Distillery

It calls itself the oldest techno club in the former East German states, and nobody seems to be arguing. Distillery started in September 1992 in the former Kronen brewery in Connewitz and moved in 1995 to an old Deutsche Bahn building on Kurt-Eisner-Straße, where it stayed for nearly thirty years. Developers wanted that land for housing. The city, the operators and the developer spent a decade negotiating, with protests along the way, and the last night on the old site was 29 May 2023. A street party saw it out. Then came a two-year gap. It reopened on 30 August 2025 in the Kopfbau Nord of Messehalle 7 on the Alte Messe grounds, described as an interim home until a permanent site at the Gleisdreieck is ready, a project which has already slipped more than once. Co-founder Steffen Kache still runs it. The programme has widened from techno and house to take in drum and bass. Neither capacity nor sound system is listed for the new room.