Virgin Red Room, The O2 London – Review

Virgin Red Room

The Virgin Red Room is a private suite at The O2 London, which can be booked for most events using Virgin Red points. Typically events are priced at 25,000-75,000 points. I visited for the opening night of Billie Eilish in July 2025, which was priced at the top end of this at 70,000 points. Included in the package was:

• Early access via the VIP entrance to the O2 Amex Lounge from 4.30 p.m. (first drink included for Amex cardholders)
• Access to the Red Room suite as one of 28 guests
• Premium seating for the event in the suite (we were seated on the bar stools pictured below)
• 2 complimentary drinks per person
• Paid bar with additional food and drink available throughout the night

Booking

The Virgin Red Room can be booked via the Virgin Red App. As Virgin Atlantic is a transfer partner for American Express Rewards, I simply transferred across 75,000 Amex points – which were available immediately – and used these to book the tickets (find out how to start collecting Amex points here). A confirmation email came immediately and then the tickets themselves were available via the O2 App about 10 days before the event. If you don’t have a Virgin Red or Virgin Atlantic Flying Club account you can get a 1,000 points bonus by joining with our Virgin Red refer a friend link. You can also get a chunk of points via the Virgin Atlantic Credit Card welcome offers.

Read Next: What Can You Get With 20,000 Amex Points?

Arrival

We had a fantastic night in the Red Room, but arrival was perhaps the most problematic element. Our Virgin Red email confirmed that we had American Express Lounge access from 4.30, we queued at this time only to be met by complete confusion from security staff at the VIP entrance. It’s likely this was specific to this event, as there had been some changes to the Amex Lounge setup to create ‘Billie’s Diner’, but the result was that no one seemed to know who had access and the VIP queue was held up for 20 minutes whilst they checked. Eventually after showing the email to 3 different people we were allowed in, only to arrive to a completely empty Lounge! Clearly some communication and organisation issues on the part of the O2 itself here.

View and Seating

The view from the Red Room is dead centre, so likely one of the best views in terms of suites. Seating is organised into three short rows of padded seats and one row of bar stools, accommodating 28 people. We were seated at one end of the bar stools, which initially I was less sure about – however these actually turned out to be very good seats. The view was great, it was easy to stand/sit as preferred (because there was no one behind us) and this also meant that moving around between the bar, sofa seating, toilets and our seats was fuss free. If I was given the option (which unfortunately you aren’t when booking) I would choose the rear bar seats again in the future. Toilets for suites are located on the opposite side of the corridor, given the limited capacity of the suites these were not particularly busy at any point during the night.

Importantly, the staging for Billie Eilish was located in the centre of the arena. This gave a very clear view. For events where the staging is located at the far end, the view may not be as good (you can check the floorplan via Ticketmaster before booking).

Food and Drink

Two complimentary drinks per person are included with the package. This is limited to relatively standard options – for example I was surprised that there was no sparkling wine available. The bar is at the rear of the room itself, with a bar person specifically for the suite. Once your 2 drinks have been ticked off on the list, you can purchase further drinks. Given there are only 28 people in the room, there was never any waiting and often the server was happy to bring items directly to the seating. There are also other bars available outside the room on the suite level, but we didn’t visit these. Drinks were typical London event pricing – for example canned Thatchers cider was £8.50…

The food offer for the event was 100% vegan as part of a Billie Eilish initiative to reduce the tour’s carbon footprint. Food could be ordered in the Lounge and then was presumably delivered from arena catering. We ordered the vegan burger and pizza, which was delivered boxed to our seats. Food prices were approx £18 per meal. The food was fairly typical eventually fast food – great to have it delivered, but nothing special.

After the event guests can remain in the Red Room for a little while. This gives the convenience of allowing the main crowds to disperse before heading to taxis, etc.

The Amex Lounge

The Amex Lounge, branded as ‘Billie’s Diner’ for this event, is worth an additional mention. As above, we initially had issues with early access, before arriving to an empty room with a DJ and buying 2 drinks at an eye watering total of £27.50! I then discovered Amex cardholders were entitled to a drinks token (one per card) so got one of these for the 2nd drink. Bizarrely, I ordered a sparkling wine only to be told by a server standing in front of a line of bottles of prosecco that they don’t sell sparkling wine! I pointed out the bottles and was told they were only allowed to use these for Aperol Spritz!

The Lounge had various ‘Billie’s Diner’ branding and slowly filled with parents and teenagers before the event. It was set up in a part club (dancefloor, DJ), part diner configuration.

After the event we then managed to get some ‘Amex Afters’ lanyards (these were not part of the Virgin Red package) and we went back to the lounge. We got these simply because someone wandered into the Red Room with a couple of spare lanyards and we were the only people still hanging around! Again access to the lounge was more complicated than it needed to be – we had to queue with the lanyard, to get a separate wristband which no one ever checked.

Billie’s Diner was much livelier after the event, again there was a DJ playing, but now there was also a complimentary merchandise table and a snack bar. The lanyard included a token which could be exchanged for one item at each. The queue for the merchandise was very long, but we waited 20 minutes and exchanged our 2 tokens for Billie’s Diner t-shirts (they had run out of everything else!). They also gave out stickers to anyone who waved their Amex card at them.

Conclusion

Virgin Red Room at the O2 London offers a great view, a private space and great perks including VIP entrance, 2 complimentary drinks and access to the Amex Lounge. Pricing varies depending on the act, but when I worked out the points price for this event (which was a sold out event), despite being at the top end it was a relatively fair deal.

I have already booked a second event to return in 2026. The key benefit for me is the opportunity to fully enjoy the event with very limited waiting, queuing, hassle or crowds.