November 11, 2025 |
Christmas for club heads comes in October. For five nights (22nd–26th), Amsterdam Dance Event (ADE) saw venues across the city – including clubs, pubs, churches, even corner shops – host revelers who sought out a spectrum of electronic music from the globe’s finest selectors. Arguably the most impressive event of this year’s festival took place on the outskirts of the city, at Club Raum, which hosted a 55-hour party soundtracked by a stellar DJ line-up including Eris Drew, Carista, Freddy K and Juliana Huxtable.
It was the longest Spielraum – Raum’s weekend-long queer parties – the club has thrown since it opened in April 2024. “Preparations for the line-up started way back in February,” say founders Diego Meijers and Sven Bijma. “We wanted to approach this ADE with full creative freedom.”
Doubling as a dance floor sanctuary and a queer pleasure palace, Club Raum has carved out a clubbing experience quite like no other. “We wanted to open an outstanding night club in every possible way, but with queerness in its DNA,” says Meijers and Bijma. The duo are stalwart figureheads within the Dutch nightlife scene. Before opening Raum, they would hold their queer Spielraum weekenders in venues all over Amsterdam and host guest spots in clubs in cities like Berlin and Tbilisi. Their idea to build a permanent home stemmed from the desire to create “a space where queer and marginalised communities are not guests, but the foundation. Where their creativity, energy and ideas shape what happens inside these walls,” they say.
from left: Sedef Adasï, resident: “I love this club because it is very genuine”; Magali Afanou, clubber: “‘It is magical to have places where we can come together and celebrate each other”
“It was essential for us to create a nightclub that met our own high standards of quality, based on the experiences we’d had in other clubs,” they continue. “That translates into strong musical programming that touches many genres, listening closely to the needs of our audience, yet remaining unapologetically independent. It’s a complex formula that we still haven’t fully mastered. And we think that search for the formula is the essence of what we’ve created, because we suspect we’ll never truly find it. That’s what makes it beautiful. We’ll keep searching and improving, adjusting and fine-tuning till the very end.”
In curating the 55-hour party, they wanted each of the club’s rooms to tell a different story, “for people to move between spaces that each offered their own atmosphere and emotional territory,” say the pair. The ground floor’s Expo room adopted a “darker, harsher, and more intense” soundscape which darted between the thundering basslines of Blasha & Allatt through to the menacing techno of Ki/Ki and Mama Shake and a highlight set from Ræza.
from left: Youssef Ahmed Mahmoud, community manager: “As a queer person helping shape up a queer space, that’s what makes it very special”; Willem Verhees, clubber: “I feel right at home here”
Upstairs in the Studio, things got more euphoric in tone. When we arrived at the club Saturday night, the party was in full swing. Jen Cardini had the dance floor pulsating with driving house punctuated with fierce break beats, segueing nicely into Sedef Adasï, who triggered a fabulous moment of gay panic with a sublime reworking of Madonna’s Justify My Love. “’I love this club because it is very genuine,” says Adasi, who is a Raum resident. “The most important part of when we talk about club culture is that we take care of each other and we really think of creating a space that is thoughtful. That means Club Raum for me.”
Another highlight came from a last-minute addition to the line-up, Manchester’s Anz, who brought her signature flavour of bubbly UK bass and upbeat house to Raum in the earliest hours of Sunday morning. “Even though we’ve done long weekenders before, taking it to 55 hours was something else entirely,” say the founders. “The key is to think beyond just logistics; it’s about building a continuous experience that stays emotionally coherent, even as people come and go, day turns into night, and the energy constantly shifts.”
In creating Raum, Meijers and Bijma set out to build a space “that feels like a world of its own — where you can lose yourself completely, but still feel safe, held and connected.” This is reflected in the club’s gorgeous interiors, which include gridded glass bars, a pared-back, concrete cafe space and elegant lighting design that moves from sensual red in the club’s locker room and toilet area through to sunset oranges and purples in the walkways between dance floors.
“The architecture plays with contrasts: opulence meets intimacy, chaos meets control. Every corner offers a different energy, from immersive installations to quiet, dimly lit zones that let people breathe,” add the pair. They’ve collaborated with a series of artists to help define Raum’s visual language. Catalina Reyes Navarro, a locally based talent, created an installation of flags stamped with hazy club photos from previous Raum parties, which is the centerpiece of the club’s main chill-out space. The work is part of Raum’s artist-in-residence program by Lucia Fernandez Santoro, which invites a series of different creatives to show work within the club.
A second chill-out area, imagined by architects Joaquin Valdes and Bram van Grinsven, is designed as an amphitheater, flanked by glass walls, that comes bathed in reds and blues thanks to lighting strips that halo the space. “The design is a statement. It reflects our belief that clubs can be cultural institutions in their own right — places of artistic expression and transformation, not just consumption,” say the founders.
from left: Heleen Wintershoven, clubber: “I love the club because it is where you can be you”; Ketia, resident: “It feels like coming home versus going to work”
It was the latter space that Meijers and Bijma transformed into Arena, a third dance floor debuted for ADE. “Every big event at Raum is an opportunity to transform the space, to show people a different side of what the club can be. The Arena was born from that instinct – a dance floor that could hold a lot of energy without losing its sense of connection. The 55-hour weekender felt like the perfect moment to unveil it.”
The concept behind the weekend, they say, was to explore fresh sounds and new ways of moving through the space. “We asked all the DJs to play the music they really love, but that might be a bit different from what they usually do,” add Meijers and Bijma. “While the Studio and Expo were more defined in genre, the Arena became a space that went in all directions.” Here, DJ Flight unleashed a masterclass in jungle, Jerrau has the walls trembling with an eclectic bass-y cocktail of sounds and Ketia closed out the stage Monday morning with a tour through their trance collection, transporting the crowd to euphoric new heights when they dropped Rui Da Silva’s classic, Touch Me. “It feels like coming home versus going to work [when playing Raum],” says Ketia.
“You never really know if something that eclectic will work,” say Meijers and Bijma of the Arena concept, “but that room ended up being very special. DJs felt encouraged to take risks.”
Joining the likes of Ketia, Mama Shake, Adasï and Ræza were a slew of fellow Raum residents who brought the heat all weekend long. “’I like playing at this club because I feel like nowhere in the world you get to see a community come together like this,” says Bashkka, who will return to Raum for an all night long set next month. It’s a sentiment echoed by duo Doppelgang: “Raum gives us creatively everything we need, we feel at home here.”
“Our resident roster grew organically, shaped by the people who helped form the soul of the club,” say the founders. “It was never about genre first – it was about energy, perspective, and representation. We wanted residents who could embody a deep love for the culture that built nightlife in the first place.”
Doppelgang, residents: “Raum gives us creatively everything we need, we feel at home here”
While community is a word thrown around loosely in club culture, after spending two nights partying at the Raum, it was clear that there is a deep-rooted connection between its DJs, dancers, staff and founders. “As people who party a lot, we become part of a space that has already existed for so long, so you don’t really have a role in seeing it shape up,” says Youssef Ahmed Mahmoud, Raum’s community manager. “As a queer person helping shape up a queer space and being a part of it, that’s what makes it very special.”
Meijers and Bijma created Raum to bridge “worlds that often exist separately: nightlife, art and education. That’s why we host talks, residencies, and visual installations alongside club nights,” say the pair. Ultimately, though, for Raum devotees like Heleen Wintershoven, who travels from Rotterdam each weekend to visit the club, it’s a place to feel liberated, connected and free to be themselves.
“A night at Raum should give you more than release; it should give you resonance,” say the founders. “Maybe that’s the feeling of community, a conversation that stays with you, or the spark of inspiration that carries into your own work. Or maybe just makes you bike home with a smile on your face.”
Photography by Bailey Slater.
