After 22 years in business, Berlin’s famous Watergate nightclub will permanently close at the end of 2024 due to financial reasons.
“With a heavy heart, we have decided to end our club operations at Watergate at the end of the year and to not renew our lease,” the venue shared in a statement posted to social media today. “With the pressure of rising costs and shifting club culture, this is the only sensible and responsible decision.”
Speaking to Resident Advisor, Watergate co-founder Ulrich Wombacher cited “inflation, the energy crisis, rising costs in general, and not least, the high rent” charged for the club’s location in the heart of Berlin on the River Spree as the primary reasons for the club’s closure, alongside the rising popularity of larger events and festivals.
“A Club like Watergate is based on the original idea of the club as a defining place for an entire musical generation,” he said. “Now that we see things going in a different direction, it’s time for us to take this last step. Continuing blindly without sense or reason and risking an uncontrolled financial decline is out of the question for us. We’ve chosen to step down while we still have control and to leave the stage with dignity.”
Watergate will host a run of farewell parties from its birthday in October through its closure at the end of the year, with an exact closing date still yet to be announced. RA reports that Charlotte de Witte, Sven Väth, Richie Hawtin, Marlon Hoffstadt, DJ Minx, and Kerri Chandler are among the names confirmed for the closing run, alongside influential parties such as Multisex, Mala Junta, Club Heartbroken, and New Kids on Acid. Full programming will be announced in the coming months.
Last month, nearby club Renate also announced its closure due to financial pressures and rent increases. Both venues have the same landlord, Gijora Padovicz, a notorious real estate developer in the city’s Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg neighborhood. In 2020, Padovicz forcibly evicted a longstanding anarcha-queer-feminist squat community from his newly purchased Liebigstrasse 34 property.
Many of Berlin’s clubs have also been threatened following a proposed 17th stage of construction of the city’s A100 motorway, which opposers say would annihilate prominent nightclubs in the region.
Hailed as one of Berlin’s most influential nightclubs, Watergate was founded in 2002 in Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg by Wombacher, Steffen Hack, and Niklas Eichstädt. The club’s namesake label, Watergate Records, and related brands will continue to exist outside of the shuddered physical space.
Read Watergate’s full statement in the post below.
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Featured image from Watergate.
