3 Best European Escape Room Destinations

As travelling escape room enthusiasts – part of our travel planning involves figuring out new locations around the world to travel to for a trip focused around escape rooms. The article will only cover escape rooms that are available to an English-language speaker, there are many more escape rooms in other languages and countries that we are sure are excellent but are inaccessible to those who only play in English.

Common wisdom in the English-language speaking Escape Room community is that the three best European escape room markets for density of quality rooms (in no particular order) are Barcelona, Athens, and Netherlands/Belgium.

Outside of Europe, top North American cities don’t have the same escape room density as any of those top three European nexuses, although there are many excellent markets within North America to expore. Also outside of Europe, Israel is very developed escape room market that we expect will slowly rise up the TERPECA rankings as more contributors play their rooms and contribute comparisons.

The common wisdom aligns well with the top rooms from the 2022 TERPECA. Those three European regions are indeed the three regions with the highest concentration of top escape rooms not just in Europe, but worldwide. We’ve aggregated the TERPECA escape rooms into geographical clusters (roughly based on metropolitan regions up to ~200km in radius) and present the top three European regions (which are also the top three global regions) below.

8 Best Barcelona Escape Rooms (TERPECA)

4 of these are located in (or very close to) Barcelona. 4 more of these will require a car to reach. These 8 escape rooms represent 8 distinct companies.

• 6 – Cybercity 2049 – Escape Barcelona (Santa Coloma De Gramenet, Spain)
• 11 – La Posesión [The Possession] – Arcanum (Sant Sadurní D’Anoia, Spain)
• 12 – Outline – Outline Escape Room (Cornellá De Llobregat, Spain)
• 15 – La Casa [The House] – Insomnia Corporation (Berga, Spain)
• 28 – La Cervesería [The Brewery] – Enigmik (Barcelona, Spain)
• 30 – Tao Room Escape: Japanese Massage Center – Virus Room Escape (Calella De Mar, Spain)
• 46 – Casa Museu Josep Fontcalda [Josep Fontcalda House Museum] – 1801 Escape Room (Barcelona, Spain)
• 56 – Distrito 111 [District 111] – Unreal Room Escape (Barcelona, Spain)

13 Best Athens Escape Rooms (TERPECA)

12 of these rooms are in Athens. One of them is in Acharnes, which is adjacent to Athens.

• 1 – Chapel & Catacombs – Lockhill (Athens, Greece)
• 8 – Don’t Take A Breath – Verone (Acharnes, Greece)
• 10 – El Exorcista – No Exit (Athens, Greece)
• 13 – Paradox Project 2: To Βιβλιοπωλείο [The Bookstore] – Paradox Project (Athens, Greece)
• 26 – Paradox Project 3: Το Ωδείον [The Music Academy] – Paradox Project (Athens, Greece)
• 41 – Ice Tiki – Way Out Escape Rooms (Athens, Greece)
• 53 – Woman In Black – Coven Escape Rooms (Athens, Greece)
• 54 – Το Σανατόριο (Νύχτα, Μεσάνυχτα) [The Sanatorium (Night Mode, Midnight Mode)] – Lockhill (Athens, Greece)
• 64 – M’ama – #Suspense (Athens, Greece)
• 65 – The Sacrifice – Disappear Escape Rooms (Athens, Greece)
• 73 – Mystic Project – Mystic Corporation (Athens, Greece)
• 75 – Wake Up – Station 33 (Athens, Greece)
• 83 – Death Row – No Exit (Athens, Greece)

16 Best Netherlands/Belgium Escape Rooms (TERPECA)

The escape rooms in this region are spread out across both countries, with 10 in The Netherlands and 6 in Belgium. This region contains the cities Amsterdam and Brussels, however each of those cities have only 1 TERPECA game each.

• 2 – Molly’s Game – Down The Hatch (Voorburg, Netherlands)
• 3 – The Dome – Mama Bazooka (Bunschoten, Netherlands)
• 9 – Stay in the Dark – Darkpark (Vlaardingen, Netherlands)
• 16 – The Toy Factory – Escaperoom Antwerp (Zoersel, Belgium)
• 22 – The Movies Experience (90 Minute Version) – The Push Mystery Rooms (Dudzele, Belgium)
• 32 – Lost And Found – Kamer 237 (Volkel, Netherlands)
• 35 – The End – Darkpark (Zoetermeer, Netherlands)
• 40 – Illusion – Epic Escape (Waalwijk, Netherlands)
• 60 – Le Prince – Escaping Belgium (Retie, Belgium)
• 61 – Het Geheim Van Sint-Rumoldus [The Secret Of Saint-Rumoldus] – De Gouden Kooi (Mechelen, Belgium)
• 74 – Soup Du Jour – Rock City Escape (Amersfoort, Netherlands)
• 82 – Corpse Inc. – Escaperoom Junkie (Baarn, Netherlands)
• 84 – Tokyo Lab – Escape Rush (Brussels, Belgium)
• 85 – Chernobyl – Thestart Escaperooms (Ranst, Belgium)
• 95 – Kamer 237 [Room 237] – Kamer 237 (Volkel, Netherlands)
• 99 – The Amsterdam Catacombs – Logic Locks (Amsterdam, Netherlands)

21 Best North American Escape Rooms (TERPECA)

For comparison and calibration for our North American readers, we are including a list of TERPECA rooms in North America. 17 of these are in the United States and 4 of them are in Canada (specifically, Québec).

• 14 – The Man From Beyond – Strange Bird Immersive (Houston, TX, United States)
• 17 – Armoire À Vendre [Wardrobe for Sale] – Escaparium (Laval, QC, Canada)
• 18 – Cutthroat Cavern – 13th Gate Escape (Baton Rouge, LA, United States)
• 25 – Abstraction – Eliviascape (Québec, QC, Canada)
• 31 – L’Île Perdue De La Reine Vaudou [The Lost Island of the Voodoo Queen] – Escaparium (Laval, QC, Canada)
• 33 – Pins & Needles Tattoo Parlor – The Exit Games (Clearwater, FL, United States)
• 37 – Mogollon Monster – The Nemesis Club (Phoenix, AZ, United States)
• 38 – Servants of Sleight – The Exit Games FL (Clearwater, FL, United States)
• 42 – Ghost Patrol – Trivium Games (Emeryville, CA, United States)
• 43 – The Edison Escape Room – Palace Games (San Francisco, CA, United States)
• 48 – The Storyteller’s Secret – Boxaroo (Boston, MA, United States)
• 49 – The Attraction – Palace Games (San Francisco, CA, United States)
• 52 – Hope End – The Ministry of Peculiarities (Azusa, CA, United States)
• 57 – The Storykeeper – Locurio (Seattle, WA, United States)
• 63 – Lab Rat – Hatch Escapes (Los Angeles, CA, United States)
• 66 – Evil Robots – The Nemesis Club (Phoenix, AZ, United States)
• 78 – Undercooked – Omescape (Sunnyvale, CA, United States)
• 86 – Rain Corp. – Escaparium (Laval, QC, Canada)
• 88 – The Starlight Motel – Escape Artist Greenville (Greenville, SC, United States)
• 92 – Project Minotaur – Quest Room US (Los Angeles, CA, United States)
• 97 – The Nest – Scout Expedition Co. (Los Angeles, CA, United States)

We are also summarizing the TERPECA rooms below aggregated by country. This also surfaces Spain, Greece, and Netherlands/Belgium as concentrated escape room centers. The United States also surfaces, however the United States rooms are spread apart over a very large area. These are the rankings for Top Countries by # of TERPECA Top Rooms.

The rankings below correct for area by dividing for the area of the country (from Wikipedia as of 4/20/2023). Israel shoots up to the top, and Netherlands/Belgium, Greece, and Spain take the next slots. These are the rankings for Top Escape Room Countries by Geographical Density.

The rankings below correct for population by dividing by the population of the country (from Wikipedia as of 4/19/2023). The United States falls off of the top 10 again, while Greece shoots to the top with a staggering 12.4 top rooms per 10 million people. Again, we see Netherlands/Belgium, Israel, and Spain represented well. These are the rankings for Top Escape Room Countries per Capita. The top 5 countries in this per capita ranking are the same as the top 5 rooms in the geographical density rankings.

We can also look at the top 10 countries by number of enthusiasts (total 955) represented in the TERPECA contributors.

Again, since these numbers are biased towards larger countries, we can normalize these numbers by the population of the country to estimate Top Escape Room Countries by TERPECA Enthusiast Density.

We are very thankful to the Top Escape Rooms Project (TERPECA) and all of its contributors for making the research for this blog post easy. For a graphical view of the top 100 escape rooms according to TERPECA, check out the TERPECA Map.

Thank you for the kind folks at the #terpeca channel at the Escape Rooms Discord for helping point out an unintentional omission and also for helping identify that calling the “Netherlands/Belgium” region “Amsterdam” was not accurate.