An August Plea: Where Do We Send Our Clubbing Friends?

I saw an interesting post on Facebook this week that really resonated with me.

It wasn’t an angry rant, although it could easily have been. It was more of an August plea with a simple question:

Where do we send our clubbing friends?

Not the ones who want a €5,000 table, a bottle of something with a sparkler stuck in it and 14 people filming themselves pretending to be having the time of their lives.

I mean our actual friends, the ones who come to Ibiza for a proper night out. A club night where we know they are going to have a great time – without feeling like they’ve been pickpocketed of their hard-earned cash by 6am.

This is where Ibiza clubbing has become a little bit complicated. Once upon a time, you could recommend a night with almost complete confidence.

Time to get nostalgic.

Every night was something special and of course Sunday was We Love with Bora Bora fitting in somewhere between everything else and the beauty was that you didn’t necessarily have to plan it all 6 weeks in advance. You went. You danced. You bumped into people. You followed the crowd. You ended up somewhere you hadn’t expected to be and, crucially, the promoters actually wanted you there.

Guestlist mattered. Workers mattered. Residents mattered. There was a relationship between the people putting on the parties and the people who supported them.

You didn’t necessarily need a wallet full of €100 notes to participate. Fast forward to August 2026 and things are obviously rather different. Ibiza has ‘evolved’. 

The clubs are bigger. The DJs are bigger. The production is bigger and, obviously, so are the prices. There is nothing wrong with this, I’m a big believer that Ibiza reacts to the market but there must be more surely.

Nobody is suggesting Ibiza should somehow freeze itself in 1996 but there is a difference between accepting that things change and accepting that the traditional Ibiza night out should become an expensive luxury product because I’m increasingly conscious of what I’m recommending (in fact I usually leave it to my kids).

If I’m recommending a club and telling them to expect to spend €150, €200 or more, I want to be absolutely certain they’re going to walk out at sunrise thinking: “That was fucking brilliant” not “Did we really just spend €600 between us?” and that, for me, is the interesting bit because there are still some fantastic nights happening.

Akasha, Chinois, 528, Nocturna, Tomadachi, to name but a few, are now flying the flag for authentic nights out, and Amnesia under pressure from noisy neighbours, have come out fighting and can probably claim to be the most authentic club on the island.

These places deserve attention because it feels like old school and there’s definitely still a place for that where it’s not all about money – well not from the outside anyway (if you know what I mean).

Ultimately, if we’re going to complain about what Ibiza has lost, we should also support what it still has – this is a true ‘glass half full’ moment and perhaps that’s the bigger point.

We shouldn’t just complain about the death of the old Ibiza, a time when we were younger and more involved, we should actively support the bits that still feel like it.

I’m not anti-VIP. I’m not anti-luxury. I’m not anti-expensive DJs. If you’ve got €10,000 to spend on a table, crack on, but there should still be somewhere for the person who simply wants to dance, sweat, lose their mates (only to find them 3 hours later talking to complete strangers) then end up somewhere unexpected and wake up wondering exactly what the fuck just happened.

The best promoters understood that building a crowd wasn’t simply about selling tickets it was about building a community – I’m looking at you Clockwork Orange.

The clubs looked after the workers and residents because they would come back next week and they would bring their friends and they would tell their visitors where to go. They would become the unofficial marketing department and what’s more they would stick with you.

So perhaps the answer to the August plea is simple. Let’s find those places, support them and recommend them so when our friends ask: “Where should we go tonight?” we’ve got somewhere we can send them without the need for a financial disclaimer.

Somewhere they can spend a reasonable amount of money, hear brilliant music, have a proper Ibiza experience and come home with memories rather than a bank statement that requires counselling.

The corporate takeover might be well underway with guestlists disappearing and spontaneity hanging on by its fingertips but I don’t believe (unlike some of the Facebook Karens) that the real Ibiza has disappeared.

Maybe we just need to stop being lazy, put down the smartphone and get better at finding it.