Chelsea is the anchor of the whole strip and still the best single answer to "where do I see a guitar band in Vienna tonight". It fills three interconnected arches that can be opened up or partitioned, so normal bar trade and a concert can run on the same evening. The booking policy is British guitar music and its descendants — indie, punk, post-punk, garage — plus live football on the screens, which is not a coincidence: the founder, Othmar Bajlicz, was a professional footballer before he opened the original Chelsea on 12 December 1986. Open daily from 6pm to 4am. Nearest station: U6 Thaliastraße or Josefstädter Straße.

B72

Hernalser Gürtel, Stadtbahnbogen 72–73, 1080 Vienna | OPEN

B72 occupies two arches by the U6 at Alser Straße, and it is the strip's cross-section of the alternative scene: Austrian and touring international bands early, established club nights afterwards. It is small — a couple of hundred people at most — dark, and it books guitar music alongside electronic beats without treating the two as enemies. Listed hours are Thursday from 8pm, Friday from 9pm and Saturday from 11pm, running to 4am on the weekend, but the doors follow the programme rather than a timetable.

rhiz

Lerchenfelder Gürtel, Stadtbahnbogen 37–38, 1080 Vienna | OPEN

rhiz is the honest exception on this list. It has concerts several nights a week and is one of the most respected small rooms in the city, but its centre of gravity is advanced electronic music rather than rock. Go for noise, industrial, experimental and post-everything; do not go expecting a support band and a riff. Thursday from 8pm to 4am, Friday and Saturday from 8pm to 6am.

Kramladen

Lerchenfelder Gürtel, Stadtbahnbogen 39–40, 1080 Vienna | OPEN

Kramladen opened in 2015 two arches along from rhiz and has become the strip's reliable small-band room. The spread runs punk rock through indie and singer-songwriter to electronics and outright experiments, and the room is compact enough that there is no distance between the band and the front row. Monday and Tuesday 8pm to 4am, Wednesday to Saturday 8pm to 6am. Its listings live on Facebook rather than a website, so check there.

Café Carina — live music, no cover

Josefstädter Straße 84, 1080 Vienna | OPEN

Café Carina is inside the Otto Wagner station building at Josefstädter Straße, which makes it the most architecturally interesting bar on the Gürtel and also the easiest to find: you get off the U6 and you are at the door. It has traded under this name since 1985 and it puts on live music most nights of the year — jazz, alternative, rock, metal, singer-songwriter, open mic — with free admission. There are also chess sets, a pool table and a pinball machine. Monday to Thursday 6pm to 2am, Friday and Saturday 6pm to 6am. Its own website has been unreliable and at the time of writing was serving injected spam; use its Facebook page for listings.

Weberknecht — the metal end of the strip

Lerchenfelder Gürtel 47–49, 1160 Vienna | OPEN

Weberknecht is on the outer side of the road, two minutes from U6 Josefstädter Straße, and it is the heaviest of the Gürtel rooms. Up to four floors of club, lounge and live stage wrap around a vaulted basement, there is a garden, and it opens every day of the week from 6pm to 6am — which on this strip is unusual and very useful. Happy hour runs Sunday to Thursday from 6pm to 8pm. The booking runs to real touring metal: Anvil and Killer are in on 27 October 2026, doors 6.30pm.

Venster99 — the DIY hardcore room

Währinger Gürtel, Stadtbahnbögen 99–100, 1090 Vienna | OPEN

Venster99 is the last of the arches, up by U6 Alser Straße, and it is the one that matters if you came for punk and hardcore. It has been run since 2006 as a non-profit collective with an explicitly political, anti-commercial constitution: no booking fee for artists, donations at the door rather than a ticket price, and a stated preference for unknown, experimental and non-mainstream acts. That has not stopped Power Trip, Jesus Piece, Loma Prieta, Frontierer, Hexis and Implore playing there. Hours follow the programme; there is no standing bar timetable.

WUK — the occupied locomotive factory

Währinger Straße 59, 1090 Vienna | OPEN

WUK is a ten-minute walk down from the Währinger Gürtel arches and it is one of the largest socio-cultural centres in Europe: more than 12,000 square metres of a nineteenth-century locomotive factory, later a technical college, occupied by activists and formally handed over to their association on 3 October 1981 with no electricity, water or heating. They fixed it themselves. It now holds a concert hall, performance spaces, the Kunsthalle Exnergasse, workshops and a courtyard. Programming is broad — the rock and indie shows sit alongside theatre, children's events and contemporary art — so check the calendar rather than turning up.

Battle Axe Rock & Metal Pub

Glatzgasse 4, 1190 Vienna | OPEN

Battle Axe is further out, in Döbling north of the Gürtel, and it is the closest thing Vienna has to a proper metal local: a drinks-only pub with no kitchen, a bar full of Austrian beer and a playlist that does not apologise. Wednesday is the pub quiz, Thursday is the regulars' table. Wednesday and Thursday 7pm to 2am, Friday and Saturday 7pm to 4am; closed the rest of the week. Not a gig venue — a place to drink before or after one.

The other arches, for completeness: Fania Live (Stadtbahnbogen 22–23), Club Lucia (24–25) and Loop (26–27) are DJ bars rather than rock rooms; The Loft at Lerchenfelder Gürtel 37 (1160) is a club; and Café Concerto at Lerchenfelder Gürtel 53 (1160) has live music every night in its Wintergarten and Felsenkeller on a donation basis, but the programme is jazz, Irish session, reggae, folk and world music rather than rock. It is a lovely room. Know what you are walking into.

The first district is where you are staying and it is the worst district in Vienna for live rock, with two exceptions and one large trap. The trap first, because it will otherwise eat your first evening.

The Rock — International Bar/Pub

Fischerstiege 10, 1010 Vienna | OPEN

The Rock is a short walk from the Bermuda Triangle towards the Salzgries and it is the first district's actual rock pub: a proper beer bar with rock on the stereo, old and new, and a crowd that is not there for a bar crawl. It does not publish reliable opening hours, so check its Facebook page before you cross town for it. There is no stage — this is a drinking place, not a gig venue.

Escape Metalcorner — the metal bar

Neustiftgasse 116–118, 1070 Vienna | OPEN

Escape Metalcorner has been running for more than twenty-three years and it is the venue this guide would pick if you only had one night and you came to Vienna for metal. It works on two levels: a bar with tables opposite the entrance, priced sanely, and a live room one floor down that holds roughly 130 to 150 people plus the band. The programme is metal and rock in every direction, with international touring bills alongside house nights — the retro "Pump Up The Jam", the occult and obscure "Come To The Sabbath", and a metal quiz. The venue's own site lists standing bar hours of Friday and Saturday 8pm to 2am; on concert nights it opens for the show, so work from the programme. Nearest stop: U6 Thaliastraße, bus 48A, night buses N6 and N64.

Replugged

Lerchenfelder Straße 23, 1070 Vienna | OPEN

Replugged is a purpose-built live music club just inside the Gürtel in Neubau, with a large stage, proper lighting and PA, backstage and backline hire — the sort of room a touring band actually wants. It books national and international bands and DJs across genres rather than specialising, and it is a hire venue as well as a promoter, so the calendar is what tells you whether tonight is a rock night. Programme-led: check before travelling.

Flex — the club in the U-Bahn tunnel

Augartenbrücke 1, 1010 Vienna | OPEN

Flex has the best story in Vienna nightlife and it is worth knowing even if you do not go. It grew out of the eviction of the occupied house at Aegidigasse 3 in August 1988; the first Flex opened on New Year's Eve 1989 in Arndtstraße in the twelfth district as a mixture of underground club, punk meeting point and cultural centre, built around hardcore punk gigs. On 1 October 1995 it reopened where it still is: inside an abandoned section of U4 tunnel on the bank of the Donaukanal, with a sound system that has a genuine reputation and a canal-side terrace that is one of the best places in the city on a summer night. Be clear about the present, though — it is now mostly an electronic club with occasional live bookings. Listed hours are Thursday to Saturday from 11pm to 6am.

Two more inner-city notes. Tunnel Vienna Live at Florianigasse 39 (1080) is a long-running bar, restaurant and jazz cellar in Josefstadt with a nightly programme — jazz and singer-songwriter rather than rock, but cheap, open from morning to 2am, and useful. And for records: Totem Records at Zollergasse 18–20 (1070) has been Vienna's metal shop since 1998, run by Alex Wank, the drummer of Pungent Stench, and stocks seventies rock, soundtracks, industrial and ambient alongside the metal, plus books on film and the occult. Substance at Westbahnstraße 16 (1070) covers indie and post-punk; Rave Up Records at Hofmühlgasse 1 (1060) is the long-standing indie and rock shop; and Teuchtler at Windmühlgasse 10 (1060) is the second-hand cave.

Everything with a big stage is out east. The third, tenth, eleventh and twelfth districts hold the Arena, the Viper Room, the Gasometer and the venues that have historically defined Viennese rock, and none of them is more than twenty-five minutes from Stephansplatz. You will need the U1, U3 or a tram, and on a weeknight you will need to think about the way back.

Arena Wien — the flagship

Baumgasse 80, 1030 Vienna | OPEN

Arena Wien is the most important venue in this guide and one of the most important in Central Europe. It is the former Inlandsschlachthof — the domestic pig slaughterhouse — handed to the occupiers of 1976 by the city in 1977, repaired by hand for three years, running a regular programme since 1980 and heritage-listed since 1997. It is still run by an association on self-governing, democratic lines rather than by a promoter. The site holds a Große Halle, a Kleine Halle, the smaller Dreiraum, an open-air stage and a walled yard covered in thirty years of paint, and it puts on roughly 200 events and 30 open-air concerts a year across rock, metal, punk, stoner, hip-hop and everything adjacent.

The autumn 2026 diary is a fair sample of the range: the Vienna Metal Meeting on 3 October, a two-stage indoor festival for about a thousand people with Satyricon, Benediction, Ellende, Sulphur Aeon, Dödsrit, Lamp of Murmuur, Izegrim and Graufar, doors at 5pm and tickets from around €89 (roughly £76); and on 9 October a book launch for Drüben im Dritten marking fifty years of the Arena, with The Kids from Belgium plus Baits and Bad Weed. The Arena Beisl next to the halls is open daily from 5pm and is where you wait for doors.

Viper Room — the rock club

Landstraßer Hauptstraße 38, 1030 Vienna | OPEN

Viper Room opened in June 2007 in a space that had traded as The Monastery until a couple of months earlier, and it has been the city's dedicated rock and metal club ever since: about 300 people on the main floor, a small bar upstairs seating forty, cellar acoustics and a heavy PA. It books a mix of touring metal, hard rock, punk and tribute nights — 2026 has run from The Night Eternal and All For Metal to ROME. Listed club hours are Friday and Saturday from 10pm, but the concert schedule sets the real calendar. Useful tip: for shows it promotes itself, the venue sells fee-free hard tickets over the bar during opening hours, which saves the booking fee that agencies add.

Fluc & Fluc Wanne

Praterstern 5, 1020 Vienna | OPEN

Fluc sits on the traffic island at Praterstern, between the station and the funfair, and is the strangest-looking venue in the city. It calls itself a centre for arts and communities and runs on urban activism as much as bookings: a ground-floor bar and deck, the cellar "Wanne" for concerts and club nights, a radio studio and a cantina. The programme is broad — indie, alternative and noise alongside a lot of techno — and much of it is free or nearly free. Open daily from 8pm to 6am. If you are staying near Praterstern, this is your local.

EKH — Ernst-Kirchweger-Haus

Wielandgasse 2–4, 1100 Vienna | OPEN

The EKH is a self-managed social centre in Favoriten, squatted on 23 June 1990 and named after Ernst Kirchweger, a concentration camp survivor and anti-fascist who was killed by a right-wing counter-demonstrator in 1965, in what is widely described as the first political killing of the Second Republic. The Communist Party sold the building in 2004, a fight over eviction followed, and it survived. Inside there is a pub, event rooms, rehearsal rooms, a library and an infoshop, and the music policy is punk and hardcore and whatever is adjacent to them. It is a political space first and a venue second: read the house rules, do not photograph people, and expect donations at the door rather than a ticket desk.

Szene Wien

Hauffgasse 26, 1110 Vienna | OPEN

Szene Wien in Simmering is one of the oldest surviving concert venues in the city and was already an institution when the Chelsea opened in 1986. It is a mid-size hall with a summer garden — the "Soundgarden", run with Rock Antenne Österreich — and a striking number of its shows are free entry. The programme swings between Austrian rock and pop, touring rock and hip-hop, so check the listing. Operated by Planet.tt, which also runs the Gasometer hall and SiMM City.

Raiffeisen Halle im Gasometer — the big room

Guglgasse 8, 1110 Vienna | OPEN

Raiffeisen Halle im Gasometer is built inside one of the four enormous brick gasholders raised in Simmering in 1899 and converted around the turn of the millennium into flats, offices and this hall. Capacity runs to about 4,200 and it is where touring metal lands in Vienna — Accept play on 4 December 2026, and the 2026–27 diary runs from Slaughter To Prevail to the usual European package tours. It traded as the Planet.tt Bank Austria Halle until 2023, so older listings and ticket stubs use that name. Nearest stop: U3 Gasometer.

U4 — open, but no longer a rock club

Schönbrunner Straße 222, 1120 Vienna | OPEN

U4 is the most storied building in Viennese pop history and it is still trading, which is why it belongs here rather than in the lost venues. It opened on 8 May 1980 in a windowless Meidling basement that had been intended as a wine bar called the Copa Cabana; the owner, Ossi Schellmann, handed it to people from the scene to run. When politicians decided the club endangered young people and its dance licence was revoked, a sign went up reading "Beim Bewegen bitte nicht tanzen" — when moving, please do not dance — and the U4 turned itself into a live venue instead. Falco treated it as a second living room and played bass there with Drahdiwaberl; Nirvana played on 22 November 1989 on the Heavier Than Heaven tour; Werner Geier's Wednesday goth night and the queer "Heaven" night defined the decade. It closed for fire-safety works in 2005 and reopened. Today it runs Tuesday to Saturday from 11pm on R&B, dancehall, eighties and nineties and queer club nights. Go for the history and the stairs down. Do not go expecting a band.

Two more for the big-room list: SiMM City at Simmeringer Hauptstraße 96a (1110) takes 800 standing or 508 seated and covers the gap between club and hall, and the Wiener Stadthalle in Rudolfsheim is where the arena tours play — Halle D holds the rock bills, with Deep Purple on 5 October 2026, Korn on 19 November and Five Finger Death Punch with Lamb of God on 14 February 2027. And a word on the Prater: the Schweizerhaus and the funfair are genuinely worth an afternoon, the beer is excellent and the Krügerl held at €5.90 for 2026, but there is no rock music out there. Fluc at Praterstern is the exception, and it is on the wrong side of the station from the rides.

Vienna has lost less than most comparable cities, because so much of its scene ended up in buildings the city itself owns. What it has lost, it lost hard.

The original Arena — Auslandsschlachthof, St. Marx (occupied June–October 1976)

The 70,000-square-metre foreign slaughterhouse at St. Marx was occupied on 27 June 1976 and demolished starting 12 October 1976, the morning after the last occupiers left. Everything alternative in Vienna traces back to those hundred days, and the site itself is gone — the modern Arena on Baumgasse is the consolation prize the city offered afterwards, and it turned out to be the better deal.

Rockhaus / Planet Music — Adalbert-Stifter-Straße 73, 1200 (1989–2008)

Founded in 1989 as the Rockhaus in Brigittenau near the Floridsdorf bridge and later renamed Planet Music when the booking widened beyond metal, this was where a generation of Viennese metal fans grew up: Sepultura and Sodom early on, then Death, Marduk, Machine Head, Kataklysm, Hate Eternal and The Haunted, in a room small enough that you could stand at the merch table and talk to the band. It had an adjoining Rock Café with its own mini-stage. Construction on the site pushed the operation out in 2008 and the promoter moved into the Gasometer, where it still runs the Raiffeisen Halle. The room is gone.

Shelter — Wallensteinplatz 8, 1200 (1995–2014)

The Shelter opened in 1995 in the vaults of the old Wallensteinkeller in Brigittenau and ran for nearly twenty years as one of the best small live clubs in the city: about 300 people across three rooms — a bar, a concert room and the much-mourned Überraum. Its last show was on 17 October 2014. Old listings still send people to Wallensteinplatz; there is nothing to find.

The old Chelsea — Piaristengasse 1, 1080 (1986–1995)

The first Chelsea was a cellar under a residential building in Josefstadt, opened on 12 December 1986. At a time when the Arena and Szene Wien already existed, its novelty was a club with different DJs every night and a standing slot for Austrian underground bands. It moved to the Gürtel arches in June 1995 and the move changed the city. The cellar is not a venue any more.

The first Flex — Arndtstraße, 1120 (1989–1995)

Worth naming because the current Flex is a very different proposition. The original opened on New Year's Eve 1989 in Meidling out of the wreckage of the Aegidigasse squat eviction, and for about six years it was a hardcore punk venue with a cultural centre attached. What survives of it is the name, the sound system obsession and the tunnel by the Donaukanal.

das B.A.C.H. — Bachgasse 21, 1160 (status unconfirmed)

For years das B.A.C.H. in Ottakring was one of the most reliable small stages in Vienna for punk, hardcore, folk and indie. Directory listings still carry it with evening hours, and it has reopened under new management at least once, but its website no longer resolves and we could not confirm a current live programme. Treat any listing for it with caution and check before you go.

Getting Around

• The U6 is the rock line. It runs above the Gürtel arches for the whole length of this guide. Thaliastraße for Chelsea and Escape, Josefstädter Straße for Café Carina and Weberknecht, Alser Straße for B72 and Venster99.
• The U-Bahn runs all night on Fridays and Saturdays and before public holidays — it has done since 2010. On other nights the last trains go around half past midnight and the Nightline buses (N-numbered) take over, roughly every half hour. Plan the way back from the Arena or the Gasometer before you go out on a Tuesday.
• Trams: several lines run along or across the Gürtel — the 6 and 18 run down the southern stretch past Westbahnhof, and the 33 terminates at Josefstädter Straße right by the arches. The WienMobil app has live times.
• For the Arena: Baumgasse in the third district — U3 to Erdberg or the 18 tram, then a short walk. For the Gasometer, U3 Gasometer takes you into the building.
• Taxis and apps: Bolt, Uber and 40100 all operate. Vienna is compact enough that a cross-town fare after the last train is not ruinous.

What It Costs (September 2026)

The euro was worth about 86 pence at the time of writing. Rates move; treat the sterling figures as indicative.

• Beer: a Krügerl (0.5l) generally runs €5–6 (£4.30–5.15) and a Seidl (0.3l) around €4 (£3.45), with Gürtel bars at the lower end and the first district at the higher. The Schweizerhaus in the Prater held its Krügerl at €5.90 for the 2026 season, which is a useful benchmark for "fair price".
• Entry: Café Carina and much of Venster99 and Fluc are free or donation-based. Weberknecht, Chelsea, B72 and Kramladen charge only for advertised concerts.
• Club gigs: priced per show and per promoter rather than by a house rate. Agency listings for Viper Room shows have started around €34 including fees; the venue sells fee-free hard tickets over its own bar for shows it promotes, which is worth the walk if you are in town a day early.
• Festivals and big rooms: Vienna Metal Meeting at the Arena was from about €89 (£76) for eight bands on two stages. Stadthalle arena shows are priced like arena shows anywhere.
• Transport: fares changed on 1 January 2026. A single is €3.20 on paper or €3.00 in the app; a 24-hour ticket is €10.20 on paper or €9.70 on mobile; the weekly ticket is €28.90 and the 31-day is €75. The old 48- and 72-hour tickets were abolished at the start of 2026, so ignore any guidebook that still recommends them. Validate paper tickets before you board; inspectors are frequent and the penalty is three figures.

Rules, Habits and Words

• Smoking has been banned indoors since 1 November 2019 in every bar, pub and restaurant in Austria, e-cigarettes and shisha included. Terraces and gardens are exempt, which is why the Gürtel bars all have a knot of people standing under the arch. Austria was one of the last countries in Europe to do this and some older locals are still annoyed about it.
• The Würstelstand is part of the night. Vienna closes its bars late and feeds you from a sausage stand afterwards. Bitzinger at Albertinaplatz behind the opera runs from 8am to 3am; the stand at Hoher Markt is the other classic. Order a Käsekrainer — a sausage with melted Emmental inside it — and expect it to be violently hot in the middle.
• One piece of slang, with a warning. The famous Würstelstand order is "a Eitrige mit an Schoafn, an Buggl und an 16er-Blech": a Käsekrainer with hot mustard, the end crust of a loaf and a can of Ottakringer, brewed in the sixteenth district. Almost nobody actually says it, and saying it will mark you instantly as a visitor who has read a listicle. Know it; do not use it.
• Useful words: a Beisl is a neighbourhood pub, ein Krügerl bitte gets you a half-litre, ein Seidl a third, zahlen bitte asks for the bill and Prost is cheers. English is universal on the Gürtel and in Neubau, less so in Simmering and Favoriten.
• Cards and cash: cards work almost everywhere now, but small Beisln and door desks at DIY venues like Venster99 and the EKH can be cash-only. Carry €40 in notes.

Check Before You Go

Almost every venue in this guide is programme-led rather than timetable-led: the arches open when there is something on and close when the room empties. Everything listed as open here was checked against venue websites and current mapping data in September 2026, but Café Carina's website has been compromised, Kramladen publishes only on Facebook, das B.A.C.H.'s domain no longer resolves and Escape's bar hours and concert hours are two different things. Look at the venue's own page or social feed on the day.

The Pilgrimage Checklist

• ☐ Arena Wien — the slaughterhouse the city gave to the people who occupied the other one
• ☐ Escape Metalcorner — down the stairs to the live room
• ☐ Chelsea — three arches, a guitar band and a football match
• ☐ Café Carina — live music, no cover, in an Otto Wagner station
• ☐ Venster99 — hardcore in the last arch on the Gürtel
• ☐ U4 — stand where Falco and Nirvana stood, then leave before the R&B starts
• ☐ Totem Records — Zollergasse, before anything opens

Related Guides

Continue your rock journey with these guides:

• Budapest Rock Bars — Two and a half hours east by train, and much cheaper beer
• Prague Rock Bars — The other Habsburg capital, with a scene built on dissidence
• Berlin Rock Bars — Louder, cheaper and considerably less polite