Find Free/Low Cost Event Venues in Chicago
Updated February 4, 2020
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Booking Parties Without an Event Planner
Use these venues to plan an affordable event for birthday parties, showers, and Tuesday night Shenanigans.
Finding a space to hold a business meeting or plan an event can quickly become a project, but there are venues and resources out there to make the process affordable and easy.
Related: Chicago Bachelorette and Ladies' Night Guide
Chicago Party Planning Resources
Peerspace is a directory of creative spaces that you can rent for meetings, photo shoots, and events.
Breather is a venue booking engine that allows you to book venues of all sizes on a flexible time schedule. Current spaces are for smaller groups of about 8 people and cost as low as $40 per hour - rent it like a ZipCar or on a recurring basis.
Caviar is a food delivery service that has a nicely curated list of Chicago’s best restaurants. Get high quality food delivered to your venue. If you’re having an adult beverage type of event, you can also get booze delivered from Drizly.
Piece Pizza and Brewery in Wicker Park serves award-winning beer and pizza, has a pinball machine and live band karaoke (Saturday nights), and accepts reservations for groups in the dining room of 10-20 during the week and 20-40 on the weekends. The pit area is also available depending on whether there are live music shows or other events going on.
Emporium Arcade Bar has two Chicago locations in Wicker Park and Logan Square. Use their easy to book online form to reserve space for your party of up to 30 for free (just pay for your drinks). The super cool part about Emporium, aside from the kick ass games to play, is that you can bring in your own food or get recommendations from Emporium on local restaurants and food trucks.
Chicago Joe's in North Center has a full bar and restaurant and doesn't charge a rental fee for party reservations.
If you're looking to host at a bar, Matilda has an easy reservation process and flexible options to work with your party. There are also multiple spaces (3, to be exact) depending on whether you're into dining, dancing, or screening home videos from your childhood on their audio visual system.
Free/Low Cost Event Venues in Chicago
When planning a family gathering in Chicago, weather is a major factor. The City of Chicago allows parties to book certain park locations for a reasonable cost, but at the mercy of Mother Nature (you can still bring tents, ponchos, and ice sculptures). You can find more venues on our family events home page.
If you're looking to make custom gear for wedding and other family events, check out Get It Made in West Town. Get It Made can not only help you design cool stuff for parties, they also have a showroom where you can bring your friends and family for a creative party, where you design custom stuff like flip flops, trucker hats, coozies, socks, scarves, yoga mats...and pretty much anything your little heart desires! Public and private workshops like cake decorating classes, soap making, and flower arranging also happen at Get It Made.
Beermiscuous is a craft beer geek's dream. This Lakeview beer bar is not only a great place to try a beer flight and play board games, but with free wifi and plenty of tables, it's a great place to get work done too. Beermiscuous has a generous event policy that doesn't require minimum purchases or a booking fee, and customers are allowed to bring their own food, pets, and children if desired. Two spaces are available that fit either up to 25 or up to 40 guests. The only catch is you'll need to buy a $25 gift card, but it's easy to spend those buckaroos on beer to stay or bottles to go!
If you want to hold a pet friendly party, Cody's Public House has a great outdoor patio that you can reserve for parties with barbecues for to grill your own food on, dart boards, and cornhole/bags boards. A deposit is required but there is no reservation fee, and pups are allowed.
Lagunitas Brewing Company supports non profit organizations by donating beer as well as their taproom space for events. Demand is high, however, and they are currently booked through 2016.
Sunshine Enterprises, a business incubator affiliated with Sunshine Gospel Ministries. Supporting local entrepreneurs is part of the Woodlawn neighborhood cafe's mission, making it a great place for coworking. The Greenline Conference Room is a 12 person venue available for events at no charge (a $25 gift card purchase or tab is required, however).