Fewer People Are Going Out at Night, and Dutch Music Venues Are Feeling It
Club-night visits dropped by nearly 14 percent in a year, and fewer nights sold out; venues blame the cost of living, changing habits and the fading of the post-lockdown party boom.
See more of Dutch Brief in your Google search results
Dutch pop music venues saw a marked drop in the number of people coming out at night last year, new figures show, and many venues are running a loss. The data suggests that the surge in going out that followed the coronavirus lockdowns is starting to fade.
Fewer clubbers
Visits to club nights (in Dutch, clubnachten or nachtprogramma’s) at Dutch pop venues fell by nearly 14 percent in 2025 compared with the year before, according to figures from the Association of Dutch Pop Venues and Festivals (VNPF), the sector’s industry body. The venues in question, known as poppodia, are mostly mid-sized, often subsidised live music halls that host both concerts and club nights.
Fewer nights are selling out, too. In 2025, one in five club nights sold out, down from one in four the year before. The VNPF describes club nights as more than just parties: they also serve as meeting places for subcultures and the wider night scene.
The cost of living and changing habits
The association points to several reasons, based on conversations with its members. One is simply that young people seem to want to go out less than they used to. “When we talk to venues about it, we hear different needs from young people,” said Arne Dee of the VNPF, who also pointed to rising prices both inside and outside the venues.
The other main factor is money. “I think it is mainly down to people’s personal financial situation,” said Hanneke Dijkstra, who programmes the night events at the Simplon venue in Groningen. “People really, really have less to spend.” At Hedon in Zwolle, ticket sales also lagged. “We saw a considerable dip in the autumn,” said head programmer Erik Delobel, who put the figures in context: “After corona everything went through the roof, and now there is some normalisation.”
SPONSORED
You’re overpaying your accountant. And they still don’t call you back.
Neno gives you a dedicated bookkeeper, automated admin, real-time financial insights and a free business bank account. Everything your business needs, in one place.
No chasing. No surprises. No unnecessary costs.
Concerts too, and the bigger picture
The decline was not limited to club nights. Concert visits fell by 3.6 percent compared with 2024, although they remained well above the level of 2023. Across all activities, the venues recorded around 5 percent fewer visits than in 2024, at just over 6.5 million, but still slightly more than in 2023.
The VNPF stresses that averages hide large differences between individual venues. Over the past three years, around 60 percent of venues saw their club-night visits fall, sometimes sharply, while about 40 percent actually reported some growth.
Many venues in the red
The financial picture is more worrying. More than half of the affiliated venues ended the year in the red, as they did the year before. According to the VNPF’s own figures, the share of venues running a loss has risen steadily, from 38 percent in 2023 to 58 percent in 2024, and the association expects it to climb further.
The losses are not only the result of fewer visitors. Costs have risen sharply: staff wages and the fees for booking artists have both gone up. The VNPF argues that a key underlying problem is that many venues rely on subsidies from their local council, and that those subsidies have not risen in line with costs. In 2025, it says, venues’ staff costs rose by almost 8 percent and housing costs by more than 5 percent, while municipal subsidies increased by around 3 percent on average.
Why the losses matter
The association warns that the squeeze has consequences for what audiences eventually get to see. When venues have to save money, it says, the first things to be cut are the “risky” programmes: the concerts by lesser-known, up-and-coming artists and niche genres that are harder to sell tickets for.
“Whoever does not invest now will lose much more later,” said VNPF director Berend Schans, who described pop venues as “the research and development department” of the music world and warned that the Netherlands risked “cutting away something unique.” For now, the sector is asking for more stable funding, while venues try to keep their doors open and their stages filled.