How we rate

The short answer

We score every club out of 100 on six criteria, and every show out of 100 on five. Each number traces to a dated page: a venue's own site, a ticket page, a festival site or a public rating that we name. If a figure cannot be read, it is left out and marked, never guessed.

Three rules shape the lists. The club list follows the review score, from first to tenth, with no exceptions. Each show list is built from a fixed split of eight and two. Show scores rest on what a show says about itself, not on audience votes.

Some venues and shows listed are our partners.

In one line. Clubs: six criteria, 100 points. Shows: five criteria, 100 points. Data re-read every Monday. The tables below give every weight and every point.

Source: our club scorecard and show scorecard of 2 November 2026, built on the pages listed in each section below.

The six criteria for clubs

A club can earn up to 100 points. The weights add up to 100, so a score reads as a percentage. The table gives the weight of each criterion, and the list after it gives the rule we apply.

Shows and line-up: 25 points

Volume is worth up to 15 points. Ninety or more dated shows in the window earn all 15, sixty or more earn 14, and one to three shows earn 3. Depth is worth up to 10: twenty or more different titles earn 10, and one or two titles earn 2.

Counts come only from the dated listings we read. A club whose schedule we could not read scores low here, and the club page says so. The score measures what we could see, which is why a club with no published programme falls behind one that lists everything.

Easy for visitors: 20 points

This criterion is built for a visitor with no Spanish. English earns up to 10 points: English shows on every one of the 14 dates earn all 10, ten or more dates earn 9, and none listed earns 0. Booking earns up to 6: the club's own site with online checkout and prices earns 6, and an aggregator listing with times and prices earns 4.

Information earns the last 4. An address confirmed by a source gives 2, and published accessibility notes add 2. A listing that calls its address approximate loses a point.

Value for money: 15 points

We take the median online price of the paid shows in the window. A median of €8 or less earns 11 points, and a median over €20 earns 3. Free shows add up to 4: six or more earn 4, and one to five earn 2. The total is capped at 15.

Room and atmosphere: 15 points

The room type earns up to 5: a dedicated comedy room or theatre earns 5, and a promoter or a bar night earns 2. Facilities earn up to 6, with 3 for a bar or food on site and 3 for access notes. Capacity earns up to 4 when a source states it and we checked it.

These are desk facts. Nobody from this site has visited the rooms, and the room score says so. It is the criterion most likely to change once we have visit notes.

Reliability: 15 points

Weeks earn up to 8 points: 4 for each of the two weeks that has shows on at least three different days. Schedule earns up to 7: the club itself stating a weekly pattern earns 7, and a pattern read only from a listing earns 2.

What audiences say: 10 points

We use only public ratings seen on a named platform during the run, and we quote their scope. A rating of 4 out of 5 earns 5 points, and a rating of 5 earns 10. A rating with fewer than 20 reviews is capped at 6 points.

A self-published rating with no named platform is never counted. A rating for one show is not a rating for the room, and we say which it is. If no rating can be re-checked, the criterion is left out.

Source: rubric and weights in the club scorecard of 2 November 2026, applied to the Clubhouse event pages and the listings behind each club.

Why Laietana is first

The club list is the score, in order. The Clubhouse: Laietana leads with 93, and its sister room, Canvis Nous, follows with 92. Teatre Muntaner is third with 56, ahead of La Sala by LastCrit with 52.2 and Secret Comedy Club with 51.

Laietana earns its place on three counts. It has shows every night: all 14 dates in the window, in both weeks. It has the most shows: 93 dated shows and 76 titles. And it has the widest range of languages: English every night, with shows in Spanish, Italian and Catalan, and a bilingual Spanglish night.

The top tiers of two rules tell those strengths apart. Ninety or more shows earn a point more than sixty. English on every date earns a point more than English on most dates. Read the Laietana review and the Canvis Nous review for every point, or the hub page for the full list.

Source: ordering rule and scores in the club scorecard of 2 November 2026, and the Clubhouse events in English listings.

When a figure is missing

Some figures cannot be read. A club may publish no capacity, or a rating may be impossible to re-check. We do not fill the gap with a neutral guess. The criterion is removed from the points the club earned and from the points available, and the total is a share of what remains.

A dagger marks those clubs. La Sala by LastCrit and Cafe Teatre Llantiol are scored out of 90 because no public rating could be re-checked. Teatreneu is scored out of 90 for a different reason: its home page shows a rating of 4.5 from 9611 reviews with no named platform, so we treat it as a self-claim.

The table lists the gaps for every club under the scorecard. You can see exactly which fact is missing and judge whether it matters to you. A club with a gap is not worse. It is less certain.

Source: data gaps recorded per club in the scorecard of 2 November 2026.

The five criteria for shows

Shows are scored apart from clubs, because a modest room can host a strong night. Each criterion is marked from 0 to 10. The mark is multiplied by the weight and divided by 10, and the five results are added.

Value works on a ladder. An online price of €5 or less earns 9, €8 or less earns 8, €10 or less earns 7, €12 or less earns 6, and €15 or less earns 4.5. A show with no price found gets a neutral 5, and a group price for four or more adds a point, capped at 10.

Fit for a visitor starts at 5. An address stated as Ciutat Vella adds 2, and a start between 19:00 and 22:00 adds 2. A group price adds 1, and a free or pay-what-you-want show adds half a point. A theme that suits a first-timer or a date adds 1. The mark is capped at 10.

Source: weights, rubric and score formula in the show scorecard of 2 November 2026.

Where the quality score comes from

Readers ask about this part most, so we state it plainly. The 30 points for format and quality are not audience ratings. They come from each show's own published description and line-up. Any outside signal we can find adds to them, such as a credit on a festival page or a track record on a ticket site.

Our bar for quoting a rating is 30 votes for the show itself. No show on the lists clears it. The only show-level ratings we met belong to other shows at one venue. So we marked what a visitor can read before booking: whether the page names acts, describes a format or points to a track record.

The effect is a narrow range. An open mic with no named acts earns 3.5. A format described in detail earns 4 or 5. A named line-up or a credit in the show's own copy earns 5.5 to 6.5. Outside corroboration earns 7. Above that sits our own rating of the format, set on 2 November: 10 for Roast Battle Barcelona, LOLyamorous and Gong Wild, and 7.5 for The Spotlight. The scorecard names that rating next to each of those marks.

The score comes from a show's own copy, so a well-written page can outscore a stronger show with a thin one. That is a limit of the method, and it never measures how a crowd felt. Every show list says so, and no list displays a star rating.

Source: limits recorded in the show scorecard of 2 November 2026 and the event pages it cites, such as the Friday Spotlight page.

The eight and two rule for show lists

Every show list has ten places, and the split is the same in all three. Eight are reserved for shows staged through the Comedy Clubhouse in either room, through its Fringe programme or at Secret Comedy Club. The other two are for shows elsewhere. The three lists are the overall one, the recurring nights and the one-off shows.

Within a group, the top scorers fill the places. The ten are then sorted by score across both groups. Equal scores are settled by the quality mark first and by the calendar second. A script recomputes the three lists from the scores, and the build fails when a list does not match.

We set the split ourselves. It is an editorial rule and no result of the scores, which is why the lists lean toward the Clubhouse rooms. A show in the second group can outscore one in the first and still sit in the two places kept for it.

See the results in the Top 10 comedy shows, the list of recurring comedy nights and the list of one-off comedy shows.

Source: list rule in the show scorecard of 2 November 2026, enforced by the ranking script in the project.

Partners and editorial rules

Some venues and shows listed are our partners.

To be specific: the Comedy Clubhouse and the Barcelona Comedy Fringe are run by John, a friend of the owner of this site. We say so here and on the club list.

This site exists to point readers to English-language comedy in Barcelona, and to the Clubhouse booking pages in particular. Links to the Clubhouse carry a tag so that the club can see where visitors come from. Links to every other venue are plain.

What partnership does not do is change a fact. Every price, date and language comes from the venue's own page. Every score comes from the rubric above. Where we make a hand-made choice, such as the eight and two split of the show lists, we mark it on the page.

We do not accept payment to move a club up the list, and we publish no review that claims a visit we did not make. When a visit happens, the write-up goes in a marked section of the review, with the date of the visit.

Source: our editorial policy as applied in the scorecards of 2 November 2026.

How often we re-check

Every Monday we re-read the venues' own pages and the ticket pages behind our show data, and we date every fact. The date at the top of each page is the newest day any fact on it was read. Today that date is 2 November 2026.

The weekly check covers four things. New or dropped shows come first, then changes of price, then changes of language, then shows that have sold out or moved. A change goes into the page the same week, and the score is recalculated by the same rules.

Between two Mondays, a date can still move. Comedy line-ups change with little notice. Treat our pages as a well-sourced starting point and confirm on the booking page for the night you want. The what's on this week page lists the next two weeks in date order.

Source: our update routine, applied to the pages read on 2 November 2026.

What the method cannot tell you

The method has four limits. First, it reads what venues publish. A club with a strong night and a poor website scores low on information, and we say that in its gaps. Second, a rating for one show is not a rating for a room. Third, a score is a snapshot of two weeks.

Fourth, we have not visited the rooms for this edition. Each review carries a marked slot for a first-hand write-up. Until it is filled, nothing on a review describes an evening someone from the site sat through. A visit would change the room score first, because atmosphere is the part a desk cannot judge.

If you want a plan rather than a method, start with the Top 10 comedy clubs or the free comedy workshops guide. If you spot an error, tell us and we will check the venue's page and correct it.

Source: data gaps in the club scorecard and limits in the show scorecard, both of 2 November 2026.

Questions people ask