Wednesday night, Falckensteinstraße 49. The glass front at the foot of the Oberbaumbrücke, dark for the better part of two years, lit up again. Richie Hawtin, Ben Klock, BASHKKA and Valentina Magaletti in the booth, the Spree outside the windows.

That was a pre-opening. The real thing starts on 30 October, when Silencio opens a seven-month pop-up in the rooms that used to be Watergate.

What's happening

  • What: Silencio Berlin, a temporary club project
  • Where: the former Watergate, Falckensteinstraße 49, Kreuzberg
  • Opens: 30 October 2026
  • Runs until: May 2027
  • Programme: announced in October

The format, according to the press release: a different collective takes over the space every weekend. No names yet. The project is part of Reference Festival, and the pre-opening doubled as the party for Maurizio Cattelan's exhibition "Night" at the Neue Nationalgalerie — so the first crowd through the door was Art Week, not Wednesday ravers.

Who Silencio are

Silencio opened in Paris in 2011 on Rue Montmartre, founded by Arnaud Frisch together with Manu Barron and Anthony Caton — the team behind Social Club. The interior was designed by David Lynch, and the name comes straight from Club Silencio in Mulholland Drive. More culture club than techno club: concerts, film, art, a guest list that reads like a festival programme.

Berlin marks Silencio's 15th birthday. It isn't their first pop-up either — they've run temporary rooms around the Venice Biennale, Cannes, Art Basel Miami Beach and in New York.

Frisch's line on it, roughly: a club is something you reinvent, not something you preserve — and Berlin understood that before any other city.

What they did to the rooms

Studio Karhard — the people behind Berghain's interiors — stripped Watergate back. The floor is gone and the red brick underneath is exposed. The layout stays: bars and toilets are where you remember them.

The booths moved, though. Upstairs, the decks now sit against the windows. Downstairs on the old Water Floor, they're in the middle of the room. Artist Marc Leschelier built new booths out of concrete blocks and placed concrete sculptures around the space, including one on the pontoon. Studio Raito and Bureau Borsche are on the new visual identity. The Watergate logo on the façade has been painted over in black.

Where Watergate went

Watergate opened in 2002 and closed at the end of 2024 after 22 years, with a 35-hour New Year's Eve send-off. Co-founder Ulrich Wombacher said the reasons were financial. The rooms have been empty since.

The brand didn't disappear: the team kept "Don't Stop The Dance" going with open airs at Sage Beach and Malzfabrik. In August, the building's owner, the Padovicz group, told rbb it had signed an "internationally successful club operator" as tenant. Silencio fits the description — what happens after May is still open.

Our listing, photos and history of the venue: Watergate Club Berlin.

Not everyone is cheering

Groove was blunt: an international art-and-fashion crowd moving into one of Berlin's most important club spaces, with little visible link to the local scene. Silencio says it is in dialogue with the city's creative communities. The weekend takeovers will be the test — who gets booked, what the door looks like, and whether regular Berliners get in.

Why it matters anyway

Seven months is not a comeback. Nobody knows what happens to Falckensteinstraße 49 after May.

But look at the last two years. Watergate closed. Clubs across the city are fighting rent, costs and a motorway. And in 2026 the direction started to turn: AMT opened under the Alexanderplatz arches in March, and now one of the most famous rooms on the Spree has sound in it again.

A club space a lot of people had written off is back in use — with big names on the decks and a serious design team behind it. That's exciting. Short-term, yes. But every room that comes back instead of turning into offices is a chance for the future of Berlin nightlife.

30 October. Programme in October. We'll list the nights as soon as they're out.