Banana Bar Amsterdam: Prices, Opening Hours and What to Expect

Posted on: January 4, 2026

Banana Bar Amsterdam costs 50 euro at the door, and that hour includes four drinks. Most pages about it are years out of date, and several still tell you to reserve, which this place does not do.

I read the venue’s own price, contact, FAQ and history pages on 28 September 2026. Below is what entry to this Red Light District bar buys, what the shows cost on top, and who should keep walking.

Banana Bar Amsterdam at a Glance

Prices and hours change without notice, so treat the table as a guide and confirm at the door.

Banana Bar Prices: Entry, Drinks and What a Show Costs

Entry is 50 euro per person for 60 minutes, and four drinks are included: beer, wine, soft drinks, branded spirits or mixes. That is the whole of what the door price buys.

Everything the performers do beyond serving those drinks is charged separately, and that is where the bill gets away from people. The figures below come from the venue’s own price page, read on 28 September 2026 and linked at the foot of this article.

That drinks discrepancy comes from the venue’s own pages. Ask before you pay.

Older guides still promising unlimited drinks, or a 60 euro entry fee, are working from numbers the price list no longer shows.

How You Pay

The venue publishes nothing about payment methods. Dutch venues often accept Maestro or PIN but refuse foreign credit cards.

Carry enough cash for entry as a fallback, and ask how a show fee is paid before you agree to one. The agreed fee is the fee, and nothing on the venue’s price list suggests a tip is expected on top.

The Real Cost of a Night Here

The 50 euro is the floor, never the ceiling. Shows are priced at the bar with no list on the wall, and the price scales with the size of your group.

Agree a price out loud before anything starts, and say no if the number moves afterwards. Two people who say yes to one show can easily double the 100 euro they paid to walk in.

Decide your limit outside on the canal and say it to the group. Four included drinks arrive quickly, and nobody negotiates well after the fourth.

Opening Hours and Why You Cannot Book

Hours checked September 2026 against the venue’s contact page, which lists them as daily rather than day by day. The Banana Club runs on the same hours. Hours change, so call +31 (0)20 622 4670 if you are travelling across town for it.

Sunday is covered by those daily hours, so no night of the week is a wasted walk. The only closure the venue publishes is 31 December.

The 50 euro buys 60 minutes rather than an open-ended evening, so a 01:30 arrival is poor value. A weeknight shortly after opening is likely to be the quietest version of the room.

Reservations do not exist. The venue states that booking is not possible and that entrance tickets are sold at the door only, so you queue, you pay, you go in.

At the Door

Expect an ID check, and at weekends a short queue. Door staff across this district can turn away groups that are large or visibly drunk, so if you are running a stag party, come early and come sober enough to get in.

Going alone is fine and not unusual. A lone visitor gets asked about shows more often than a group does, so decide your answer before you pay.

Left something behind? The venue’s FAQ says to contact them, or to ask at the door just before opening time the next day.

That door-only rule is the honest difference between the Banana Bar and the seated theatre a few doors along. If you want a fixed price, a seat and a start time, book Moulin Rouge Amsterdam tickets online instead.

What Actually Happens Inside

Visitors describe a bar rather than a theatre: no stage, no seated audience, no show times. The performers work behind and around the bar and serve your drinks, unlike the seated sex shows in Amsterdam a few doors along.

Drinks are poured by the performers, who work topless or close to it. Your four are included in the entry price.

The house act is the banana show, and it is the reason for the name. Other props turn up in visitor reports as well, and every one of them costs extra.

Asked directly whether sexual acts are on offer, the bar answers that it provides erotic entertainment only. It is an entertainment venue rather than a brothel, and the paid shows are performances rather than services.

How the 60 Minutes Works

The hour is the product, so treat it as a meter. The venue does not publish when the clock starts, what happens when it runs out, or what a fifth drink costs once the included four are gone.

Ask all three at the door before you pay, and note the time you walked in. Anyone quoting you a price after minute 60 is selling you something new.

Being Asked, and How to Say No

You will be asked whether you want a show, often more than once. The asking is the business model, not a misunderstanding.

Saying no is normal and nobody makes a scene about it. “No thanks, just the drinks”, said once and then repeated in the same words, works better than an explanation.

If you would rather not be drawn in at all, stand at the far end of the bar rather than dead centre. The review below mentions the pricing being unclear, so settle your limit before you pay at the door.

Put the phone away. The venue publishes no camera rule, but photographing or filming performers is the fastest way to be shown the door in any Red Light District venue, and it applies on the street outside too.

What Visitors Report

The complaints in the reviews I have read come back to the same two things: the upselling, and prices posted nowhere. The compliments are the bar staff and the strength of the drinks.

One Google reviewer set out the arithmetic.

⭐️⭐️⭐️ “The 65euro option requires at least another 100euros. This pricing scale is not made very clear anywhere other than these reviews. Bartender was very nice, and the drinks were strong. We paid 130euro for entry and another 140euro for a 4girl show for my partner and I. Fun show, steep price.” Source: Google review, undated.

That works out at 65 euro each, which does not match the 50 euro on the price list today, so the review probably predates the current tariff. Do not budget from it. The ratio is the part that still holds, because the extras can cost more than getting in.

Banana Bar vs Banana Club vs Moulin Rouge

Three different nights out, two of them in the same building. The Banana Club is a separate room with pole and lap dancing, not a separate address.

The honest split: the Bar suits groups who want to stand, drink and be part of it. Couples and mixed groups usually have a better evening at the Club or in a seated theatre.

If certainty matters more than atmosphere, the theatre wins by default, because nothing at number 37 can be reserved. Our Moulin Rouge vs Banana Bar comparison sets the two side by side on price, drinks, hours and booking rules.

Sixty doors up the same canal, the old Hospital Bar now trades as Amor Rosso, which we compare in Moulin Rouge vs Amor Rosso.

Finding the Door: Oudezijds Achterburgwal 37

Look for the narrow house with the dark front, the banana sign and the illustrations in the windows. There is no box office and no queue system, just a door with staff behind it.

The building is a monumental eighteenth-century canal house at Oudezijds Achterburgwal 37, 1012 DA. It sits a minute’s walk from Moulin Rouge at numbers 5 to 7, about 74 metres along the same water.

Old canal houses on this stretch rarely have lifts, and the venue publishes nothing about accessibility, so phone ahead if stairs are a problem. Staff speak English.

It is roughly ten minutes on foot from Amsterdam Centraal, or a shorter walk from Nieuwmarkt metro. Oudezijds Achterburgwal is the eastern of the two old canals, and number 37 sits near the top end.

The street is busy and lit until closing, and the usual district rules apply: watch your pockets in the crowd, ignore anyone selling drugs on the bridges, and never photograph the windows. If a price changes after you agreed it, repeat the number you agreed, refuse, and leave.

The street keeps changing around it, and the city has spent years arguing over the future of Amsterdam’s window brothels on this stretch.

From Church of Satan to Banana Bar

Before it sold bananas, number 37 was the bar attached to Maarten Lamers’s Kerk van Satan. That is not a marketing story, and the venue tells it on its own history page.

Lamers opened a cafe here in the 1970s where naked women served drinks, but he had no liquor licence, so the police raided him and took the stock. A police chief at the Warmoesstraat station suggested sarcastically that he give the drinks away, because no licence is needed when alcohol is served privately.

Lamers took the suggestion and registered a religious community instead. He styled himself Monsignor Lamers, the bartenders became sisters of the Order of Wallburga, and the doormen became collectors.

Members were never sold alcohol, which is what the missing licence would have covered. They made a voluntary contribution and were charged by the hour to rent a glass, and the drink itself was free. Pay once, drink included, watch the clock: today’s 50 euro for 60 minutes is at least a family resemblance.

A church also paid no tax, and the turnover climbed. It held until Lamers told the press his church had gathered 40,000 believers and two tax inspectors were sent in undercover.

The raid followed, Lamers left the country, and he was traced years later in France. He settled with the Dutch authorities to avoid prosecution. The venue’s own account gives no years for any of it, so treat other tellings that do with care.

Where the Name Came From

Jan Otten, the Red Light District entrepreneur who ran the place for decades and died in 2024, explained the rename in a Vice interview. Boudoir had started to sound dated, he said, even though the women still worked in nun outfits and the banana act was already the speciality.

Bachelor parties kept asking for the place where you could eat a banana from a woman, so he simplified the name. That way, he told Vice, it is clear what you are selling.

Otten bought the business from a competitor he had no time for, which is why he says he has a natural aversion to the Bananenbar. He turned it down at first, and only bought it after a woman working for him talked him into it. He also told Vice that the performers work for themselves and bring their own props.

Who Owns the Banana Bar?

The Banana Bar was built up by Jan Otten, who started as a guard at Casa Rosso, rose to own it and died in 2024. His history page does not date the purchase beyond a few decades.

His Otten Group — now led by his stepson Dylan Meijer — also runs Casa Rosso, the Erotic Museum, the Hospital Bar and a peep show. The Banana Bar and Casa Rosso therefore share an owner, which is why the two get confused.

The photograph above shows the same address on 6 October 1978.

The Lizzo Lawsuit and the Banana Bar

The bar gets mentioned in connection with Lizzo, and most of what circulates about it is wrong, so here is the careful version.

In August 2023 three former tour dancers filed a civil lawsuit in Los Angeles County Superior Court against the singer, her touring company and a dance captain. The claims included sexual harassment and a hostile working environment, as NBC News reported at the time.

Lizzo, real name Melissa Viviane Jefferson, has not been criminally charged over any of it. No criminal investigation into the Amsterdam evening has been reported, here or anywhere else.

One allegation concerned a 2023 visit to the Banana Bar after a show in the city, where a dancer said she was pressured into touching a nude performer. NBC dates that visit only to earlier that year, so ignore the exact dates you will see elsewhere.

That allegation is about how the singer allegedly treated her own employees, not a claim against the bar or its performers. The bar disputed the account at the time, its manager telling Dutch news agency ANP that staff remembered a pleasant evening on which nothing unusual happened. Lizzo denies the allegations.

There has been no trial, no verdict and no finding of wrongdoing against anyone. The case has been through pre-trial motions since.

One thing to watch if you search it yourself: reporting about a Lizzo lawsuit being dismissed concerns a separate claim brought by a former wardrobe assistant, not the dancers’ case. Status last checked September 2026.

Is the Banana Bar Worth It?

Go if you want an hour of something genuinely strange, you are in a group, and you can treat 50 euro as the price of the story. The drinks are decent and the staff are good at their jobs.

Skip it if you want a show with a beginning and an end, if you dislike being sold to at close range, or if the idea of being invited up makes you tense. A seated theatre ticket does that job better. If none of the adult venues appeal, the same streets are more interesting with the history attached, which is what our Red Light District audio tour is for.

The complaint in the reviews is almost never the content. It is the bill, and the bill is avoidable if you know the extras exist before you walk in.

Banana Bar Amsterdam FAQ

What happens at the Banana Bar in Amsterdam?

You pay at the door for 60 minutes at a bar where four drinks are included and the performers serve them topless or close to it. There is no stage and no seated show.

For a fee agreed on the spot, a performer does a short act at the bar, traditionally with a banana.

How much does it cost to get into the Banana Bar?

Entry is 50 euro per person for 60 minutes, checked on the venue’s own price page in September 2026. The separate Banana Club is 30 euro per person on the current offer, normally 40 euro. Shows are charged on top of both, so the entry fee is the start of the bill rather than all of it.

What is included in the entrance fee?

Four drinks at the Banana Bar: beer, wine, soft drinks, branded spirits or mixes.

Nothing else is included, because every show costs extra. At the Banana Club the venue’s price list says one drink and its FAQ says two, so ask before you pay.

Do I need to book tickets, or can I just walk in?

You walk in. The venue states that reservations are not possible and that entrance tickets are sold at the door only, first come first served.

If you want a guaranteed seat and a fixed price, book Moulin Rouge Amsterdam tickets online instead, a minute along the same canal.

What are the Banana Bar’s opening hours?

The Banana Bar is open daily from 20:00 to 02:00, and from 19:30 on Friday and Saturday, checked September 2026. The venue lists its hours as daily rather than day by day, so Sunday opens at 20:00 like the rest of the week. It is closed on 31 December, and hours change, so call +31 (0)20 622 4670 if you are travelling across town for it.

Can I pay by card at the Banana Bar?

The venue does not publish which payment methods it accepts.

Dutch venues often take Maestro or PIN cards but refuse foreign credit cards. Carry enough cash for entry as a fallback, and ask how a show fee is paid before agreeing to one.

What happens when the 60 minutes are up?

The venue publishes a 60-minute ticket but says nothing about when the clock starts or what happens at the end. Note the time you walk in and ask at the door, because the included drinks are tied to that hour.

Anyone quoting you a price after minute 60 is selling you something new.

Can couples and women go to the Banana Bar?

Yes. The venue states plainly that everyone is welcome, women included, and couples do go. Be aware that the room fills with stag parties at weekends, which is why many couples prefer the Club side or a seated theatre show.

Is sex available at the Banana Bar?

No.

Asked the question directly in its own FAQ, the venue answers that it offers erotic entertainment only. It is an entertainment venue rather than a brothel, and the paid shows are performances rather than services.

Will I be pulled into a show, and how do I say no?

You will be asked, probably more than once, but nothing happens without your agreement and your money. A calm “no thanks, just the drinks”, repeated in the same words, ends it without any awkwardness.

Standing at the end of the bar rather than in the middle makes the question come up less often.

What is the minimum age and do I need ID?

The minimum age is 18 and you should carry ID, particularly in a large group on a weekend night. The 21 minimum you may read elsewhere applies to people applying for jobs there, not to guests.

Are there group discounts at the Banana Bar?

No. The venue states that it does not offer discounts, which is worth knowing given that bachelor parties are its core trade.

Ten people means ten times 50 euro before a single show is bought.

Sources and Updates

Prices, hours, the age limit and the house rules on this page come from the venue’s own price list, FAQ and contact page, read on 28 September 2026. The history section follows the venue’s own history page and the Vice interview linked above. The lawsuit section follows NBC News on the original complaint only.

Last updated 28 September 2026. We re-check the door price, the opening hours and the status of the lawsuit whenever we update this page, and we date every figure so you can see how old it is. Prices and hours change without notice, so confirm at the door.

About the author — Martijn, Amsterdam guide

Martijn has guided hundreds of tours through Amsterdam’s Red Light District and De Wallen over the past years. He writes from first-hand experience — the shows he has seen, the bars he knows and the streets he walks every week — and his tours and photos also feature on TripAdvisor. Everything here is checked against what he and our local guides see on the ground.

• Experience: years guiding Red Light District & De Wallen tours in person
• Standards: first-hand, checked on location, useful for real visitors
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