Glasgow Community Sauna brings affordable sauna and cold plunge to Pollokshields

Sauna culture has found a welcoming home on Glasgow's Southside. Glasgow Community Sauna, a not-for-profit community interest company in Pollokshields, has a simple mission: to make sauna and cold plunge affordable and accessible to everyone in Glasgow.

In its first six months, the sauna welcomed more than 6,000 people to its hand-built horsebox sauna. It has since grown into a community hub with two saunas, the original seven-seater horsebox and a 13-seater accessible sauna, which the team describes as Scotland's first wheelchair-accessible sauna.

Visitors will also find chilled and filtered cold plunges, outdoor showers, changing areas, lockers, toilets and places to rest in the garden. Tucked down a quiet street next to tenement flats, the site feels like a wee world of its own, just five minutes from the train station and Subway.

VisitGlasgow describes it as a welcoming, grassroots wellness space on McCulloch Street, centred on inclusivity and wellbeing, offering an authentic wood-fired sauna experience designed to bring the local community together.

A standard session costs twelve pounds and includes access to the saunas and cold plunges. People come to meet their neighbours, make new friends or simply enjoy a quiet moment to themselves in the communal sessions.

Community is at the heart of everything. Through partnerships with local organisations, Glasgow Community Sauna offers free and discounted sessions to people who need them most, and it is building a social prescribing programme with local charities and support groups, which it says is the first of its kind in Scotland.

The sauna also works with local artists, musicians and sauna practitioners to explore the traditions of sauna. Sessions can include Aufguss rituals, listening sessions, Pirts whisking, soundbaths, movement and seasonal Celtic festival celebrations.

It is a popular place to celebrate, too, with the horsebox, the big sauna or the whole site available to book for birthdays, work wellbeing days, community gatherings and sports club events. Memberships help support the project all year round, and gift vouchers are available.

Glasgow Community Sauna is on McCulloch Street, Pollokshields, Glasgow. Sessions, memberships and vouchers can be booked at glasgowcommunitysauna.co.uk.