
It’s difficult to perforate the mythical origin story of Berlin’s club culture, to question the glimmer in the eyes of those who were there, who stepped over the fallen stones of the Berlin Wall to claim a new sound, a new space, a new city. “We were discovering parts of the map that we didn’t know about before,” remembers American-born Danielle de Picciotto, an artist and musician who went on to co-found the Berlin Love Parade.
It was the Wild West of the former East and everyone was exploring the cavernous remnants of the DDR, these factories and industry spaces left empty for years, a haunting memento to the state’s downward economic spiral. “The doors were open, you didn’t have to break in or anything.” This is how some of Berlin’s most famous clubs were born, says de Picciotto via phone from the back of her tour bus to Toulouse. She helped build up the original Tresor location and the short-lived E-Werk club, which ran from 1994 to 1997.
Compared to residential rents, commercial rents aren’t regulated.
The creatives went straight to work decorating the walls, playing the sound from Detroit, making the blank expanses into living rooms. “All of a sudden, there were like 200 new venues that you could go to every day, every night,” de Picciotto says. “You didn’t have to pay for these spaces, no one knew who they belonged to. It all kind of happened without money, without earning it, without having it – just with the thought of breaking the artistic and philosophical and musical boundaries. It was a kind of paradise.”
Since the 1990s, that wild paradise has been formalised, bogged down in paperwork and building codes and fire exit requirements, and many clubs have come and gone. Those first techno clubs were running on borrowed time, says Daniel Schneider, co-director of the Jugendarchiv, in abandoned spaces where no one was in a hurry to find the owner.
Once the Ordnungsamt started paying attention to where electricity was illegally being syphoned from or what the waste disposal situation was, a lot of them had to either shut down or go legit. “That’s just no longer possible today,” Schneider says. But with Berlin bastions Watergate and Renate set to close before the end of this year and next, respectively, there’s a revived frenzy around if – and how and when – Berlin’s internationally-renowned nightlife will finally succumb to Clubsterben.
Lights out?
The ‘club death’ concept has been around long enough for it to be its own German word, and although some of the essential fears remain the same, the institutional demands do change somewhat with the times, says Emiko Gejic, a board member of the Berlin Club Commission. “The business is not up to prior Covid numbers, let’s say.” Even with some emergency governmental intervention, clubs are getting crushed by the surging operating costs, relative downturn in attendance and rising rents – which also affect other businesses, she says, because compared to residential rents, commercial rents aren’t regulated.
The commission itself – a network of club owners, managers and artists advocating for policy changes – works to address many of these hurdles, offering resources and conducting research. Clubsterben has long been a feeling in the air; now, it’s becoming more quantifiable. “Without the data, the situation of Clubsterben is something very subjective, as some people feel it more because their particular spaces are being shut down.
Some people feel it less,” Gejic says. “There are also some people that say there is no actual Clubsterben. It might be that they don’t notice it, because they mostly visit some of the clubs that are still there and are not part of the larger scene. It’s always a subjective feeling. That’s why having reliable data is important to prove the actual numbers of venues that had to shut down.”

In November, the Club Commission released some worrisome new figures. Fifty-five percent of Berlin clubs surveyed reported declining sales, and almost two-thirds reported that their profits had fallen considerably – an average of 19% decrease, with smaller venues hit even harder. The difference in these numbers means that profits are dipping even for clubs that are maintaining their gross intake – likely a result of inflating costs and economic challenges.
Just over half the clubs said their visitor numbers had declined compared to the previous year. And the kicker: according to the Berlin Club Commission, roughly 46% of the clubs said they were thinking about closing in the next 12 months – double the number from a similar survey done in spring, in which 89% of clubs reported a hike in operating costs, specifically rent and energy.

These factors – staffing, rent, sales – are functions of clubbing as a business, rather than what they started as: a creative movement. Those early party planners were improvising, sure, remembers de Picciotto, but the creativity and community of Berlin’s first techno clubs was unparalleled: fashion shows in the foyer, murals and projections on the walls, laser shows on the dancefloor, trapeze artists from the ceiling. “Now everybody goes there to get something and not necessarily to bring something. Back then everyone wanted to bring something, to leave their mark,” she says. Now, in order to continue, de Picciotto argues, clubs need to be reconceptualised, from inside and out, as a part of this city’s cultural heritage.
When Berlin’s techno scene was added to the UNESCO intangible cultural heritage list early this year, some hoped it would help garner the recognition necessary for longterm material support. For Renate, it wasn’t enough. The club originally opened in 2007 with a mostly-house-and-techno lineup and became a core part of the Friedrichshain club corridor. After an uphill battle against a “notorious real estate investor”, as they wrote in a statement, and other financial demands, they’ll have to close their doors at the end of 2025.
Without consistent funding and protection against rent increases, recognising clubs as cultural spaces remains a definition on paper only, says Renate’s press spokeswoman, Jessica Schmidt. “It’s easy to demand, but looking at the broader political situation, it’s clear that the world has other priorities, even if safe spaces like clubs are crucial right now. But, hey, hope is the last thing to die, right?”
It’s difficult to paint the entire club scene with one brush, because venues have different lease agreements and requirements, and offer varied programming. As of now, there are some measures to try to keep clubs afloat, including a dispensation under which venues on state-owned land can receive long-term rental contracts and can host three open-air events for free until midnight.
The Club Commission’s annual Tag der Clubultur offers prize money to 40 clubs in various categories. They’ve also instated a ‘Clubkataster’ on their website that shows clubs and music venues alongside a map of current development plans to warn of potential conflicts and provide support as early as possible. “One of our major tasks is to protect the spaces, for example, helping with making them soundproof so they have less problems with neighbours,” says Gejic. “Then, of course, trying to find new spaces and to support the local scene, the younger generations and younger collectives that are coming up.”
(Don’t fear) the realtor
Clubs are a huge boon to Berlin’s economy. According to a 2018-2019 study done by the Club Commission on behalf of the Senate Department for Economics, Energy and Public Enterprises, club tourism brought in €1.48 billion in 2017, and the upstream markets of the food, music and hospitality industries provided an additional €168 million.
One-third of the surveyed visitors reported coming to Berlin for the club culture. This study was done prior to the pandemic, since which the club scene has suffered. However, their “Nachtökonomie Strategie” study reports that 2023 saw a 16% uptick in guests visiting Berlin compared to the previous year, and numbers from Statistik Berlin-Brandenburg suggest that tourism figures are close to, and in some months meeting, pre-pandemic levels.

In order to keep property speculators from gutting the club landscape entirely, rent caps are necessary, says Niklas Schenker, a member of the Berlin House of Representatives for Die Linke and their spokesperson for rents, public housing and club culture. “We need a rent cap for apartments but also for businesses, so that we can ensure that rents in clubs don’t become so unaffordable that they end up having to give up,” he says.
The “anarchic time” of the early 90s, as the Jugendarchiv’s Schneider calls it, before anyone assessed the value of the massive empty buildings up for grabs, also set the tone for today. Many buildings were condemned, says Schneider, and many were bought up by shrewd investors like the now-notorious Padovicz Group, who drive the rents through the roof.
On the state and federal level, there’s a huge need for protections against eviction, so that landlords like Gijora Padovicz, who owns the buildings Renate and Watergate occupy, can’t “simply throw clubs out from one day to the next”, says Schenker. Through a network of subsidiaries, Padovicz owns over 200 properties in Friedrichshain alone.
It’s clear that the world has other priorities, even if safe spaces like clubs are crucial right now.
His acquisition approach has already led to the closure of the former techno club Rummels Bucht, two apartment buildings, the queer-feminist housing project Liebig 34 and the queer mobile home site known as ‘Mollies’, which was cleared for new luxury apartments. In 2017, Padovicz doubled the rent for the Watergate building, and earlier this year it was announced that he would not renew the lease for Renate.
Specific subsidies could also be helpful for clubs, says Schenker, and the clubs seem to agree: according to the most recent figures from the Club Commission, over 40% stated that they will need more government support in the future. Some already exist – for clubs that offer jazz programming, for example – but new forms of help could be offered to clubs that are politically involved or provide spaces for marginalised groups as part of their mandate.
Stopping the construction of the A100 freeway extension is also top of Schenker’s list. The actual route for the next phase of the Autobahn is not yet finalised, but the intended stretch would involve levelling ://about blank, Neue Zukunft, Oxi, Void, Villa Kuriosum, Club Ost, Renate and its sister club Else. Paradoxically, Schneider says, this proposed path is likely also a reason these clubs haven’t faced even higher rent hikes over past years – investors don’t want to gamble on properties that’ll potentially be destroyed by the state.
Focusing on just their economic impact ignores what clubs mean to people, though, argues Schenker. “I have a bit of a fear that since the Senate is moving more in this direction that whoever can make it as a club under these real market conditions is welcome to stay in Berlin.” The fact that these buildings also provide “safer spaces” for marginalised communities is fundamental, he says, and losing them would be devastating.
Remaking paradise lost
Even if it wasn’t explicit, clubs were safer spaces for these groups from the beginning, says DJ, producer and veteran of the Berlin club scene Sven von Thülen. “It was a little bit like this Funkadelic song ‘One Nation Under a Groove’, this way of coming together, this way of taking drugs together, dancing together – it united all these people from totally different aspects of life.” The demographics of Berlin in the mid-90s can’t compare to the diverse population today, says von Thülen, but, playing regularly at club mainstays like Berghain since it opened, he remembers seemingly disparate groups sharing in something bigger than themselves: “probably-right-wing football hooligans” alongside Black gay men from the US, for example.
Von Thülen heard echoes of this in the 150 interviews that he and journalist Felix Denk conducted for their 2012 book, Klang Der Familie, an oral history of the Berlin club scene post-reunification. It’s not like racism, homophobia, sexism and discrimination didn’t exist, says von Thülen, but what trickled down from the early 90s into the 2000s felt transformative. “It’s like a slow drip of personal change. This sounds kind of corny, but you realise we are not that different.’”

Debates about just how inclusive the Berlin club scene is, or was, have long accompanied the nostalgia around it. The queer collective Room 4 Resistance was founded in 2014 as a platform to question the politics of the dancefloor. One of its founders, Luis Manuel Garcia-Mispireta, says that the very door policy that is supposed to ensure an inclusive experience instead curates a “managed diversity”.
“Much in the same way that a ‘vintage’ clothing store offers a range of clothing that is carefully selected to give an inaccurate-but-appealing image of past eras, nightclubs curate crowds to give the aesthetic of diversity without the hard work of inclusion,” says Mispireta. “Many venues select their guests with the goal of creating an image of easy, spontaneous ‘diversity’ that is only possible through very harsh forms of exclusion at the door.”
Sometimes cost pressures also interfere with inclusivity. In 2019, after Watergate dealt with a rent increase, they upped ticket costs, including to their Afrohouse party night Rise, which foregrounds Black DJs. This priced out guests from the community it was meant to serve, DJ and music producer Sarah Farina told tip Berlin in 2021. “In the end, it’s a white party with Black DJs.”
Deconstructing the sound barrier
Most Wahlberliner have probably heard how things were better before, regardless of when they arrived. “When I got here people already said it’s dead,” says von Thülen of the club scene in 1996. Still, clubs closing down feels like a serious thing every time it’s come up. 2012 saw a big Clubsterben scare: the then-15-year old Icon club closed its doors on the heels of the historic Knaack shutting down after decades in operation.
Similar issues existed then, with club owners speaking about how difficult and expensive it was to find a space. Noise complaints played a bigger role, though, says Schneider of the Jugendarchiv, as did neighbourhood conflicts. This is where the Club Commission steps in nowadays, like with a state-sponsored fund to subsidise noise-reducing measures.
The club scene has shown itself to be adaptive, says Gejic, especially during the pandemic, when many pivoted into beer gardens, testing centres, flea markets, shelters for unhoused people and whatever else they felt they could offer. Brick-and-mortar locations might very well become less significant than they were 20 years ago, she posits.

“There has been a certain importance to venues like Watergate or Berghain, or other established venues as well. They had a huge importance for DJs who really wanted to play there once in their life.” Over time, collectives have become more significant, hosting popular and regular event series for their communities, says Gejic. “This is definitely a shift.”
It’s also much harder to find new spaces nowadays, she says, both because they are limited and because of the operating costs. In some cases, Berlin’s evolving cityscape can provide opportunities, as in the case of the Turbulence collective, which opened on the former Tegel airport grounds and was funded by the state. “This is a very specific case, but it’s not something that would be the solution for everyone, as we cannot depend on the Senate to offer us spaces,” Gejic says.
According to the Club Commission’s 2019 study, one-third of Berlin clubs were operational in the same location for over 10 years. Some venues have started offering the use of their space for other types of cultural or corporate events, says Gejic, and that remains an option for those willing to be more flexible or become more commercial.
Perhaps there’s a natural cycle to Berlin’s club scene: Watergate will close by the end of 2024 after 22 years overlooking the Spree, but Berghain still stands where it’s been for 20 years; Renate has until the end of 2025 to say goodbye, but KitKat continues thriving in its fourth location since it first opened in 1994. But whether clubs manage to endure or not, younger generations might not keep going. One of the heads of Watergate, Uli Wombacher, told Berliner Zeitung that Berlin’s club culture “has lost relevance”, especially for the generation that came of age during the pandemic.

”People looked for other things to do during Covid, music is consumed differently, digital has taken an extremely big step. The average clubber goes out for three or four years, then they finish their studies or whatever, and the next generation comes along. Generational leaps are quick in this business. Two and a half years of closed clubs make a difference.” This may have even been true before the pandemic hit, too. According to numbers from the 2018-2019 report, most folks hitting Berlin clubs are 31-40, with only 9% aged 18-21, based on estimates by club owners and event organisers.
Rising entrance fees are also a factor, says von Thülen, but amongst the younger generations, personal politics have become more important inside the club than ever before. “There’s much more a need of ‘Where do I see myself? Where am I safe?’” says von Thülen. “In ‘95 people thought for a minute that the conflict in the Middle East would be solved with this two-state solution, right? Horrible stuff happened all the time, but it was kind of easier to focus on the seemingly good things.” It’s become more divided, starting with the pandemic and now the war in Gaza, he says.
In February, several DJs and artists pulled out of Berlin’s annual electronic music event, CTM Festival. This was in support of Strike Germany’s boycott of German cultural institutions and what they define as “McCarthyist policies” towards “expressions of solidarity with Palestine”. Over the summer, Berghain was also met with calls for boycott after French-Lebanese DJ Arabian Panther accused them of cancelling his event due to pro-Palestinian messages on social media. Free expression is critical to rebuilding the community behind the club scene, von Thülen says, but it isn’t always rewarded, especially from less established DJs.
When Berlin clubs face the challenges of commercial business, it might feel contradictory to call back on that early renegade spirit to protect their legacy. But that’s a core component, says de Picciotto – it has to be. “Get the whole thing alive again, so that it’s not actually something that you could exchange with AI or robots, but really bring that important soul thing to it,” she says.
Some clubs are able to continue operating by diversifying, by operating like cultural institutions in the more formal sense, hosting panels and community events in addition to live shows and club nights. “The underground is the soil from which a lot of really important things grow, and in that way it’s a really important aspect, but if it’s all about playing generic music which you can also hear on Spotify […] it’s not a cultural heritage.”
Enshrining clubs as cultural heritage could make them less accessible, though. Any long-term solutions to keep clubs relevant and viable have to be flexible – like with state support, which not everyone wants. Von Thülen ponders the same question, wondering if this “top-down” approach allows the scene to really be “alive”. The spark needs to come from the underground, he says, in order to bring people together. This is where the collectives come in, says Gejic: they’re evolving the parties to their needs.
“We also see more events that are very much focused on inclusivity, on more diversity, on more equality,” she says. In the end, it all comes down to the people, von Thülen says. “I generally think when I see the good clubs or parties that are successful, it is, now more than ever, that they’re creating community. That community can be diverse – it can be specific to whatever – but they manage to create community over long periods of time.” The drugs, the booze, the sex, that’s all secondary, he says. “That’s all fine, but do that in community. You want connection, that’s what you want.”