For thirty years the uniform was the same. Black T-shirt, black trousers, straight face, 140 BPM of something serious. Berlin didn't smile on the dancefloor, and it was proud of that.

Walk around the city on a weekend in 2026 and something has shifted. There's glitter on the U-Bahn at 7am. Trance breakdowns get cheers instead of eye-rolls. Club nights put words like bounce, hard dance and Eurodance on their flyers without irony. Berlin is taking off the black. Not all of it, and not everywhere, but enough that it's worth asking what's going on.

The sound got happier (and faster)

The most obvious change is the music. Trance, the genre Berlin's techno purists spent two decades sneering at, is back, and one of its biggest faces lives here. Berlin DJ Marlon Hoffstadt, better known as DJ Daddy Trance, went from local outsider to Mixmag cover star. His 2023 track It's That Time passed 70 million streams, and this year's calendar includes EDC and Coachella. Big hooks and euphoric breakdowns are fashionable again.

Next to it sits a harder, bouncier strand: bounce, hard dance, hard trance, makina, neo rave. It's fast, melodic and built for jumping rather than nodding. You no longer have to hunt for it:

  • Seazed at Void Club in Lichtenberg runs a whole floor of Bounce, Trance, Makina, Hardhouse and Hardtrance next to a Schranz and hard techno floor. The next one is on Friday 9 October, with no dress code and tickets from 6€.
  • M-BIA by Alexanderplatz has billed Club Nacht as Hard Techno // Hard Trance // Hard Bounce, at under 10€ on the door.
  • TOP90s at Badehaus on the RAW grounds leans fully into the nostalgia with Eurodance, 2000s bangers and themed nights. There's a Neon Special this Saturday and a Bad Taste Special on 17 October.

None of these is a fetish party. They're ordinary Berlin club nights, and that's exactly the point: the colourful turn isn't a niche anymore.

Why now?

A new generation wants a different kind of night. International coverage has been circling this for a while. CNN described Gen Z clubbers who find the classic scene expensive, strict at the door and "less exciting", and who want something looser and more social. In May, Dazed called it "less cool, less cold". Toy Tonics boss Mathias Modica put it in one line: "Kindness is the new coolness."

People drink less and stay shorter. The Clubcommission's Clubkultur Berlin 2026 study puts numbers on it: 73% of clubs sell less alcohol, 57% see shorter visits, and 62% have widened their programming in response. A night that runs on euphoria rather than endurance fits that crowd better.

Joy is a reasonable reaction to hard times. Rents are up, doors cost 20 to 30€, and clubs keep closing. When the world outside is heavy, not everyone wants the dancefloor to be heavy as well.

And the kinky end?

Berlin's fetish and sex-positive scene has always been the blackest corner of the blackest city: leather, latex, harnesses, techno. It's now getting its own colourful wing.

The first sign was Trance Baby Trance, which launched at INSOMNIA in 2025 as an experiment: what happens if the kinky crowd dances to euphoric trance instead of techno? It found its audience. After a final edition following Rave The Planet on 15 August, it has now been relaunched as BOUNCE under the UNDR umbrella, next to UNLEASHED, HEAT and CAGE. It serves bounce, hard dance and euphoric trance on two floors, with playspaces around them. The dresscode flips the usual fetish rules: costumes and full character looks are welcome as long as they stay kinky, and when the club is full, colour gets in first. The premiere is Saturday 17 October.

What's interesting is less the party itself than the shift it represents. A kinky night that openly tells people they don't need a fetish wardrobe, that watching is fine and that a costume counts is lowering the entry threshold to a scene that has always had a high one. For first-timers, a room full of neon and glitter is simply easier to walk into than a black box.

What it means for the scene

The dress code is changing, not disappearing. "Anything but street clothes" still applies at many doors, but effort is increasingly measured in colour and creativity rather than how much black leather you own.

Techno isn't going anywhere. Berghain is still Berghain, and hard techno is still packing rooms. What's new is that Berlin now has more than one answer to "what does a good night sound like?", and the answers are allowed to be fun.

There is a risk of nostalgia on repeat. Plenty of this wave borrows heavily from the 90s and 2000s. The nights that last will be the ones that build something new on top of the references, not just play the old hits louder.

It's good for newcomers. Cheaper nights like Seazed or M-BIA, reduced tickets like Kater's Next-Gen or 28 & UNDR, and friendlier formats all point the same way: Berlin is slowly rebuilding the entrance to its scene. A city that only knows how to look cool at the door eventually runs out of new people.

Berlin still wears black, and it probably always will. But on more nights than ever, it's wearing it with a little glitter on top.

Looking for a party this weekend? Browse all upcoming parties in Berlin on Berliner.party.