Alcotraz: The Christmas Pardon to launch this November
The UK's longest running immersive cocktail experience will get a festive makeover for the first time this November.
Photo: Inventive Productions
The UK's longest-running immersive cocktail experience is running its first Christmas show in its 9 year history. The Christmas Pardon opens at Alcotraz London on Hackney Road on 24th November 2026 and runs to 3 January 2027.
Guests bring a bottle of spirit and a wrapped present, and the Warden judges the presents themself. Whoever brought the best one leaves with a clean record and free tickets for six to come back in the new year.
Christmas has been smuggled into Alcotraz. New inmates arrive at Cell Block Two-One-Two carrying a bottle and a wrapped present, and the guards confiscate both at intake. The bottles go to the canteen. The cell block's Christmas tree is built from confiscated property: bottles, tin cups, hip flasks and parcels.
The Governor has ordered one Christmas pardon each sentence. The Warden’s request for it to be postponed until next Christmas was denied. They are now judging the presents personally, and suspiciously have cleared a lot of space in their office to do it.
Photo: Inventive Productions
Alcotraz is immersive theatre set in a vintage American prison run by its inmates. Guests arrive as new inmates and are suited up in orange jumpsuits. Live actors play the Warden, their crooked guards and the inmates who really run the block, and they build the night around each group. Guests can take a job from the inmates and get pulled into the story, or stay in their cell and watch it play out.
The drinks are contraband. Each guest smuggles in their own spirit, using a smuggling device handed out on arrival, while the guards look the other way. The inmates working the canteen, played by trained mixologists, turn it into four cocktails for each guest, which are made to their taste. There is no menu. If the Warden asks, it is chicken soup. Non-drinkers can take the mocktail option and need no bottle.
For its first Christmas, the regular Alcotraz show gets new set dressing, props, lighting and story. Alcotraz is rated 4.9 stars from approximately 15,000 reviews across its locations, with six cell blocks in the UK. The Christmas Pardon runs in London only.
Sam Shearman, Founder of Inventive Productions, said:
Most office Secret Santas end with somebody holding a candle they did not want. We wanted the present to matter, so at Alcotraz the best one gets its giver back into prison. The Warden is judging it themself, which is the part I would worry about.
Tickets start at £51 a head for The Rookie, with three character add-ons - the Escape Artist, the Mole and the Janitor - costing an additional £11 each. The show runs for 1 hour 45 minutes, and inmates must be 18 or over.
Alcotraz: The Christmas Pardon runs at 127 Hackney Rd near Hoxton from 24th November 2026 to 3rd January 2027. Tickets are priced from £51.00 per person. For more information and to book tickets, visit christmas.alcotraz.co.uk
