Cosmic Comedy Berlin

Two compères and a basement bar

Cosmic Comedy Berlin was set up in 2014 by two working comics rather than by promoters. Dharmander Singh and Neil Numb had each spent years on the circuit — Singh was born in Birmingham, came up through theatre as a child, moved into stand-up in his late twenties and relocated to Germany in 2008 — and between them they had been performing and putting on shows internationally for more than two decades before the club existed. That double role has never really separated: both men still appear on their own bills as hosts.

The first home was not the building the club occupies today. Cosmic ran out of Bar 1820, the basement room beneath Belushi's on Rosa-Luxemburg-Straße in Mitte, with doors at 7.45pm and the show up at 9pm — a format that already combined a mixed international bill with free vegetarian pizza and a shot on the way in. The club's own archived listings from that period still describe Singh and Numb sharing the compère duties, and the pizza-and-shots offer that would later become the house signature was fixed in place from the Mitte years onwards.

The gamble was linguistic as much as commercial. Berlin in the mid-2010s had German-language comedy institutions and a scattering of English open mics, but little in the way of a permanent English-language room with a stable weekly rhythm. Cosmic's bet was that the city's international population and its visiting-comic traffic would together be enough to fill a club in English three nights a week.

Taking over Kookaburra

The decisive move came in 2022, when Singh and Numb acquired the Comedy Club Kookaburra at Schönhauser Allee 184 and renamed it Cosmic Comedy Club Berlin. The room they inherited had its own long history. Kookaburra was founded around 2001 by Sanjay Shihora and advertised itself as the German capital's first comedy club; from 2002 it occupied the premises of a former savings-bank branch on Schönhauser Allee, where the cellar still holds what is described as Berlin's oldest surviving vault. Shihora had wanted to call it Comedy Tresor, but lawyers acting for the Tresor nightclub blocked the name, and the Australian kingfisher was chosen instead. From 2007 the club's shows were televised, first on Sat.1 Comedy and later on ProSieben Fun.

Under the new owners the programme was converted to English only — a clean break from the German-language bills and the television era that preceded it. The change gave Cosmic something the Mitte basement could not: a purpose-built comedy room with its own address, its own bar and its own technical staff, rather than a space borrowed from a pub. By May 2025, the Prenzlauer Berg hostel guide eastseven was describing Cosmic flatly as the successor to the former Kookaburra and naming it its favourite comedy club in the city, alongside Neukölln's Comedy Café Berlin.

One side effect of the move is still visible online. Several listings and directory entries continue to give the old Rosa-Luxemburg-Straße address or describe the club as the basement at Belushi's, years after the programme shifted north to Schönhauser Allee 184 in 10119 Berlin.

The work is the calendar

Cosmic has no specials catalogue or run of recorded seasons to point at; the body of work is the weekly diary and the acts it has put through the room. The structure is simple and has barely changed since the takeover. Thursday is the open mic, where first-timers are mixed in with working professionals, and the club lists entry at €13. Friday and Saturday are the Showcase, built from established local and touring comics doing tried-and-tested sets, at €17. Both strands run 7pm to 11pm, with the stand-up itself starting at 9pm after food and the bar's early two-for-one hour.

The open mic is the part of the operation with the most obvious function in the wider scene: it is where Berlin's English-language acts get their stage time, and where visiting comics drop in unannounced. The best-documented example is the American stand-up Todd Barry, who turned up to perform at the club unannounced in 2023.

The club runs on a small permanent team rather than a promoter's roster. Singh books and hosts; Stefanie, a Berliner who came from adventure tourism, runs operations; Reuben, who has been involved for more than a decade, manages the bar; and Dietmar handles light and sound as well as putting the food out. The merchandise table is modest to the point of comedy in itself — a house hot sauce at €15 and a mug at €10.

Autumn 2026: the state of the diary

As of 22 October 2026 the club's listings carry roughly two dozen dates on sale, running from the open mic and showcase nights of the current week through to 25 November. The weekly spine is intact, but the specials around it show where the programming has been pushing.

The immediate run is dense. The American comic Dan Docimo plays two shows on 25 October, an early set at 5pm and a late set at 8pm, with the late show already marked sold out. CallMeManny brings a Europe Comedy Tour date to the room on 26 October at 8.30pm. Brad Upton is booked for 8 November at 5.15pm, and Tereza Hossa has a solo show on 25 November at 8pm. The club is also staging a Halloween edition of the Showcase on 31 October.

The most interesting development is a Spanish-language strand opening up inside what was declared an English-only club in 2022: Laila Roth performs in Spanish on 27 October at 7.30pm, and Juampi González brings Oveja Negra on 22 November. The early start times on several of these specials — 5pm and 5.15pm — point to a room now being turned over more than once a night rather than held for a single bill.

The audience numbers behind this are substantial for a club of its size. Aggregated Google reviews put it at 4.7 out of 5 across 1,625 ratings, which is a large volume of feedback for a three-nights-a-week venue.

Inside the room

The night follows a fixed clock. Doors at 7pm, two-for-one on selected drinks until 8pm, pizza from a local Italian restaurant served from 8.15pm while it lasts, stand-up from 9pm, an interval partway through, and out by around 11pm. The pizza is vegetarian and vegan, and every guest gets a shot at the bar. Listed hours stretch to 11.30pm on show nights.

The Showcase bill of 2 October 2026 gives a fair picture of how the room is cast: Singh hosting, with Tommy Ferrari from Italy, Todd Stuchiner from the United States, Willy from New Zealand and Dinara Kerey from Kazakhstan. Four acts plus compère, drawn from four continents, playing to a mixed crowd of residents and visitors — that is the standard shape rather than a one-off.

The house rules are unusually explicit and clearly deliberate. The venue is non-smoking and wheelchair accessible, operates what it calls a nice-people-only policy, and discourages heckling outright. Singh and Numb have stated their position plainly: stand-up should entertain and get laughs rather than work by abusing the audience. Reviewers tend to confirm the effect, returning repeatedly to the friendliness of the staff, the ease of talking to strangers, and the proportion of women on the bills. The most common complaint is logistical rather than artistic — the pizza service occasionally runs late.