Where to Watch Football in Amsterdam: 12 Bars That Actually Put It On

Where Penya Blaugrana Amsterdam watches. Barça is on the main screen with the sound on, and the room is full of people who care about the result — Dutch, Catalan, Spanish, Moroccan, Italian, Colombian and more. Free to join, nothing to sign up for, and you do not need to speak Catalan or Spanish. This is the disclosed entry: it is our bar, and it is on the list because it is the only place in the city where a Barça match is the point rather than a request.

Eight large screens alongside thirteen full-size pool tables, dartboards and the occasional pub quiz. Good for an evening where the football is part of the plan rather than all of it. Five minutes down the same street from PARCK.

The most-recommended sports bar in the city and usually the first name on any list: around 26 to 30 screens, two big screens, English commentary on the major games and a terrace on Thorbeckeplein. It is also, as it happens, the registered address of our association in the statutes — a legal formality from 2024, not where we watch. Loud and busy on any big night, which is the point.

A 1960s room that has served a great many beers, and a genuine Ajax haunt. If you want to watch an Ajax night among Ajax supporters rather than among tourists, this is closer to the real thing than anywhere with a laminated menu.

A spacious Guinness-first Irish bar with terrace seating on the square. Reliable for Premier League and European nights, and calmer than its neighbours until it is not.

Historic glazed ceiling, handsome light fittings and screens generally given over to the Dutch and Irish leagues. The one on this square you can hold a conversation in.

Bare brick, fifteen big screens and burgers off a Josper grill, just off Rembrandtplein. Long treated as one of the city’s prime match-watching rooms, and it takes the football seriously enough to schedule around it.

A Leidseplein institution with a prominent terrace, multiple screens and a reputation built roughly equally on live sport and on pitcher-and-ribs deals. Wide event coverage — if it is on somewhere in the world, there is a decent chance it is on here.

Irish-pub feel with a more contemporary beer selection than most, and a kitchen that runs from steaks to stamppot. Central, easy to find, easy to leave.

Behind the Royal Palace, part of a small European chain, open since 1994 and about as dependable as this category gets. Big screens, full menu, and staff who are used to being asked for a specific fixture.

A canal-house bar at the edge of the Red Light District with maritime décor and a reputation for showing every football match there is. Not smart, not trying to be, and better for it.

Part of an international pub chain, which here means a broad sports offering — Premier League, Champions League and NFL — and group packages for the big occasions. Predictable in the way a chain is predictable.

Not a sports bar as such, but it does not miss a big game, and it stays open through the night at weekends. Across the IJ on the free ferry from Centraal — a genuinely nice walk before a late kick-off.

For the biggest Ajax nights they put the match on a huge screen in the main hall for something like six hundred people. Closer to a stadium concourse than a bar, and a completely different experience from watching in a pub.