WHATS ON / Bristol Club Nights

Bristol Clubs & Nightlife

— All Bristol's electronic & dance music listings.

The best place to buy tickets for dance music events in Bristol.

DJs playing at Bristol's nightlife hot spot.

Bristol’s best club nights

Dance music dominates Bristol’s musical landscape with the city’s electronic music producers and DJs considered some of Bristol’s finest exports. Outsiders and bloggers frequently fail to understand Bristol’s dance music, using resorting to sweeping statements about dubstep, disco or house music or cringe-inducing references to the ‘Bristol Sound’. The truth is that Bristol’s musical integrity is a direct result of sheer variety and the passion of individuals working in the music scene today.

Like Manchester’s Warehouse Project, Motion is the first nightclub many visitors to Bristol will be introduced to. While Headfirst is generally focused around the city’s smaller nights and events, the value Motion adds to Bristol’s musical culture in undeniable. The ability to book DJ’s like Ricardo Villalobos and Laurent Garnier or live acts like Moderat, inspires the next generation of promoters that will bring their own talent to venues like dare2, Lost Horizon and Lakota.

Bristol Club Listings

Buy club tickets

Since 2016 clubbers have been able to buy tickets for events at venues like Coroner’s Court, Lakota and The Small Horse here on Headfirst. We work directly with the club promoters providing an ethical and independent place to buy your club tickets. Headfirst provides barcode-based club night tickets which are scanned by staff outside nightclubs and venues in Bristol on a nightly basis.

DJ Culture & Nightlife

Stokes Croft’s Idle Hands record shop has earned international recognition from both international and Bristol DJs and is frequently listed alongside Rush Hour Records and Public Possession as one of Europe’s best sources of electronic music. The rise of house music (and with it disco) has seen the club focus begin to shift from headline producers to experienced djs and record collectors. Where true DJ bookings were once the domain of small niche nightclubs like Cosies and Take 5 Cafe, recently promoters like Simple Things and PTS have brought international dance music purveyors to larger venues like Propyard and The Island’s prison cells. Clubbers rush to buy Dropout Disco tickets before the full line-up is announced while Dirty Talk and Alfresco Disco’s innovative approach to the typical ‘nightclub venue’ sells out on the promoter’s reputation alone.

Bristol's lesser-spotted unicorn DJs at our favourite nightclub. Club night at the Thekla in Bristol.

Sell out warning - buy tickets while you can!

Huge booking for this PTS and Maximum Euphoria Halloween link-up! Pontillistic trance architect Lorenzo Senni descends upon The Island to recalibrate your very being armed with his trusty Roland JP-8080. The Warp-affiliate excels at piercing melodic tension and spiralling arpeggiated bliss that will send chills down your spine. PTSxME ϟ Lorenzo Senni at The Island.

Sexquisite and Riot coming through with the spooky sexy link-up! Providing a playground (literally) for the Halloween kinksters complete with an opening wax play workshop, kink market, fully kitted-out playroom and only the steamiest dancehall, R&B, slut-pop and garage tunes to get down to. RIOT HALLOWEEN at Lakota Club.

Sell out warning! Inarguably the heaviest and most militant of the 90s steppas titans, you can truly feel the weight of an Iration Steppas session in your rumbling spine as you reach a kind of dubwise oblivion. A sub-wise blessing in mortal form; the Vanguards of Dub toast 35 years at the top in another essential Teachings lesson with Firmly Rooted in the Trinity arena. Teachings in Dub - 35 Years of Iration Steppas at The Trinity Centre.

One of the hottest stargazers in the fertile new beat / post-punk / italo / industrial crescent - Babyschön takes you on a sludgy psychedelic tour of the darkest dancefloors. Big booking FFO: Andrew Weatherall, Elena Colombi, Vladimir Ivkovic, Lena Willikens etc. Zen Arcade w/ babyschön + Morey Cillar at The Red Church.

Tickets Available

Fri 24th October
CBTSouth present - Sub Zero at Lakota
Fri 17th October
Spektra Events at Lakota
Wed 8th October
SEKTOR at Lakota
— Lakota

SEKTOR Tickets

Mon 27th October
BOXXED OFF at Lakota

Electronic music in Bristol

Experimental dance music and boundary-pushing techno will always be found in Bristol’s smaller club venues. The Island’s cells space for example, continues to provide opportunities for new promoters that have vision beyond simply booking a DJ and running a publicity campaign. With no permanent sound system or DJ equipment, the old prison cells is blank canvas club - at it’s very best when an innovative event organiser puts in the time to transform the whole dancefloor space.

Club audience bought their tickets on Headfirst Bristol.

Editor's club recommendations

Our editor's top live music recommendation

Sell out warning! Deep club psychedelia’s mortal champion John Talabot stretches those godlike selects into primordial cosmic battlecries in the monster mash of Club Blanco’s Green Works Halloween tradition. Salon des Amateurs will feel as tame as a Mixmag office party after this one! Club Blanco Halloween w/ John Talabot + Chez de Milo at Green Works.

Following 4 years of sold out parties, Brown Excellence are taking over Trinity with a festival celebrating South Asian culture intertwined with the duo’s signature club heat. Across three stages, catch Baalti’s percussive dek bass, Bollywood disco and house, JAWARI on the sitar-led jazz and raga specialist Sway of the Verses. Plus food stalls, silent disco and much more. Brown Excellence Festival at The Trinity Centre.

Prepare to be blasted out of this world with two tunnels of extraterrestrial debauchery from the wicked minds of Fagbutt. Joining the mission: HEZEN’s sultry sci-fi club-pop, LCN on the distorted-bass rituals and sexy house heat from Hannah Holland. Plus further cosmic club workouts from Peoplelikeusdj and Adonis’ Shay Malt, featuring wild performance sorcery throughout from UGLY, NARKOTIK and Roach. FAGBUTT X Loco Klub present: Cosmic Creatures w/ LCN, Shay Malt, HEZEN ++ at Loco Klub.

They don’t call it gay Xmas for nothing! Rocky Horror screening in the basement, pumping disco, techno and electro from CROTCH + GAY AS F*CK residents, all hosted by the likes of Ernest The Drag King and Celestria… high camp Halloween antics await for all creatures of the night. GAY AS F*CK X CROTCH HALLOWEEN at Exchange.

Alternative Spaces and New Club Venues

One of the main strengths to Bristol's club scene is it's relentless dynamism, every year enthusiastic new promoters bring new experiences to the table. Unlike raves of the previous decades, new events shirk the crusty, rebellious connotations of free party culture in favour of organised, party-centric events in interesting locations.