Smoke and Oak
Jazz and cocktail bar
A jazz bar with rustic charm and a portrait of Bill Murray on the wall. Order the Blazer, a flaming cocktail, or the No Tai if you are not drinking.
📍 14 Dashwood Crescent, Darwin City NT 0800
Live music: 6 bars
Swipe to see all 6 bars →
The Trader Bar
Cocktail and wine bar
Through an archway of vines and a steel door, with skilled bartenders, a long gin, cocktail and wine list and DJs on the lawn. Try the Aloha: vodka, watermelon and aloe vera.
📍 3 Harriet Place, Darwin City NT 0800
The Cavenagh
Party bar
Darwin's backpacker party bar, with frozen mango daiquiris, cocktail specials and live music, about ten minutes' walk from the Waterfront.
📍 12 Cavenagh Street, Darwin City NT 0800
Shenannigans
Irish pub
An Irish pub known to locals as Shags, with Guinness on tap, nightly specials, live music and a dance floor at weekends.
📍 1/69 Mitchell Street, Darwin
🕒 Daily 10am to 2am (OpenStreetMap; check before you go)
Sweethearts
Gastropub
Named after Darwin's famous crocodile, with live music seven days a week and gastropub dinners such as crispy-skinned barramundi.
📍 74 Mitchell Street, Darwin
Darwin Railway Club
Club bar
Local and international musicians, a tropical beer garden, swing dancing lessons on Wednesdays and free pool tables every day.
📍 17 Somerville Gardens, Parap
Map: live music
Tap a pin for the bar. Numbers match the list.
Your questions
Which Darwin bars have live music?
Start with Smoke and Oak, The Trader Bar, The Cavenagh, Shenannigans and Sweethearts. Our full list has 6 bars.
More Darwin bar guides
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Who wrote this guide
This guide is written by the team at M.AD Agency. We run Cocktail Week, the ten-day cocktail festival held town by town across the UK and Ireland. Now we're bringing it to Australia. Since 2022 we have taken it to more than 20 towns and cities and worked with hundreds of bars. We put this guide together from our own research and trusted local guides, including Australian Traveller and Norther.
No bar paid to be included and nobody can buy a place. We check the guide regularly as bars open, change and close.
Cocktail Week in Australia
Want your bar in this guide?
Run a bar in Darwin that should be here? Get in touch at hello@cocktail-week.com and tell us about it.