What actually got rebuilt?
The overhaul focused on the Green Floor, the club's main house-leaning room. Renate's own account: dividing walls that split it into small rooms came down, the sound system was replaced with a custom rig from Kirsch Audio plus an added horn distributor, and the dancefloor was reshaped into an L so more of the room can actually see the booth. Outside, a new bar hut, garden seating and a fountain arrived in the courtyard. But the surrounding rooms, the ones that make Renate feel like Renate, got dressed up rather than gutted: colorful window film, a red room under hemispheric ceiling lights, a room built around a metal canopy bed, a pirate-ship bar. Groove's April reporting called the result "a house party without locked bedrooms": the bedroom-scale rooms of the old squatted apartment building stay bedrooms, in shape and feel, they're just open to everyone now instead of a handful of squatters.
"The Renate is more of a playground that differs from other clubs with their identical arrangements, making it something special." - Caitlin Russell, Renate PR
Why was Renate almost gone in the first place?
None of this happened on a fixed timeline. Renate's lease was due to run out in 2025, and for months the club didn't know if it would still exist past that date. A new ten-year contract only landed on December 15, 2025, with what the club credits as crucial legal support from Franziska Giffey, Berlin's senator for economic affairs, energy and public enterprises. Only once the lease was secured could the renovation start: a soft, weekends-only reopening in January 2026, then the full relaunch in April after three months of work.
Does it still feel like Renate?
That's the bet booker Felix Cornelsen is making with a lineup built to test it: Daniel Avery, Stenny, Angel D'lite and Mary Lake across seven floors for 66 hours straight, September 11 to 14. Renate has thrown an anniversary party every year since its 18th, but this one carries more weight than a round number. The club that survived by rebuilding is still the club born out of a squat, still keeps its scrap-built labyrinth under the dancefloor, still doesn't look like anywhere else in Berlin. "This is a huge privilege for me," Cornelsen said of booking the reopened rooms, "the chance to curate here, to have an influence."
