Breaking down the state of Shanghai’s club scene

Shanghai’s identity has long been tied to forward momentum — economic, cultural, and social. From roughly 2005 to 2019, that identity extended beyond finance and commerce into a distinct cultural progressiveness, where rapid development and internationalization created a palpable sense that opportunity was everywhere. That openness extended into nightlife. Clubs became laboratories for experimentation, where music, identity, and subculture collided. Underground venues in particular offered space for creative resistance and self-expression — a break from “old China” and an embrace of the freedoms of a globalizing metropolis. Identity shift Despite strong macroeconomic indicators — Shanghai’s GDP grew 5.5% in the first three quarters of 2025, outpacing the national average, while foreign tourist arrivals surged almost 50% year-on-year — that growth reflects a further commercialization of the city, one that is restructuring the nightlife scene and favoring commercial clubs over the underground. Consumption is rising, but the cultural ecosystems that once defined the city's edge are under strain. Over the past two years, a wave of closures has reshaped the city’s club landscape — from legacy venues like Elevator, Dada, and 44KW to more recent casualties like System, which now operates as a nomadic party series, and All Club, which shuttered its Xiangyang Bei Lu location in summer 2025. The closure marked the end of an era for a space central to the underground scene since its founding in 2017. Underground to commercial “Since I first moved to Shanghai, the structure of the club scene has changed dramatically. Many of the underground clubs that existed back then are no longer around. The landscape has really shifted — not just in terms of venues, but in the way parties are organized and how people engage with club culture,” Agu Chen, founder of Heim, tells Jing Daily. At the heart of this shift is a growing imbalance between underground and commercial players. Large-scale venues, backed by greater capital and marketing resources, increasingly dominate the nightlife economy — changing not just where people go out, but how they experience clubbing itself. Disneyland-style clubbing Located in Fuxing Park, INS Land features in 8.8 million TikTok posts. Spanning seven floors and more than 20 venues — with varied music programming and high-production performances — it functions as a mainstream tourist attraction as much as a nightlife destination. “The impact that commercial clubs have had on underground clubs is impossible to ignore. They have much bigger budgets, better equipment, and more resources for marketing and bookings,” says Chen. “But I don't think underground culture disappears because of money or scale. Underground clubs survive because they offer something different — a sense of community, musical freedom, and an atmosphere that can’t be replicated by a purely commercial model.” That distinction — between subcultural identity and curated musical taste — is central to understanding the role Shanghai’s techno and other EDM clubs play in supporting the city’s creative community. Underground spaces have historically fostered collaboration across music, fashion, and art, creating tight-knit communities that extend beyond the dance floor. Photographer Kirill Sokolov, who documents China’s nightlife under the name Sokol, says that sense of solidarity has weakened. Speaking to Dazed in December 2025, he said: “Now, with international lineups booked almost nightly, local DJs often play to smaller crowds, and that tight-knit support has faded. It's entered a new phase, a kind of survival mode.” A new scene New spaces are emerging, albeit with a different energy. Ian Kawo Yen, a Shanghai-based creative consultant, says: “The scene is definitely different from years ago — you’ve got different kinds of clubs, live houses. There’s also a new wave of clubs opening at C Park Haisu. I went to one called Reactor recently; it was exciting. I'm looking forward to seeing where the club scene goes. The energy is different from the past, for sure, but it’s still going.” That endurance matters. In a city where fashion bloggers tag their outfits on the #shanghaicitywalk hashtag, which has generated billions of impressions on Xiaohongshu (also known as RedNote), the level of self-expression present in Shanghai is a mainstream fact. Yet that creates a level of competition between the booming commercial nature of the city, and its underground creativity. The nightlife may no longer resemble its peak-era underground self, but it is not disappearing. It is evolving — unevenly, under economic pressure and cultural change. The question is which version of it will define the next chapter of China’s most cosmopolitan city.

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Breaking down the state of Shanghai’s club scene