Policy & the night worldwide

A club is a cultural institution for exactly as long as a licence allows.

How Amsterdam governs the night

In 2013 Amsterdam introduced 24-hour licences: a handful of venues, mostly on the edges of the city, were allowed to stay open day and night, on condition that they offered a cultural and artistic programme.^[1] The first 24-hour licence went to Trouw, in a former printing plant on the Wibautstraat.^[2] The idea: spread the night out, give makers room, and take the pressure off the centre.

The sticking point is almost always space. New housing rises next to existing clubs, and then the noise complaint often lands on the old neighbour instead of the new resident. The agent-of-change principle reverses that: whoever changes the surroundings carries the cost of adapting, not the venue that was already there.^[3]

Places still disappear. After the pandemic years, and as its permits ran out, De School closed in early 2024, as Trouw had before it.^[4] Every closure shows how narrow the margin is within which the night is allowed to exist.

How Amsterdam exported the night

Amsterdam's biggest contribution to the world's night is not a club but an idea: the night mayor. After Mirik Milan turned the role professional from 2012, cities such as London, New York, Berlin, Paris and Sydney adopted their own night mayor or night office.^[5][6]

Milan grew that work into VibeLab, which wrote the Global Nighttime Recovery Plan together with dozens of cities: a practical guide to protecting the night and helping it recover after crises.^[7] That is how an Amsterdam experiment became an export.

Policy sounds dull, but it is where the night is won or lost. That is why it belongs in this guide, and why we back the people who do the work.