Amsterdam wouldn’t be the party city it is without the local collectives and labels driving its nightlife. They brought Detroit and Chicago house into the city’s record shops, turned afterparties into all-day institutions, built a home for the queer community and helped make round-the-clock clubbing part of local life. Many still put homegrown DJs at the heart of every lineup. Today they run labels, radio shows and some of the most loved parties in town. Here’s the story behind eight of them, and what they’ve planned for ADE 2026.
Rush Hour
Rush Hour is a record shop, label and distributor, and one of Amsterdam’s oldest music collectives. Antal Heitlager, already a collector selling records privately, met Christiaan Macdonald at university. The pair bought a stockpile of house records from Coco Records in Zaandam and sold them by mail order from their student house. In 1997 they opened the Rush Hour store in the basement of Housewives on Fire, a hairdresser and clothing shop, with no business plan, just a short list of what they needed.
In 1999 they moved to Spuistraat, where the shop remains, and launched the label the same year. Rush Hour grew into an international distributor, supplying record shops around the world, and became a key route into Europe for house and techno from Detroit and Chicago, the cities the shop was built on, though its racks have always covered many genres.
This years Rush Hour event takes over Lofi, a warehouse club in Sloterdijk, on Saturday 24 October from 14:00 to 22:00, with Antal joined by Ron Trent, Soichi Terada, Arp Frique live and more for an afternoon of disco and house. It sold out fast, which says plenty about the shop’s pull nearly thirty years on, so keep an eye on resale and grab a ticket the moment one appears.
Breakfast Club
Breakfast Club’s founder, Brent Roozendaal, got his taste for endless parties young. He went clubbing in Germany with his uncle, a house DJ, and was going to afterparties by sixteen. Back in Amsterdam, he found the illegal afters at a squat called Havana, and learned that a night didn’t have to end when the club closed. He started Breakfast Club in 2010 as exactly that, an afterparty for people arriving straight from somewhere else. It grew into a daytime event in its own right, with free breakfast for everyone who makes it.
As the party grew, Roozendaal found a partner in Pieter Jansen, a longtime regular on the dancefloor whom he met at an afterparty, and the two now programme the music together. Their approach is built around long sets, giving DJs freedom to take a crowd on a journey instead of trying to top whoever played before. Almost everyone plays vinyl, and bookings favour quality over fashion, with plenty of local talent on every bill. Last year they marked fifteen years with a 15-hour party at Radion, the club they treat as home.
For 2026 they’ve linked five events into one long party, built on the idea that music needs time to unfold. The first two are at Pllek on the NDSM wharf in Noord: One Long Groove on Thursday 22 October with Gene On Earth, Octo Octa and Talaboman, and Friday’s The Sound of Belgium, a tribute to Belgian pioneers like CJ Bolland made with Brussels station Kiosk Radio. The weekend then moves to Radion, where both daytimers run 09:00 to 19:00 with free breakfast until eleven. Saturday 24 October is Runner’s High, with Donato Dozzy, Lena Willikens and John Talabot, and Sunday 25 October brings Second Wind, with Craig Richards and OK Williams. It all closes with The Final Stretch, a 30-hour marathon at Garage Noord with tINI and Nicolas Lutz.
ZeeZout
ZeeZout, Dutch for sea salt, was founded in Amsterdam in June 2011 by Stijn Ceelen and Glenn Schonewille, and started from a simple idea: throw a party for friends where good people could come together around music. Those first club nights soon spread to Utrecht and Rotterdam, and the pair learned much of their craft at Trouw, an influential club in a former newspaper printing plant, where the artists they met helped shape their sound. At a time when few festivals played leftfield house, disco and techno, ZeeZout made those genres its focus, and it developed a knack for booking artists like KI/KI, Bicep and Mall Grab just before they broke through. In 2015 they launched their own festival with 4,000 tickets sold, though for years it was the club nights that kept the company going. They’ve never sold to a larger organisation and remain a small, self-owned team.
Their ADE home is Het Rijk van de Keizer, a rambling venue in Amsterdam Oost full of unexpected rooms, small stages and open-air corners, where they’re running two ZeeZout DAYTIME editions. Friday 23 October runs 15:00 to 23:00 with Djrum, Two Shell, Eris Drew and Octo Octa. Saturday 24 October runs 14:00 to 23:00 with Helena Hauff, Call Super and Hunee, backed by local names including PHIA and Merel Helderman.
VBX
VBX was founded in 2013 by Niels Modderkolk, growing out of an earlier Amsterdam party called Vrijbuiters. DJ Ferro was a founding member, and his close ties to the minimal scene brought the crew together before its first event. Their biggest inspiration was Zip, the Berlin DJ behind the minimal label Perlon, and that patient, groove-focused sound is still at the heart of the party. After moving between venues, VBX settled at Shelter, the club in the basement of the A’DAM Tower, and at BRET in Sloterdijk, becoming one of the pioneers of Amsterdam’s round-the-clock party culture.
Alongside Ferro, Amsterdam DJ Makcim has been with the party from early on, and British DJ Christian AB and local DJ Noach play regularly. VBX also hands entire nights to guest curators, recently including Ben UFO, co-founder of the UK label Hessle Audio, and London DJ Jane Fitz.
This year’s main ADE date is VBX - Lofi on Friday 23 October from 23:30 to 08:00, with Paquita Gordon, Marco Shuttle and Frank Haag playing live. Their Sunday closing party has become a fixture of ADE week, and this year it returns on 25 October as Apollonia Curates VBX - Shelter, an all-night session from 23:00 to 09:00 programmed by the French trio Apollonia.
Brighter Days
Amsterdam DJs Kamma and Masalo began playing back-to-back in 2014, and Brighter Days grew out of that partnership. It started as house gatherings and became a party series built on positivity and togetherness. Their selection is extensive in a very Amsterdam way, drawing on jazz, funk, disco and early house, with deep respect for the people who built dance music.
That respect shows in who they book. New York house legend Joe Claussell was one of their biggest inspirations, and his records became Brighter Days classics, so bringing him to their ADE party in 2024 was a dream come true. Detroit producer Theo Parrish followed in 2025, and next to these heroes they give plenty of space to new and local talent, with Kamma and Masalo playing every edition as residents. In 2023 they compiled a Brighter Days collection for Rush Hour, and this May they launched their own label, Brighter Discs, opening with their track “Can’t Fake The Feeling”, built on a vocal from a 1989 record by Chicago house pioneer Joe Smooth.
This year’s edition, Brighter Days x Life and Death, takes over Shelter on Saturday 24 October from 23:30 to 07:00, in partnership with the Italian label run by DJ Tennis. DJ Tennis, Retromigration and Sedef Adasi join Kamma & Masalo in the main room, while Ajuma and Chew go back-to-back all night in the second. It’s their third year running holding Shelter’s ADE Saturday.
IsBurning
IsBurning was founded in 2014 by Carlos Valdes and DJ Sandrien, who had been hosting monthly techno nights at Trouw. The two bonded over Chicago house and Detroit techno, and shared a frustration: Amsterdam was one of the world’s most important gay cities, yet its gay scene was dominated by commercial Top 40 clubs, with nothing like the queer house and techno nights in London, Berlin or New York. They wanted to create a home for the city’s queer community and to show where the music came from. The first IsBurning took place at Trouw in April 2014, and the following year they played the club’s closing weekend.
After Trouw they moved to Cruquiusgilde, a small warehouse in the east of the city, for more intimate Sunday parties. At their second birthday there they surprised the crowd with unannounced sets, and secret lineups became the party’s trademark, so people come for the party rather than a big name. Twelve years on, lineups are still never announced. The tagline is “come as you are”, and residents Carlos Valdes, Josh Caffé, Titia and Vuur play alongside guests such as Eris Drew, Octo Octa and Robert Owens. IsBurning has since moved between venues, including Shelter and Lofi, run Pride parties with Dekmantel, and released a long-running mix series that platforms queer artists.
This ADE, IsBurning heads to TILLATEC, a club in a former 1967 technical school, for TILLATEC invites: Cruise, IsBurning, tINI & THE GAYNG + Mala Junta on Saturday 24 October from 23:00 to 06:00. The club calls IsBurning its second family, and for one night it brings all four queer collectives together under one roof. In true IsBurning style, the lineup is unannounced, and it’s billed as the last time these collectives will come together at TILLATEC for ADE.
LNR
LNR, short for Local Night RADION, is run by Radion itself, the 24-hour club in the former ACTA dental centre in Amsterdam Nieuw-West that calls itself the home base for the city’s techno community. LNR was conceived in September 2021, on the first night clubs reopened after lockdown. With travel restrictions still unpredictable, Radion’s team chose not to gamble on international bookings and built a night entirely around Dutch talent. The idea is that local artists deserve their own room and a crowd that actually listens, and Radion believes the Netherlands has never had more homegrown talent than now. The sound is mainly techno, and some events have been vinyl-only.
This years LNR ADE edition takes place at Radion on Thursday 22 October from 23:00 to 07:00, with an all-Dutch lineup led by Remco Beekwilder and SHE/HER alongside Beau Didier, Beste Hira and Ultrastation. Radion’s pitch is blunt: while everyone else goes international, they go local, with tickets kept as cheap as possible so local dancers can afford ADE too.
Big names will fill the headlines this ADE, but the soul of the week lives with crews like these, the ones who keep Amsterdam’s dancefloors going all year round. Pick a party, discover a new DJ and support the people who make this city what it is. Check out our TicketSwap ADE collection to find tickets for every event.
