IfZ announces closure at the end of the year – frohfroh – electronic music from leipzig

Just a few weeks ago it was the 10th anniversary, now the Institute for the Future has announced that the club is closing. It will continue until New Year's Eve, after which it will be lights out, the end.

Now it's official: Today, like many other magazines, newspapers and blogs, we received the club's press release. Two days ago, the Leipziger Volkszeitung picked up on the first leaks from the club and received confirmation from Xavi, the managing director of the IfZ.

This confirms the rumors that have been circulating since the store reopened after the Corona break. “The reasons for the end of the IfZ are complex. After 2019 was the most successful and highest-revenue year in the club's history, revenues plummeted rapidly in the wake of the Corona pandemic. The IfZ was unable to make up for these losses after reopening in 2022.”says the press release.

The dramatic financial situation was already described in a report last summer. Even then, it was said that since the reopening, going-out behavior and cost structures had changed so much that 100 to 200 guests per night were missing in order to operate profitably. In addition, there were some political and internal challenges that repeatedly caused unrest and discontent.

But it was precisely this unrest that shaped the IfZ and was part of the DNA of the politically and socially critical club. But the time for such projects does not seem to be the best right now: “The impending closure of the IfZ is a significant example of how it has become almost impossible for non-commercial and community-oriented projects to survive – yet the contribution of precisely these open spaces to culture and democracy should not be underestimated.”it says in the press release.

Xavi added: “The attempt to work together with flat hierarchies, in which the common design of the many is more important than the financial profit of individuals, has become impossible in view of the economic constraints. We can no longer withstand the pressure.”

We are deeply saddened but confident that this will not be the end of Leipzig's club culture. The city is vital and is losing more and more free spaces, but the club culture in particular has reinvented itself again and again over the past 30 years, experiencing difficult and extremely good phases and even overloaded phases with an oversupply.

We say thank you for 10 years of IfZ – with important impulses towards awareness work, sound and music quality, diverse line-ups, grassroots club management as well as lots of nightlife gossip and funny meme material.

The last party will be on December 31, 2024!