Club Annie

One address, two names

Club Annie is a room rather than a touring act: a club and small concert hall at Lijnbaansgracht 238 in Amsterdam, opened by the Melkweg in October 2026 and operating under two names depending on the night. On Fridays and Saturdays it runs as Annie, a nightclub holding 500 people with a licence until six in the morning. On weekday evenings and the run-up to the weekend the same building works as ANN, a 350-capacity concert room sized for acts that would rattle around in the Melkweg's larger halls. Anything advertised under the name is the venue's own programme, not a group on the road.

The Melkweg announced the takeover on 17 September 2026, describing Annie as a softer, more playful and freer alternative to the conventional nightclub, with club nights on Fridays and Saturdays and concerts spread through the rest of the week. Laura Vogelsang, the Melkweg's managing director, put it as a deliberate investment in the future of Amsterdam nightlife and in room for new makers, organisers and communities. The building sits directly across the water from the Melkweg's own address, a proximity the programmers had been watching for years: Max Lagewaard, one of the two bookers, has said the team always looked at the other side with a degree of envy. The project carries support from a partnership with Grolsch.

Sugar, then Sugarfactory, then nothing

The address has a long industrial and then nocturnal history. The structure began as a sugar refinery run by the firm De Granaatappel, documented on the site from at least 1854, and shut down in September 1920 after the works relocated and the post-war economic crisis bit. By the late 1970s the shell had been colonised by art studios and theatre rehearsal spaces, which is roughly the condition in which Amsterdam's cultural sector tends to inherit its best rooms.

In 2005 the building was acquired by Sugarfactory, which traded as an alternative night venue mixing music with performance and was described by the city's night mayor as the other club alongside the Melkweg and Paradiso. Sugarfactory filed for bankruptcy in January 2019 and closed immediately, undone by the weekend economics that have killed a long list of mid-sized European clubs. Two further operators followed — Lovelee, then Club Inn — and the room was empty again before the Melkweg stepped across the street. Ticketing systems have not caught up with any of this, which is why the venue still surfaces in listings under hybrid names such as ANN/Club Annie.

A makers' house on a two-year pilot

The operating model is explicitly experimental. Annie is running as a two-year pilot structured as a makers' house: young collectives are given a minimum of three editions each rather than a single trial night, on the reasoning that nobody builds an audience in one go. Milou Zoer, who programmes the club side with Lagewaard, has framed the point as making sure everyone gets the chance to grow — a direct answer to the booking convention in which an unproven promoter gets one Friday and is then dropped. The announced resident partners are PAARDENRAVE, The Late Night Show, Da Funkshun Nightmarket, LIEVER LESBIES and PYXLS, each returning several times a year with multidisciplinary nights.

The aesthetic brief is just as specific, and pointedly not industrial. The team has described painting the space pink and dark purple and hanging nude works pulled out of the Melkweg's own archive, with Lagewaard reaching for the phrase abandoned sex club to describe the atmosphere he wanted: brooding, dark and close rather than the grey concrete and strip-light severity that has dominated techno rooms for a decade. Zoer's formulation is that Annie should feel welcoming in a sexy, flirty way, and a bit crude with it, while staying safe and genuinely open — a balance that is easier to state in an interview than to hold at four in the morning.

Behind the booking policy sits a reading of what club line-ups have become. Zoer has said plainly that clubs are often quite linear and masculine, and the programme answers that with a bias towards female and female-identifying artists, and with performance, drag and strip acts treated as part of the music rather than decoration between DJs. Davy de Lepper, the creative director, describes night culture as total theatre in which everything comes together, which is the clearest available statement of what distinguishes Annie from a straightforward dancefloor.

Thirty hours for ADE's thirtieth

The venue's real opening was timed to the Amsterdam Dance Event, which ran from 21 to 25 October 2026 and marked thirty years since the first edition in 1996 — an edition the Melkweg played, alongside Paradiso and Escape. Annie got an unusual allowance for a room that had barely opened its doors: thirty consecutive hours of licence. Zoer called it the programmer's dream, and said she wanted a weekend full of wonder.

The build-up started on Thursday 22 October at 23:30 with the resident night PAARDENRAVE. The main event, billed as annie's ADE weekender, opened at 22:30 on Friday 23 October and ran without a break until 06:00 on Sunday 25 October, split into three blocks. The overnight block from just before midnight to ten on Saturday morning carried angelboy, sim0ne, Justin Tinderdate back to back with Elotrance, LESSSS, Bebe Bad and ZUKE. The daytime stretch from ten until ten gave the floor to MCR-T, MOMANNA, iMarly, Tina Turnup, KAHORSA, FJUSHA and Ratkapje. The closing block from 22:00 on Saturday ran PARALICH, Evissimax, M¥SS KETA, $HOKI287, DBBD back to back with DJ SEXSTASY, and TOCCORORO. Tickets started at €27.50 and the door was 18 and over. The line-up was weighted towards female headliners by design, with long sets, back-to-backs and unannounced guests used in place of a conventional headline slot.

Where it stands now

As of 25 October 2026 the weekender has only just closed and no critical write-ups of it have been published; the available accounts of the room are still the venue's own and its programmers'. What is verifiable is the dated programme already on sale, which gives a clear picture of how the two halves are being used.

The concert side under ANN leans towards artists at the point where a first headline tour becomes possible. Charlie Jeer plays on Wednesday 28 October 2026 with doors at 19:30, his first Amsterdam show; Jenna Raine follows on Thursday 12 November, the South African singer and guitarist Bongeziwe Mabandla on Friday 20 November, and Kyle Alessandro on Friday 22 January 2027. Tiffany Day, Chrissy Chlapecka, Dominique Fils-Aimé and Politie Warnsveld were among the first names announced for the room.

The club side is booked as a rotation of promoters rather than a house sound. Sumibu Halloween Night, a hip-hop night, takes 31 October 2026; an Eastern European queer night follows on 6 November; AanTafel! with DTM Funk on 7 November; Bounce That Booty, built on Latin, funk, bubbling and reggaeton, on 13 November; the hyperpop and trance night Pyxls on 21 November; and LIEVER LESBIES returns on 20 February 2027. The spread — hip-hop, reggaeton, hard house, hyperpop, queer disco — is the makers'-house policy showing up on the calendar rather than in a press release.