Your alarm is always going to hate you on Friday morning. At least with Guerns Thursday, you have a good reason for it.
Guerns Thursday at New Guernica has been running for 16 years, making it one of Melbourne’s longest-running non-commercial club nights. The weekly event has outlasted venue relocations, a pandemic and countless other Thursday night competitors, and it shows no signs of slowing down.
What’s more, the night now comes with all-night drink specials including $5 beers and seltzers, $6.50 vodkas and $8 hard rateds, plus free entry before 11pm with an RSVP ticket and $5 entry for students and concession holders after that. It’s probably the best value club night anywhere in the city, and we feel that’s worth celebrating.
Guerns Thursday
- Every Thursday from 9.30pm
- New Guernica, 64 Smith Street, Collingwood
- Free entry before 11pm with RSVP
- $5 entry for students and concession after 11pm
- $5 beers and seltzers, $6.50 vodkas, $8 hard rateds all night
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New Guernica first opened at 322 Little Collins Street back in 2009, taking over a very eclectic space previously occupied by Club F4. When the original building got earmarked for demolition to make way for a boutique hotel, the team found a (considerably more stylish) new home at 64 Smith Street in Collingwood in November 2021.
The building itself has been standing since 1868 and has lived many lives, including stints as The Last Laugh Comedy Club, A Bar Called Barry’s and Foresters Beer and Music Hall.
These days it operates as a multi-room nightclub with seven-metre ceilings, a balcony overlooking the dance floor and a sound system featuring Nexo Alpha, Void and Funktion One speakers that could probably wake up the entire suburb if pointed in the wrong direction.
Underground selectorism
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The music programming has always leaned into high-energy house, techno, edits and underground selectorism rather than the commercial club formulas that dominate other Thursday nights around town.
The mainroom focuses on deep and vocal-driven house with the occasional curveball, while the upstairs space cranks up the BPMs for anyone who wants things a bit faster. DJs regularly weave 2000s Australian electro classics and throwbacks between house bangers, striking the balance between nostalgia and discovery that keeps both casual punters and seasoned dance floor regulars coming back week after week.
The venue has always placed a big emphasis on nurturing local talent, and plenty of Melbourne DJs who cut their teeth at New Guernica have gone on to crack the international circuit.
The club has hosted some of the world’s biggest electronic acts alongside emerging local selectors across its 16-year history, all of them playing from a DJ booth built around a battered church organ that has become one of the venue’s most recognisable features. Generations of Melbourne clubbers have passed through those doors since 2009, and based on the drink specials alone, plenty more are likely to follow.
For more information, head here.
This article was made in partnership with New Guernica.
