Seoul Cafe Guide – Our 20+ Favourite Seoul Coffee Shops in 2026

Seoul’s cafe scene is synonymous with cool beans, decadent desserts and Instagrammable interiors.

From hanok style hang-outs to cool coffee shops with fun features, these are our favourites cafes in Seoul – cool coffee shop hunting is easy especially in trendy neighborhoods like Ikseon-dong, Hongdae and Seongsu-dong.

One thing to remember – the Seoul coffee shop scene moves fast with sadly many closures (but lots of new openings too – yay). So always check any Seoul cafe is still open on Naver Maps (it is more accurate than Google Maps).

For instance, we update our South Korea guides once or twice a year and recently, we had to remove several Seongsu-dong cafes we’d previously visited that are now permanently closed or have relocated.

From themed and cartoon cafes to blissful bagels, here is our to the best Seoul coffee shops.

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Entering via a lush garden stepping stone walk-way surrounded by lanterns, walk into a world of cool, dark interiors and relaxing water features (plus top notch air-con).

You can choose to sit in the outdoor garden / pond area or in the inner sanctum which also has lots of plants and greenery.

Cheong Su Dang dessert cafe is a place for decadent desserts and coffee or matcha tea. The most famous dessert at Cheong Su Dang is their wonderful and wobbly souffle castella cakes.

One minor annoyance when visiting Cheong Su Dang dessert cafe is that the entrance to the cafe is so beautiful, it has become the go-to place in Ikseon to do Instagram poses – so you may need to push past the flowing dresses and phone tripods to lay claim to your castella cake.

A ‘railly’ interesting retro train cafe, we managed to grab a table here and tried the raspberry latte (8,000 Won), peanut brittle iced latte (8,000 Won) and a slice of cookies and cream cake – all very good!

Keep an eye out for the railway-style conveyor belt by the serving counter which displays all the bakery products – like a sushi train but with cakes!

Order at the counter or via the self service tablets and then try to grab a seat in the much coveted garden courtyard area – you are given a buzzer to collect your food and drinks when ready.

We had a couple of lattes served with a strawberry and cream cake plus one of our favorite desserts ever, a crumbled Oreo cheesecake. Whilst not cheap, Hanok Langsom Ikseon certainly makes for a memorable coffee spot in Seoul.

A homely hanok cafe with a water garden, pond and constant rainfall as the center feature, such is the popularity of Rain Report Rainbow that it can be hard to find a table.

Plus if you visit late afternoon, pretty much all of the sweet treats have sold out – so this is one time you might actually want to see the rain early in the day!

Very much about decadent desserts, try the Cherry Blossom Mont Blanc, honey fig cake, madeleines or Instagrammable drinks – the forecast is good!

Woo’z Bakery Ikseon serves pastries, croissants and salads but is best known for its decadent desserts especially the donuts (which is handy given Donut Jungsu Ikseon next door closed down recently).

Example Woo’z Bakery Ikseon desserts include mango glaze donuts (2,500 Won), peanut butter donuts (2,800 Won) and fresh cream donuts (3,800 Won) – we opted for a cold latte and hot Americano instead which were both fine.

To escape the heavy rain we sat down for a couple of drinks – ordering is easy via a vending machine kiosk and you are given your beverages and snacks a few days later.

There is no minimum purchase as such but everyone is asked to buy at least one drink each.

They also have a selection of adorable Hello Kitty shaped cakes and sweet treats which look really good.

The Myeongdong Hello Kitty Apple Cafe is set over 3 levels with seating on level 1 and 2, plus gift shops on level 1 and level 3 (the level 3 gift shop is much bigger). We bought a cute postcard as a souvenir.

Ediya Coffee Lab (Google Maps | Naver Maps)

On our 2026 Seoul trip, we visited the very cool and luxurious Ediya Coffee Lab 이디야 커피랩 – the flagship branch of the Korean Ediya Coffee café chain.

This epic cafe is located in the company’s headquarters building in Gangnam and is a more upscale and premium branch of  Ediya Coffee that is open until 1am every day!

It is a massive multi-floor space with an industrial-modern interior, a coffee tasting area and a bakery (complete with a bread timetable that shows when fresh bakery items come out).

We totally recommend the crème brûlée latte, the canales and the mozzarella/pesto bread. We enjoyed the food so much we visited twice during our stay in Gangnam!

This is also one of the first cafes with valet parking out the front and many expensive looking cars parked there!

Located in Lotte World Mall in Jamsil near to the theme park entrance, this is another colorful and cute cafe with themed dishes, pastel interiors and My Melody merch galore.

Opened in August last year (2025), this is one of the newest character cafes in Seoul and easily combined with Lotte World theme park, Lotte World Tower observation deck and the huge Lotte Zettaplex supermarket nearby. We also spent a fortune in the brand new Kakao Friends Jamsil store next door!

Sanrio My Melody Harmony Cafe Jamsil is open daily from 10am – 9pm and is located at B1, Lotte World Shopping Mall. The nearest MRT is Jamsil Station (Line 2).

Since its trendy transformation, locals and tourists flock to Seongsu-dong, a happening hybrid of street-art, pop up shops with weird and wonderful warehouse coffee shops.

‘Changgo’ is actually Korean for ‘warehouse’ and you could quite easily miss this colossal coffee shop if you didn’t know about it. There are no giveaways from the outside as to what to expect inside other than a huge wooden door on the outside that simply says ‘Open’.

Inside, you’ll find an artisan array of baked goods and sweet treats plus two huge warehouse rooms with art installations and pop-up exhibitions.

When we visited Daelim Changgo in Seongsu-dong, we found it so hard to choose what we wanted in the bakery section – on offer were amazing pastries like earl grey tea canales or dark chocolate croffins and coconut croissants. Please, just take all our money now!

Where iced coffee meets industrial chic, Cafe Onion is all about the experience – the walls half covered in cement merge into the shabby furniture and exposed brick-work.

The sweet treat selection here is superb and there is so much choice – half your time will be spent deciding which perfect pastry or choice croissant to have.

The Cafe Onion Seongsu also has a rooftop, one of the best aerial spots to spy on Seongsu-dong in the summer months.

This is a super popular cafe as it is housed in a traditional hanok! Queues can be quite long to enter the cafe so we arrived early at 9.30am and walked straight in (around a third of the tables were still free). By the time we left at 10.30am there was already a small queue waiting outside.

We opted for a crispy croissant filled with cream and strawberry jam, and topped with strawberries and blueberries (7,500 Won), which was really tasty!

We also picked a Jeju matcha scone which was a bit dry and disappointing (5,500 won). Both our coffees (latte and flat white) were also good.

And let’s not mention the ‘kid licking cakes’ incident (which happened here a few weeks before we visited – now all cakes are under plastic domes).

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Literally every time we walk past London Bagel Museum Anguk 런던베이글뮤지엄 안국점, the queue is always massive – and we always see their bagel filled bags being carried by hungry locals around Seoul (pretty much that and Olive Young bags).

London Bagel Museum Anguk (the original store) is open from 8am to 7pm. Read our guide to Korea’s London Bagel Museum chain here >

There are two main sections to explore – a lounge area where you can read and play games with the kitties upstairs, before making your way down to the huge themed fairy-tale cat city and square down below.

There are around 50 named cats of various breeds and from what we can see, all seemed well looked after with some spaces for the cats to laze in if they didn’t want to play.

Admission to Roof Cat Me Hongdae 루프캣미 고양이카페 홍대점 is 20,000 Won* for 3 hours including one self-serve drink and locker access – please note children under 12 years old are not admitted).

*We booked our discounted Roof Cat Me Hongdae tickets (17,500 Won) in advance with Trazy >

From the Hog’s Head Pub & Cafe to the Wizard Cafe, every inch of this hedonistic Harry Potter has become like a scene from the movies.

The theming begins outside whereby Kings Cross has been recreated complete with Platform 9 ¾ and the luggage trolley disappearing into the wall. Unlike the Harry Potter cafes we’ve been to in Japan, this is an unofficial one (but still kinda cool).

South Korea Hallyu tip – If you like board game cafes, head to Hongdae or Gangnam for gaming cafes like Devil’s Dice and Holmes & Lupin.

Golden Crema has three indoor levels plus a small outdoor rooftop (mainly used by smokers) – the first two levels were quite busy but we found a nice corner spot on floor 3 and we could see shoppers outside.

We had a 6,500 Won passionfruit ade and 6,000 Won iced vanilla latte – prices are reasonable, especially given the nice brews with views.

We highly recommend Mailroom Sindang 메일룸, a fun way to enjoy some sweet treats and enjoy some drinks in amazing surroundings; it is very Instagramable too.

Themed like an antique post office, you enter the cafe through a secret door to the right of the counter. Once past the door you order your drinks and snacks through a hatch and they give you a key and a buzzer! Once the buzzer goes off, you open a small mailroom style box to reveal your drinks!

We found the first floor the nicest area to sit but they have several stories including a small roof terrace on the top floor.

We enjoyed some morning coffees on the rooftop terrace at Paletscent cafe with a view of Janganmun Gate – the iced coffee here was really good and the outdoor space is a nice way to relax after a day of sightseeing.

PS Nearby, Dohwa Tiger Cafe Suwon is a hanok style coffee shop. Dohwa Tiger is a Korean cafe chain where a lot of young locals and visiting tourists hang out – very cool beans!

This six storey restaurant and cafe offers incredible panoramic vistas of the hanok village.

There is a cafe section across levels 1 and 2, a restaurant and dining experience on the middle floors plus a small outdoor rooftop terrace on floor 6 – which is where we based ourselves.

Order your drinks on the ground floor as you first enter 1in1jan – make sure you have a seat / table already as staff will ask you.

If you want to have a meal here, head straight to floors 4 and 5 – note the queues can be quite long during peak periods so get there early if possible.

Drinks in the cafe start from 5,500 Won and colorful cakes from 8,000 Won. Given the views and setting, prices were reasonable at 1in1jan cafe.

The brunch style restaurant on level 5 is open from 11am to 8pm daily and serves combo sets like fries and beer for 18,000 Won or cake and coffee for 13,500 Won.

We stayed on the rooftop for an hour or so in the sun, supping coffees and enjoying the mountain air – please note that several floors are no kids zones.

More things to do in Euljiro >

Hannam-dong Coffee Culture

Seoul’s Hannam-dong district is a hipster hang-out packed with cool cafes, bohemian boutiques and an array of artistic attractions. Easily combined with neighboring Itaewon, Hannam-dong is one of the best Seoul neighborhoods for a day of culture, coffee and retail therapy.

The coffee shops in Hannam-dong are plentiful and you are spoilt for choice where to get your caffeine fix – forget Starbucks in this instance and head to a cute coffee shop.

Some of the more popular / trendy coffee shops in Hannam dong include Lick Sip, Lilion, Low cafe Hannam, Calf on Couch, Concure, Atelier Pond and Milestone Coffee (famous for its Vienna coffee).

More things to do on Hannam-dong >

Bonus – Starbucks cafes in Seoul

Ok, we know this isn’t a Korean or independent coffee shop, but some of the Seoul Starbucks coffee shops are special, from a floating Starbucks on the River Han to the beautiful Bukhansan branch with a rooftop terrace looking out over Bukhansan National Park.

Read more in our beautiful Starbucks guide >

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