The 18 Best Pizza Places in London (2026)

Neapolitan pizza. Napoli on the Road is the pizzeria I'd put first in London, and the 50 Top Pizza guide agrees: it named it the world's best pizzeria for 2026 and Europe's best for 2024, 2025 and 2026. Michele Pascarella started it in 2016 with a wood-fired oven on a three-wheeled Ape van at London markets. It also has branches in Chiswick and Richmond, in west London; the Soho branch on Wardour Street is the one to aim for on a sightseeing trip. The dough uses a blend of Type 0, Type 1 and Prima Macina flour (from the first milling of the grain), which the pizzeria says gives a more complex flavour. A margherita is £13.90. The Ricordi d'Infanzia (slow-cooked beef ragù with a Parmigiano fondue) is £19.50, and 50 Top Pizza named it the best pizza in the world for 2025. There's a vegan section too. The catch is price and demand: it's dearer than most Soho pizza, and you'll want a booking even at lunchtime.

50 Kalò is the London branch of Ciro Salvo's Naples pizzeria, opened in 2018 on Northumberland Avenue, just off Trafalgar Square. It came fourth in 50 Top Pizza's Europe list for 2026 and 23rd in the world. Salvo is known for a very highly hydrated dough, which makes for a soft, light pizza. The margherita is £13.95, or £15.95 with buffalo mozzarella, and the marinara is £10.95. What sets it apart is the fried pizza: order the Montanara (£13.45) alongside a baked one. The London kitchen won 50 Top Pizza's Best Fried Food award for 2026. You can book online, and a 12.5% service charge is added. It doesn't list a gluten-free dough, so it's not the place if you need one.

Pizza Pilgrims on Dean Street is the Soho pizzeria I'd send a group to, because it's easy, fairly priced and takes walk-ins. It's now a chain with branches across London, started by Thom and James, who drove a Piaggio Ape van back from Italy in 2012, but the Neapolitan pizza is still good: a margherita is £12 on its order menu and the carbonara pizza, with egg, guanciale and pecorino, is £14.75. Monday to Thursday from noon to 3pm the margherita drops to £10 if you eat in. It does a gluten-free base on most pizzas for £1.50 extra and swaps in a plant-based burrata for free, which makes it one of the easier places for mixed dietary needs. The room is small and busy, and it doesn't promise the gluten-free base is coeliac-safe, so tell your server if that matters. Tottenham Court Road is three minutes away.

Rudy's has the cheapest regular-price Neapolitan margherita in Soho, at £10.90. It's accredited by the AVPN, the Naples association that sets the rules for true Neapolitan pizza, and it bakes in 60 seconds in Stefano Ferrara ovens with Caputo flour. The best-seller is the Triple Pepperoni (£16.60), and you can switch to vegan cheese on any pizza. It's a chain, and the Wardour Street room is lively rather than special. Two things to plan around: there's no gluten-free dough at all, and it closes at 9:30pm Sunday to Thursday. It's six minutes to Piccadilly Circus or Tottenham Court Road.

Santa Maria was opened by two Neapolitans, Angelo and Pasquale, in Ealing on Valentine's Day 2010, and it has since grown into a small London group. The Ealing branch (now at 11 Bond Street) is out in west London; the Fitzrovia branch on New Cavendish Street is the easy one to reach, four minutes from Great Portland Street. The Santa Margherita is £11.50, the Bufalina £14.50, and the San Rocco (£15.50) is the house best-seller. It does a gluten-free dough for £3 extra and a proper plant-based menu, including a vegan margherita. It takes cards only, and an optional 12.5% service charge is added. It's a good pick near Great Portland Street and Regent's Park.

Crust Bros on Waterloo Road is the Neapolitan pizzeria I'd pick before a show at the Old Vic, the Young Vic or the National Theatre, since it's two minutes from Waterloo station. The dough is proved for 48 to 72 hours and baked at 500°C, and the thing it's known for is building your own pizza from a long list of toppings. A margherita is £12.50. The Reigning Champ (harissa tomato, spiced lamb, whipped feta, pistachio and pomegranate) is £18.90, and a £25 pre-theatre deal runs from 3pm to 6pm. Gluten-free bases are £2 extra and there's vegan cheese. It's noisy, and it gets busy from about 5:30pm to 7:15pm as the theatres fill, so book or arrive before then.

Bravi Ragazzi in Streatham is on 50 Top Pizza's 2026 list of excellent pizzerias in Europe, and it's the south London pizzeria I'd travel for. Ferdinando Cirillo makes wood-fired, Naples-inspired sourdough pizza: the margherita is £11, the buffalo margherita £15.50 and the marinara £9.50. Gluten-free and vegan mozzarella are each £2 extra. It's a small neighbourhood room. Streatham has no Tube, so take a train to Streatham station (about five minutes' walk), and note that it doesn't open until mid-afternoon on weekdays.

New York style and slices. Homeslice in Neal's Yard, the courtyard of painted shopfronts off Seven Dials, makes huge wood-fired pies meant for sharing, and it sells them by the slice. A margherita slice is £6 and a mushroom or salami slice £6.50. A whole margherita is £29, most other pies are £34, and you can have two toppings half and half for no extra. The Neal's Yard branch has its own special with slow-roasted lamb and sumac yoghurt (£38 whole). There are several vegan pizzas, but no gluten-free at all. It's walk-in only in a small, popular yard, so expect to wait at peak times, and the 13.5% service charge is higher than most. Covent Garden station is three minutes away.

Voodoo Ray's on Kingsland High Street is the closest thing to a New York slice joint in London: giant slices from a counter, a bar, and hours that run until 2am on Fridays and Saturdays. A margherita slice is £4.90 and pepperoni £5.40; whole pies are 18 or 22 inches, from £19.50. There's a vegan pizza, the Queen Vegan, and slices are warmed through before they're served. It's a bar first and loud at night, and a whole pie costs £19.50 to £35, so slices are the better deal for one. Weekdays it doesn't open until 5pm. Dalston Kingsland on the Overground is two minutes away.

Bad Boy Pizza Society started as a joke university society in Southampton and grew through pop-ups into this pizzeria on Bethnal Green Road. It makes crisp, thin, 18-inch New York pies: the cheese pie (with tomato or vodka sauce) or the Tomato Pie with vegan stracciatella is £25, and the Vodka Roni (vodka sauce and pepperoni) or Mark's Pep with hot honey is £28. It sells slices too, though the slice prices aren't on its menu. Gluten-free, halal and vegan options are available. It's closed Mondays and Tuesdays and adds a 12.5% service charge. Bethnal Green station on the Central line is five minutes away.

Roman pizza. Pizza Union is my pick for cheap pizza in central London. It's an order-at-the-counter pizza bar in Spitalfields, four minutes from Liverpool Street, making thin, crisp Roman-style pizza in minutes. The margherita is £5.95, the Calabria with nduja and mascarpone £7.95, and the vegan marinara £3.95. There's a gluten-free base and vegan mozzarella. You sit at shared tables, it's open 11am to 11pm every day, and the lunch queue moves fast. It's a chain, and a thin Roman base won't satisfy someone who wants a puffy Neapolitan crust, but for the price nothing nearby comes close. Pair it with a walk round Old Spitalfields Market and Brick Lane.

Pixxa, near Smithfield and Farringdon station, has been making Roman pizza al taglio since 2009: pizza baked in long trays and cut into rectangles. The dough is left to rise for at least 48 hours, so it's crisp underneath and airy inside. On its delivery menu a box of six margherita slices is £23 and spicy salame £24; single slices at the counter are priced in the shop. It's an office-lunch spot, which is the drawback: it's open until 3:30pm on Mondays and Fridays and 9pm Tuesday to Thursday, and closed all weekend. On a weekday near Smithfield or the Barbican, it's the Roman slice I'd go for.

Detroit pizza. Detroit Pizza London started during lockdown from a hole-in-the-wall in Battersea and now has this shop on Commercial Street, a few minutes from Old Spitalfields Market. Detroit pizza is baked in a blue steel pan, so it's thick and square with a fluffy middle and a crust of crispy, caramelised cheese round the edge. The Red Stripe (cheese and marinara) is £14.99 for a regular 8x10-inch or £24.99 for a large, and The Detroit (double pepperoni, jalapeños and honey) is £18.99 or £28.99. Slices are £4.99 to £5.99. It does gluten-free bases and makes any vegetarian pizza vegan at no extra charge. It's walk-in only, it won't do half and half, and it's rich, so if you only like light Italian pizza, go elsewhere. Aldgate East is six minutes away.

London's own crisp and sourdough pizza. Connie's is one of the newest names here and the best value: a Peckham pizzeria by Queens Road Peckham station, named after the wife of Andrea Asciuti, who founded 081 Pizzeria. He calls it London's first Bri-talian pizzeria, making proper London-style pizza: thin, crisp and light rather than soft and Neapolitan. The Tomato Pie (a margherita) is £8, the Mary Nara £6, and the signature Connie's, with a soft egg, spinach cream and pepper cream, is £12. 50 Top Pizza put it 48th in Europe for 2026 and named it its One to Watch. There's a vegan pizza with vegan mozzarella, and seating outside. The drawback is the wait for pizzas when it's full. It's one minute from the station on the Overground.

Dough Hands began as a market stall on Station Road in Brixton in 2020 and now runs the kitchen at the Spurstowe Arms, a Hackney pub. It calls its style crispy bases and big flavours, and the toppings are generous: a margherita is £12, and The Jode (nduja, hot honey and stracciatella) and the OG (pepperoni and jalapeños) are £16 each. Vegan mozzarella costs nothing extra. It's pub seating and a pub kitchen, so waits can be long on a busy Saturday, and the kitchen shuts at 9pm (6pm on Sundays). It doesn't sell slices here; its other site, All My Friends in E9, does. Hackney Central is about ten minutes' walk.

ACE Pizza, in the village of shops beside Victoria Park, makes its dough with a biga, an Italian pre-ferment, over more than 48 hours, which gives a light, crisp base. A 12-inch margherita is £12.50 and the Double Pep £15.50; for three people, the 20-inch Vodka Marg (£32) is the one its menu says won a National Pizza Award in 2025. Vegan mozzarella is free and a non-gluten base is £3. It takes bookings online and has a waitlist, and it's card only. It's closed on Mondays and it's a 15-minute walk from Homerton station, so it's a destination rather than a stop. Walk it off in the park afterwards.

Sodo is a small group of London sourdough pizzerias, and Clapton is its neighbourhood room in north-east London. It uses heritage grains milled on site to feed its starter, seasonal toppings and a natural-wine list. The margherita is £11, the Wicker Man (pepperoni, nduja, mascarpone and chilli honey) £16, and the Summer Green is vegan at £13. A gluten-free base is £2.50 extra. It's dinner only, from 5pm Tuesday to Sunday, and it adds a 12.5% service charge. It's in a quiet corner of north-east London, so go if you're staying in Hackney or Stoke Newington. Clapton station on the Overground is four minutes away.

Zia Lucia on Holloway Road is where I'd take someone who can't eat regular dough. It offers four doughs on a 48-hour fermented base: traditional, wholemeal, a black vegetable-charcoal dough, and gluten-free for £2.50 extra. The margherita and the vegan margherita are both £12.50, and the Arianna Sbagliata (gorgonzola, sausage, truffle oil and honey) is £16, plus £2.25 if you have it on the charcoal dough, which is how the menu suggests it. Last orders are at 10:30pm every day, and it takes bookings online. Come for the dough choice; for the best Neapolitan pizza, go to Napoli on the Road or 50 Kalò. Highbury & Islington station is six minutes away.