Spring is a time for new beginnings and there’s a bumper crop of new UK escape rooms to report, covering all regions of the country and including an unusually high number of entirely new companies. Here’s the full list:
Greater London
📦 Escape Plan in Shoreditch are running a tabletop style puzzle box called The Lost Mondrian as a one-day event on the 7th May.
🔒 Not an escape room, but a NY-based experience called Spyscape has opened a copy near Covent Garden. Both the Spyscape experience and the shorter, more challenge-based Spygames sound like they may have cross-over appeal for escape room enthusiasts.
🔒 The latest room at Room Escape Hornchurch is Twister, and I’ll admit to being curious how they’re going to simulate a tornado in an escape room.
Also new, from last month’s update:
🎭 Gourmaze London: Shadows of the Crown
Southeast England
🔒 Canterbury is the latest city to get a branch of Escape Hunt; this one opens tomorrow with Aladdin & The Magic Vault, Curse of the Pharaoh, Dracula, and an entirely new room design: Jewel of India.
🔒 ClueCapers in Winchester have a new outdoor game called The Crusader’s Collectible, although it’s not so much ‘outside’ – it’s set inside the medieval buildings of St Cross Hospital.
🔒 Sip n Solve in Portsmouth (run by Otherworld Escapes) added a seventh option to their 15 min Puzzle Pods; this one is Pirate’s Cave.
Also new, from last month’s update:
🔒 Locked In A Room Southampton: Wallace and Gromit: A Grand Way Out
🔒 Pier Pressure Newhaven: The Lucky Escape
🔒 The Panic Room Gravesend: CSI – Death at the Disco
Channel Islands
🔒 MTG Escapes opened (yet?) another room – Butcher’s Basement is not about helping out a friendly neighbourhood shopkeeper but something a little more gruesome.
Southwest England
🔒 Opening soon at Escapism Plymouth is Oceanic Panic, in collaboration with the National Marine Aquarium a game with the novel premise that you need to set up a marine habitat in time to house an injured shark.
🔒 Shepton Mallet Prison refreshed and updated its Turf Wars challenge experience.
Also new, from last month’s update:
🔒 All Stars Escape Rooms (Weston-super-mare): The Bletchley Project
Last call for:
❗️ DreadLock Escape Rooms (Bodmin): The Great EGGscape (closing 19th May)
Wales
🔒 Cardiff gets a new branch of Houdini’s, as usual at the local Tenpin branch: it opens later in May with games Creepy Carnival, Titanic, and Space Break.
🔒 Bangor’s Xscape Rooms has a new scary game called The Attic. (At time of writing it’s not listed in the main part of their website but you’ll find it in the booking engine.)
West Midlands
🔒 Top Escape Rooms in Worcester opened Casino Heist, in which you need to steal a set of diamonds and also collect as much cash as you can.
🔒 Alderford Escape Islands in Whitchurch opened the rest of their line-up for this year: The Cursed Blade, The Outlaw’s Hideout, and The Temple of Fire.
Also new, from last month’s update:
🔒 Exciting Game Birmingham: Jigsaw Trial
🔒 XscapeNow (Telford): Battleships
East Midlands
🔒 Chesterfield Escape Rooms opened a copy of the Know Escape group’s submarine game, Deep Trouble.
🔒 Two (more) new rooms at Escape Leicester: Kings Never Die and Mystery Fortress. Both appear to be designs that were previously available in Worcester at now-closed CyberQ.
Also new, from last month’s update:
🔒 Break Escape Loughborough: Wickedly Oz
🔒 Mission Classified (Grimsby): Easter High School
🔒 Tension Twisted Realities (Lincoln): The Last Appointment
🔒 Trapp’d Chester House (Wellingborough): Blackout
East of England
🔒 Funky Snake Escape is a new company about to open in Leighton Buzzard, launching with conjuring theme The Vanishing Act and a scarier option The Possession. The company also offers a comedy club and a magic theatre for conjuring performances. (Leighton Buzzard seems to be, er, buzzing right now – I hear there may be another new company opening there in the near future.)
🔒 The National Horse Museum in Newmarket is also about to open an escape room called Accumulated, where you’re investigating fraud and corruption in the gambling world.
🔒 Cluetopia’s Braintree branch opened new room The Invitation, in you accept a posh dining opportunity only to discover that you’re not the diners but the main course.
🔒 Cryptx in Knapwell outside Cambridge have a great line in both puns and high(er?) brow references, as in their newest game, Shakespearean themed Love’s Labour Found.
🔒 In Norwich there’s a new game at Cryptic Escapes, fantasy adventure Dragons Dungeon.
🔒 Oliver Cromwell’s House in Ely run at least one pop-up escape room most years, and for 2025 they’re offering Operation Underlord, a spy-hunting WW2 game running through to end June.
🔒 And Suffolk Escape Room in Saxmundham have opened The Birthday Pay-Up, where you’re attempting to gather as many cupcakes as you can – as well as the credit card you’ll need to pay for them.
Last call for:
❗️ Escape Rooms Suffolk (Bury St Edmunds): The Golden Egg Heist (closing 4th May)
Northwest England
🔒 Evadare is a new company located in Edenfield north of Manchester – conveniently midway between Bury and Rawtenstall, in fact – and opened with Alice themed Curiouser and Curiouser, which sounds a great deal like the room previously available at Reading’s Time Trap. Which would be great news if so, because that was an excellent room and deserves to be brought back. And the company will also open their second room Deception in the next few days.
🔒 Compendium in Bury haven’t held back on their latest theme: Turd Raiders and The Lost Golden Plunger offers sixty minutes of toilet humour and collecting golden turds.
🎭 Outdoor escape company Street Hunt are now offering games in Manchester, as a third city in addition to London and York.
Also new, from last month’s update:
🔒 Mystery Quests (Crewe): Antidote, Hillbilly Livin
Isle of Man
🔒 The one and only company on the Isle of Man, Exit Strategy are about to open their new room, Cosmo’s Chocolate Factory.
Yorkshire & the Humber
🔒 In Withernsea, Hollym Escape Rooms opened their third room, Viking themed Reaching Valhalla.
Also new, from last month’s update:
🔒 Houdini’s Escape Room Experience Leeds: Titanic, Houdini’s Last Secret, Space Break
Northeast England
🔒 New at Escape Newcastle is Escape to Victory, which is not a WWII theme but one where you’re trying to recover missing gear for a football team before the big match. Anyone with one of those scratch-off posters trying to scratch off the ‘sports theme’ panel, here’s your chance!
Also new, from last month’s update:
🔒 The Escape Lounge (Ashington): Egyptian Tomb Raider
Scotland
🔒 Nomad Escape is a new venue opening in Glasgow. I believe the founders were previously at Escape Reality Glasgow, where they managed to create rooms that gained ratings far higher than most of the others at that chain; and following the closure of that venue, they’ve set up independently. They’ll open next week with Deep Space Zero, The Conspiracy, and The Jail.
🔒 And over at Escape Glasgow, Time Crystals is a new spaceship-set game where you need the titular crystals to power your flight home.
🔒 In Aberdeen, what were previously the escape rooms available at the Shapeshifters Bar is now operating independently as The Vault. They’ve opened new game Saw, and will also be bringing back The Resurrectionist and Cluedo: Murder of a Millionaire.
🔒 The Crieff Hydro mansion/hotel in Perthshire opened a heist-themed Escape Room as part of their roster of activities, replacing the nuke-defusal one they ran previously.
Northern Ireland
🔒 The Puzzle Tree in Bangor are opening a second game, a WWII adventure called Where Eagles Blair.