In recent years, partying has changed. Quietly at first, then Covid hit, and suddenly it was impossible to ignore. The classic club night as we know it: Friday after work, go home, eat, shower, get ready. Then meet up with friends, take a detour through some bar, into the club by 1am, and let loose until sunrise. This very club night simply does not work for a lot of people anymore. Or at least not on a regular basis. The desire for community hasn’t gone away, only the structure and the expectations around it have changed.
Under the label of “soft clubbing,” formats are growing that isolate music and human connection from the stereotypical elements like sleep deprivation and blackout drinking. Instead, you now have morning raves in coffee shops at 10am with an oat latte in hand, where you dance to house music. Daytime open airs in the park, sauna sessions with a DJ, or techno yoga are gaining traction.
For the “regular” clubs, all of this feels like a slow drowning. The regulars are getting older, but the new generation often isn’t showing up.
Running parallel to this, new social hubs are taking shape. Some are simply hobby groups, the kind our parents attended too. Just with sharper marketing and a polished Instagram presence that nudges you to check out the run club, the cycling group, or the board game café. Officially, you’re there for the hobby. Unofficially, you’re meeting new faces, casually starting conversations, and hoping something sticks. In cities like London and New York, members’ clubs are popping up on every corner, existing as a third space alongside work and home. Connections increasingly don’t happen in the smoking area of a club, but in these softer, curated environments.
There are multiple reasons for this phenomenon. More and more young people genuinely care about their health. They eat more consciously, drink less or not at all, and as a result often feel more inhibited around strangers. On top of that, Gen Z is widely considered more reserved than any previous generation, while apps and the dating fatigue that comes with them have taken the appeal out of one-night stands and purely physical encounters for many.
The final push towards a declining club culture is the financial mood. Surveys paint a clear picture: a large number of young people feel financially worse off than their parents. A full night out, including entry, drinks, and a cab, quickly feels like financial self-destruction. In a world where social media constantly makes you feel like you’re not enough, and everything trends towards relentless self-optimisation, there’s little room for a carefree and expensive club night.
So anyone who still needs to function the next morning thinks twice before giving in to excess. And clubs outside of major cities get hit twice: villages are emptying, the capitals pull in the last people still up for a night out, and what’s left are empty dance floors, booking fees, electricity bills, and owners asking themselves why they’re even bothering.
All of this mostly applies to going out regularly. The urge to occasionally let loose and celebrate something, even if it’s just life, hasn’t disappeared. But because it happens less frequently, those evenings now carry a different weight. Much like concerts, nights out are now planned far in advance. Events are researched and trips organised around them, sometimes months ahead. The expectation is different from spontaneously ending up at your local club on a Saturday.
Because of that, the phrase “I’m going to Berlin for the club scene” sounds almost nostalgic today. Most people have long been coming for something specific. Nobody books a flight to see “what’s going on.” You come for Berghain, for KitKat, for Sisyphos, or any other precisely set target.
At least, these are the big names reported on across TikTok, Instagram, and Reddit. They prove that a strong club brand is more than a logo. It stands for the vibe of a place: from sex-positive, to hippie-esque, to exclusive and mysterious. Visitors consciously choose what they’re in the mood for.
The same principle works globally, especially in the luxury segment. One of the most well-known examples is Pacha. The club with the iconic cherry leveraged its Ibiza success to open outposts in Barcelona, Munich, and even New York. Artists can be booked across multiple locations, and guests broadly know what standard to expect from the venue.
But often it’s not enough anymore. These days, aesthetics play an even more important role than technical quality. Scorpios demonstrated this particularly impressively. The beach club on Mykonos opened in 2015 and quickly became one of the island’s most popular hotspots. Within just a few years, in 2024, an outpost followed in Bodrum. The same DNA, focused on the same international jetset boho-luxury crowd. And anyone who shares their visit on social media also signals belonging, regardless of whether they’re currently in Greece or Turkey.
Whether Pacha or Scorpios: these places have long since ceased to be just clubs. They are lifestyle brands. On feeds and stories, they shape the aesthetic of many while simultaneously signalling status, interests, and musical taste. Berlin’s equivalent remains the classic post-Berghain photo or the mirror selfie in a KitKat outfit. That’s how identities form, ones that outlast every season and every DJ trend.
Many of the most established clubs have also understood that identity doesn’t stop at the door. Rather than capturing the moment only in photos and videos, even if it’s just the classic black video taken in Berghain, they print it onto fabric: T-shirts, hoodies, lighters, keyrings. Guests take these souvenirs home willingly. A physical extension of their experience.
Basically, these pieces work like band T-shirts. They tell stories and signal interests without anyone having to say a word out loud. And the way they achieve this is particularly fascinating.
Let’s take a look at Amsterdam’s Club Raum. What began in 2017 as an event series called Spielraum had by 2024 grown into a permanent fixture and one of the city’s most important underground clubs. Part of it from the very beginning: the visual identity. Playful shapes, vivid colours, and an immediately recognisable curved typeface. Through posters around the city and posts on social media, visitors are primed for the look. It’s no longer necessary to plaster the club name across a T-shirt. An elegant if-you-know-you-know that fits seamlessly into everyday life.
Whether it’s Club Raum’s unmistakable typeface, the globally recognised circle of the Tresor logo, or Pacha’s vivid cherries: these small details open conversations with people who have already been, or are planning to go to these venues. In the right environment, they say more than any high-fashion piece, because they signal interest and perhaps even belonging. Win-win, because that’s how the sense of community can be carried across borders.
Classic fashion brands have also grasped the power behind club culture and are actively seeking proximity to it. Carhartt WIP collaborated with Tresor for its 30th anniversary: a capsule collection, a vinyl compilation, and joint events in Detroit and Berlin. Umbro, in turn, has worked with the organiser Boiler Room on multiple occasions. Tracksuits and jerseys aren’t only good for sport, they’re great for dancing too.
Even at the high-fashion level, this movement exists, and was demonstrated particularly well by one brand: S’YTE by Yohji Yamamoto Inc. brought the Marquee Club, once one of London’s most influential stages, back to life. Iconic graphics from its active days landed on typical Yohji Yamamoto silhouettes. A club archive that one can definitely wear.
Words like “brand” and “branding” can quickly start to sound like a sell-out. But the shift from a diffuse sense of scene belonging to a clear identity is, in the current climate, less a betrayal than a survival strategy. Anyone who just wants to be “a good club” today gets lost, competing for an ever-shrinking pool of local visitors. There are too many claiming the same thing. A brand demands clarity: what do we stand for? Who are we not? Which guests belong here, and which don’t?
Of course, there are downsides. The stronger the brand-building, the greater the risk of smoothing things out. Excess gets curated, edges get sanded down, and a chaotic meeting point for everyone turns into a selective echo chamber. Someone already shaped by a very specific public image might decline more quickly, assuming they’d be out of place, rather than simply turning up and forming their own opinion. Community can quickly become blind brand loyalty, an easy target for exploitation by bad actors.
It’s precisely this tension that clubs are navigating today: too much brand and you become a sterile amusement park for adults; too little and you vanish with the next trend. The question is no longer whether you want to be a brand, but how you are actively steering it, to leave a positive legacy behind.