About Us
Newport's Latest and Leading Live Music Venue
The Corn Exchange on Newport’s High Street is a 500-capacity live music and performance venue, giving bands and performers a large capacity venue in the city – and providing South East Wales with a mid-size venue.
As a gathering space for people of the city since it was first opened in 1878. In more recent times this cornerstone of Newport’s history has served the city as a nightclub and an office space.
From the beginning of 2024, it has once again become a hub for gatherings in the city, bringing a heritage venue back to purpose in Newport’s city centre, while at the same time adding another story to the city’s rich cultural history.
The venue attracts bands, comedians and other artists who have outgrown Newport's smaller capacity venues but aren’t yet ready to sell the capacity of venues such as the Motorpoint Arena in Cardiff or the O2 in Bristol. It brings bands and performers back into the city centre, attracting audiences from the greater Gwent and Bristol area – audiences and visitors we would have otherwise lost to Bristol or further afield.
Excellently positioned in the city centre, surrounded by well-established places to eat and drink, as well as accommodation and excellent transport links in and out of the city, its previous life as a nightclub lends this space perfectly to a new life as a live music venue - a place for the community, and a place for our city, and a new place for visitors and tourists to experience in Newport. Hey, it even has a giant mirror ball!
The space is also available for commercial use such as celebrations, corporate events, conferences, and other such large-scale gatherings, offering a new and unique space in the city centre for events of this nature.
Over two floors, it also offers space for other amenities and projects, which would feed into a core ethos of promoting and nurturing local culture and talent; keeping Newport’s music scene threaded through the next generations and raising aspirations for young people from all communities right across the city.
It is incumbent on us as a cultural community to continue to nurture music in the city in the name of our cultural heritage, as well as to support future generations of musicians and artists.
Key highlights of the space:
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500 capacity venue
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Excellent travel links
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Great access for bands and load-ins
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Accessible
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In an already established nightlife area of the city centre
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Room to eventually establish a Newport music museum, celebrating our city’s history.
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Alternative uses for weddings, conferences, and other such gatherings, providing a new and unique space in the city centre for corporate and private events
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A high-spec community space
Our Story
The roots of Newport’s place as a culturally significant centre for live music and musicians run deep, far into the beautiful mixing pot that is this city, reflecting the Port's wonderfully diverse and rich culture that runs back centuries.
In the 90s, the Newport music scene became particularly prevalent with the dawn of Brit Pop and the nationalistic vibe of the Cool Cymru movement. Propped up with an exquisite mix of live music venues like TJ’s and Le Pub, Newport Centre also played its part, catching bands on the rise to stardom, offering not only support opportunities for local bands, but much like the grassroots venues, offering inspiration for budding musicians from Newport and the wider south Wales area.
As the new century dawned, many of the bands that were spawned from the city were retreating to their day jobs and as record deals ran their course. Still, the music scene continued to grow and evolve, with the children of the kids of the 90s passing on their cultural heritage, creating the next generation of bands, performers, and artists.
Still standing from the grassroots venues of the 90s remains Le Pub. Now in a bigger home, as a 120-capacity live music venue, its part in the continuing growth of the Welsh music scene as a live venue and a place championing and giving space to local bands and talent is almost unquantifiable. It continues to provide a venue for national and international bands on the rise, for local bands both new and established and a welcoming space for the arts community of Newport and the wider Gwent area.
It's grassroots venues like Le Pub that have kept the music scene alive, and from this, we now see a new burgeoning music scene here in Wales – a new era of Cool Cymru, with a new generation of bands springing up in the principality.
However, these bands and so many others from across the UK and further afield are getting too big for Le Pub, drawing audiences of 300-500 at every gig. Of course, there are still plenty of bands to fill the calendar of Le Pub, but keeping and attracting these well-known bands with larger audiences is important for Newport for so many reasons both culturally and economically – so, let us introduce you to Corn Exchange, Newport.
