Cheeky Monday

An accident in a coffeeshop, May 2005

Cheeky Monday started in May 2005 at Winston Kingdom, a small room attached to a hotel in Amsterdam's Red Light District. By the account the promoters still publish, it was not planned as an institution: the idea came out of a conversation between the Winston's bookers and DJ Sinistah, who suggested both the concept and the name. A Monday night in a city with no shortage of weekend drum & bass seemed like a bad bet, and the first one sold out.

The night did not go weekly immediately. It ran monthly first, then fortnightly, and only later settled into the Monday-every-Monday pattern that the name now implies. Co-founder Loz, who still manages the night, has described the origin as an accident rather than a plan — a framing that fits the slogan the promoters have used ever since: "Once you go Cheeky, you gotta go weekly."

What held the Monday slot together was the shape of the room. The Winston's club space was small, low and loud, which suited jungle and the breakbeat end of drum & bass better than a large weekend floor would have, and it drew a repeat crowd rather than a tourist one. That audience, more than any single booking, is what the night has traded on since.

Leaving the Winston, December 2017

Winston Kingdom closed in late 2017, and the Cheeky Monday mix archive dates the ending precisely: the final drum & bass party in the room was billed as Sneeky Sunday and recorded on 17 December 2017, with sets from Tradesman and Insom among the uploads. Those recordings are still the most recent items on the night's Mixcloud page, which now functions as a time capsule of the Winston years rather than an active feed.

The night moved to the Melkweg in 2017 and has stayed there. The Melkweg, on Lijnbaansgracht in the city centre, is a far bigger operation than a Red Light District bar — a multi-room venue with its own programming department — and the transfer turned a scene night into a fixture on the calendar of one of the country's best-known music buildings. The promoters now put their total at roughly 1,500 events across both venues.

The Melkweg's own copy makes two claims for it: that it is the only weekly jungle and drum & bass event in the Netherlands, and that it is among the longest-running club nights in Europe. The second is a hard thing to prove, but twenty-one unbroken years of a weekly slot is a defensible basis for it.

No records — the resident roster is the body of work

Cheeky Monday has no discography, no label and no album campaign. What it has instead is a resident list deep enough to fill a bill without a guest, and the recurring names are the closest thing the night has to a catalogue. Multiplex appears on almost every listing, usually as host rather than headliner. Sinistah, who named the thing, is still booked. Insom, Spud, Gibbo, Adi-J, Loco, Oneiroi, Serpnt, Karimooo, Graved, Yi-Ching, Bass80, Lynn Drumm and Tamza all turn up repeatedly across 2025 and 2026 listings, some of them rotating from support slot to top billing within the same year.

That rotation is the operating model. A guest takes the headline — the 2026 run has included Selecta J-Man on 14 September, Murdock on 7 September and Anaïs on 21 September — while three or four residents build the night around them. The arrangement means a Monday still works when a flight is cancelled, and it has given local DJs a weekly stage rather than an occasional one. Tamza, a regular support name on earlier bills, headlines on 19 October 2026.

The other half of the roster is the MCs. Melkweg's listings credit Cheeky's crowd, DJs and MCs together when describing the atmosphere, which is unusual for venue copy and reflects how much of the room's sound is voice over the rig rather than the mix alone.

Twenty, then twenty-one

The twentieth birthday was marked on Monday 26 May 2025 in the Melkweg's OZ room, with doors at 23:00 and a fifteen-name bill: Loco, Adi-J, Multiplex, Serpnt, Karimooo, Spud, Sinistah, Gibbo, Insom, Oneiroi, Yi-Ching, Innate, Graved, Bass80 and Lynn Drumm. There was no outside headliner. The whole night was residents, which was the point of it.

Twenty-one years was marked on Monday 25 May 2026, again at the Melkweg and again at 23:00, with a bill that mixed the resident core — Multiplex, Oneiroi, Insom, Karimooo, Gibbo, Adi-J, Loco, Bass80, Lynn Drumm, Sinistah, Spud, Tamza, Yi-Ching — with GRAVEDGR. By then the venue's standing description had been updated from twenty years to twenty-one, which is as good a measure as any of how routinely the anniversary passes.

Where it stands, October 2026

Four dates are on sale for October 2026 and they show the night running as normal. Gremlinz headlined on Monday 5 October with Squif, Adi-J, RinkR and Multiplex. On 12 October the room is handed over to a three-way crew showcase — Yamatai, Stupid and Transparent Audio — built almost entirely from back-to-backs: Geostatic with Dubruvvas, Yannons with Rue, Kalane with Morrow, Lauren Walton with Voxi, plus Kaizen T and Multiplex. Tamza headlines on 19 October alongside Oneiroi, Karimooo and Sama Sama.

The 26 October date is the exception and the more revealing one. With the Melkweg closed, Cheeky Monday moves to a basement at Onder Hans and takes twelve names with it: Serpnt, Spud, Graved, Yi-Ching, Majestic, Sinistah, Insom, Bass80, Lynn Drumm, Gibbo, Multiplex and Mae917. A weekly night that relocates rather than skips a week is behaving the way it has since 2005 — and it is not the first time, as the Melkweg's own listings have carried Cheeky dates at Onder Hans before.

Pricing has stayed low and stable: the Melkweg lists €10.50 in advance, €13.50 on the door and €11.50 for annual members on the door, with the promoters' own site quoting a €9.50 student rate. The night is 18+. The Melkweg is step-free, with a lift and accessible toilets.

Inside the room

The format barely varies. Doors at 23:00, four to six DJs in rotation rather than one long headline set, an MC working across most of the night, and a finish listed variously at 04:00 by the promoters and 05:00 by the city's own tourist board — in practice a five- or six-hour night. There is no production to speak of: no screens, no live band, no staging beyond the Melkweg club room's house lighting and sound. The draw is the programming and the rig.

Verified press reviews of individual 2026 dates are thin — the night is covered as a listing rather than as a gig, which is what happens to a weekly. What is on record is the shape of the audience: a Mixcloud archive of Winston-era sets still followed by several hundred people nearly a decade after the last upload, and a resident roster whose members keep appearing on each other's bills. The promoters' own description leans on the regulars rather than the guests, and the booking pattern backs that up.