A popular south London food and entertainment venue is giving away 1,000 free drinks to celebrate its 10th birthday this Halloween.
Boxpark Croydon will host a one-day public party on Saturday, October 31, featuring live entertainment, family activities and the free drinks offer. The party begins at 11am, with face painting, arts and crafts, a magician and performances from resident DJs. A live band will also perform hits from the past decade.
From 3pm, guests can claim a complimentary draught pint, house wine, single spirit mixer or soft drink — while the 1,000-drink allocation lasts.
A spokesman for Boxpark Croydon said: “Ten years of BOXPARK Croydon is a huge milestone, and we’re really proud to have been part of the borough’s story for the past decade. From matchdays and live music to family celebrations, big nights out and everything in between, we’ve welcomed millions of guests through our doors and created a place where people can come together and make memories. We’re excited to celebrate this special birthday with the Croydon community, and what better way to mark ten years than with a huge party, free drinks, live entertainment and plenty of BOXPARK fun.”
What Boxpark Croydon is
If you have never been, Boxpark Croydon is hard to miss: a venue built from refitted shipping containers, stacked around a central courtyard off Dingwall Road, a short walk from East Croydon station. It opened in 2016 as the second Boxpark site after Shoreditch, and was billed from the start as something more than a food court — part street-food market, part events space, part late-night venue.
The timing mattered. Croydon has spent the past decade trying to reinvent its town centre, and Boxpark arrived as one of the flagship symbols of that effort — a vote of confidence in a borough that has often felt overlooked. Ten years on, it has hosted everything from England match screenings and live music nights to family festivals and community celebrations, drawing millions of visitors through its doors.
The venue’s traders — a rotating cast of independent food and drink businesses — are part of the appeal. For small operators, a Boxpark unit offers a lower-risk route into a busy site than a full high-street lease, and for visitors it means a concentration of options that a single restaurant cannot match.
Worth knowing before you go
The headline number is 1,000 free drinks, and they will go quickly. The drinks are available from 3pm, and with a venue this popular on a Saturday — Halloween, no less — arriving well before then is the sensible move. Once the allocation is gone, it is gone.
The daytime programme is firmly family-friendly: face painting, arts and crafts and a magician from 11am, alongside DJ sets and the live band. The evening is likely to take on a different character, as Boxpark’s late-night crowd arrives — worth bearing in mind if you are bringing younger children.
Entry to Boxpark events of this kind is typically free, but it is worth checking the venue’s own channels before travelling, as large parties can involve ticketing or capacity limits. East Croydon station — served by Southern, Thameslink and the tram — is the nearest transport link, and the venue is a few minutes’ walk away.
For Croydon, the birthday is about more than free pints. A decade after it opened, Boxpark remains one of the town centre’s best-known draws — and a reminder of what the borough’s regeneration was supposed to deliver.
If the Halloween party is anything to go by, the venue intends to mark the milestone in the style it has become known for: loud, crowded and unpretentious. Whether you are there for the free drink, the live band or simply a Saturday out, expect Dingwall Road to be busy.
London Streets has been covering free pumpkin painting in London parks and London’s day-out costs this week.
