Berlin's legendary club life is changing again. Although some clubs have experienced a boom after long closures during the corona pandemic, high inflation, rising rents and declining tourist numbers have led to shorter queues outside clubs in the German capital.
The famous dance clubs in the city generated an income of 2018 billion euros in 1,5, and this year Germany included Berlin techno in the UNESCO list of intangible cultural heritage.
Nevertheless, "klubšterben" or "dying of clubs" is becoming an increasingly present phenomenon, as several iconic clubs are closing their doors.
Watergate, the pioneering electronic dance club by the river Spree that opened in 2002, will say goodbye to Berlin on New Year's Eve.
That news shocked the club scene, after another notable club, Wild Renate, announced that it would close in 2025 because they failed to agree on a new lease. "Divlja Renata" is among several clubs threatened by the expansion of the A100 highway through Berlin.
"Watergate", which has long been the center of gathering of world DJs, can no longer afford top talents. He also struggles to attract the "party maniacs" who once flocked to his water dance floor.
Are Berlin clubs losing importance?
"The days when Berlin was flooded with clubbing visitors are over. At least for now. The scene is fighting for survival," the owners said in a post on Instagram.
They partly blamed the decision not to renew the lease on "financial pressure", caused by "high rents, war, inflation and rising costs".
However, the founders of "Watergate" also pointed to a deeper problem: "The change in the dynamics of the night life of the next generation of clubs and the shift in the importance of club culture in general" were also the reason for making the decision to close the club.
One of the reasons for such a fundamental change is that smaller, independent Berlin clubs can no longer compete with the big festivals that attract tens of thousands of young people to watch mega-stars DJ.
Due to the general economic conditions, the clubs could disappear in a similar way as traditional Berlin bars (pubs) disappear, Ulrich Wombacher, co-founder of "Watergate" told the "Berliner Zeitung".
According to the Berlin Hotel and Restaurant Association, there used to be around 20.000 local pubs, but now only around 500 remain. Skyrocketing rents or contract terminations are responsible for this.
"Notorious" real estate owners are evicting clubs
The club "Divlja Renata", located in a former apartment building on the other side of the river Spree, is also likely to close at the end of 2025, due to high rents and failure to renew the lease.
The owners say their "notorious" landlord, developer Dzora Padovic who has bought up many apartment blocks in central Berlin since the 1990s, has refused to cooperate despite "intense efforts to find a solution to extend the contract or alternative solutions".
Padovič is also the owner of the building where the "Watergate" club is located in Kreuzberg, a neighborhood in which an accelerated process of urbanization and modernization, known as "fast-gentrifying", is taking place. After Padovic doubled the rent in the late 2010s, Watergate's owners didn't want to raise prices. They have been in a financial crisis ever since.
About 43 percent of club owners in Berlin are affected by rising rents, says Luc Leichsenring, spokesman for the Club Commission, which supports club culture in the capital. In an article for the newspaper "Tagesspiegel", Leichsenring emphasized the need to regulate commercial rents for culturally significant places such as clubs and to guarantee affordable rents in the long term.
This guarantee can be realized if the Berlin clubs are recognized as part of the UNESCO world heritage, and not only as objects of "intangible cultural heritage" within Germany. This is something supported by Berlin's Minister of Culture, Dzo Cialo.
Club culture is "transformed", not destroyed
Another reason for the challenging times on the Berlin club scene is that young people of clubbing age grew up in an era of economic stagnation and could not "build a relationship with the club culture", notes Marcel Weber, president of the Berlin Club Commission. However, he believes that Berlin's clubs still play a "vital role in the city's economy and tourism".
For example, "Rave the Planet", the latest incarnation of the famous techno street festival "Love Parade", is quickly developing into a major global event.
The transient club culture, which emerged from the abandoned spaces of the former East Berlin, was always in flux, adds Veber. "Berlin has always been a city of change, and the club scene adapts to these changes. That is why what we are observing now is more of a transformation than a decline."
Maintaining hope in "chaos"
Stories about the death of clubs in Berlin are nothing new. The world-famous techno club "Berghain" was on the verge of closing in 2022, but it still survives. For now.
Other clubs, such as "Griessmühle", a post-industrial dance complex on the Neukölln canal, were evicted in 2019, but later reopened as RSO in a former factory in distant but rapidly developing Schönweide.
New clubs are also opening in places where old ones have closed, Weber noted, including Maaya Berlin, formerly known as Haubentaucher - a center for African and Afro-diaspora music, art and culture.
Days of club culture
Under the motto "Behind tomorrow: Let's stay full of hope in chaos", the Club Commission of Berlin organized the fifth edition of the Day of Club Culture from October 3 to 10, which included the applications of 185 clubs and cultural collectives for up to 10.000 euros in funding.
With events across the city, the festival aims to "showcase Berlin's clubs and collectives as places of strength, hope and reflection in challenging times".
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