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The £5 entry is a good start. So is the loud, lively music booming down the nightclub’s stairway. But when I finally reach the dancefloor, hidden behind a curtain, my hopes for a wild night out in Birmingham are dashed. Despite the roving disco lights and blaring pop bangers, it is entirely empty, aside from a few bartenders milling around, tending to no one.

This isn’t 9pm on a random Tuesday. I am hitting the town on Saturday night, when the city’s bars and clubs should be in full swing, but Birmingham is looking like a bust.

Perhaps this was to be expected. The nightlife sector in the UK has declined massively in recent years. More than a quarter of all late-night venues across the UK shut their doors for good between 2020 and 2025, according to the Night Time Industries Association (NTIA) – and the “second city” has been hit particularly hard. Birmingham experienced a 28% drop in the number of bars, clubs and other establishments to grab a late-night drink in over the same period, the largest decline of any major UK city.

As well as soaring bills, business rates and staff costs, pubs and nightclubs are contending with an increasing number of people shunning alcohol. Earlier this year, an NHS survey found that one in four adults in England don’t drink alcohol, with the West Midlands (where Birmingham is located) and London having the highest proportions of non-drinkers. So, how bad is it and can the Saturday night out survive?

I have come to Birmingham from London with my friend (on a slightly deceitful promise that we would have a blast, no matter what) and we start our night out in Digbeth, a former industrial hotspot where metal sheets, Typhoo Tea and Bird’s Custard were once manufactured. In recent years, the area has been redeveloped into the city’s “creative quarter” and found itself littered with bars and nightclubs. Despite the drizzle, there is a smattering of partygoers on the streets, though they are hardly heaving. Most people escaping the rain refuse to stop when asked for their thoughts on nightlife in the city, though one passerby, who does not want to be named, screams: “It’s shit!”

Eventually, a pair of party veterans stop to share their thoughts. “Nobody’s going out,” says Puggy Roberts, 57, who has just left one gig and is on his way to another. “It’s a vicious cycle. If you don’t go out, you don’t get the venues.” The lack of good venues isn’t the only problem, according to his companion, Jen Ashford-Mowbray, 58. “The ticket prices end up being higher if fewer people go out,” she says. “We need more people going out to keep the prices down.”

The duo have been clubbing and going to gigs in the city for about 40 years – and often find themselves among partygoers of a similar age. “People from the age of 30 down don’t go out. Everybody’s gotten sensible,” says Roberts. He recalls the city’s partying heyday, from the late 80s through the 90s, when a number of local venues put Birmingham on the map. Most have since shuttered their doors. There was Rum Runner, the nightclub where Duran Duran got their footing by collecting glasses and manning the door while using the venue to rehearse – it was demolished in 1987 and turned into a Wetherspoons. Que Club, an acid rave club and music venue contained within a listed Methodist hall, where David Bowie, Run-DMC and Daft Punk once played, closed in 2017. JB’s, situated in nearby Dudley, hosted gigs by U2, Robert Plant and Judas Priest when they were virtual unknowns, but after closing its doors in 2011, the former nightclub became a martial arts centre.

It is nearing midnight and the crowds in Digbeth are already starting to dwindle. The next stop is Broad Street, the nightlife capital of the city, which I expect to be flooded with eager partygoers. When we get there, however, most bars on the strip are half empty. At the end of the street sits a shuttered branch of Pryzm, a chain of nightclubs that were once catnip to students and young people looking for a no-frills night out. Bar one venue in Brighton, all closed down in 2024.

That said, contrary to reports of young people shunning parties and drinking, most of the people who are out look to be in their 20s. Among them is Susie, 23, who is taking shelter from the ceaseless rain under the entrance of a Travelodge. She says people her age “definitely” enjoy a drink. Her friend Vanessa, 26, agrees, disputing the characterisation of Birmingham as a city void of a good time. “It’s chill. There are so many places here,” she says.

Kyrie, 40, is visiting from the Isle of Wight. “I don’t think the nightlife is dying up here,” she says. “It’s my first time visiting and I’ve had a fantastic time.” She spent the first part of her evening at Boom Battle Bar, a chain of games bars, and was looking for a place to end the night with a dance. Finding out the best spots from locals has been tricky, though. “I’m asking everyone, ‘Where’s good to go?’ and they say, ‘I don’t know.’ No one has any knowledge about the area,” she says.

The final stop of our night is Birmingham’s Gay Village where, at just past 1am, the streets are empty. The flagship club in the district, Nightingale’s, looks quiet from the outside – we pay the £5 entry and walk up a seemingly never-ending mountain of steps to find out if it’s a little more lively inside. The music is blaring, but there’s not a single person to be seen. I spot a curtain, and hope that it might be hiding a party in full swing. I pull it back, expecting a dancefloor stacked with partygoers. Nope. It is empty.

But the stairway doesn’t end here. After a few dozen more steps, another room appears – not empty this time, but not packed out either. There are about two dozen people busting moves on the dancefloor, and a few more hanging around on the sidelines. Studio 54 it ain’t. We are close to giving up when I spot another venue, the Village Inn, with a trickle of people going inside. After an interrogation by a bouncer asking if we have been before, some friendly strangers vouch for us and we are allowed in. Inside, the place is full to the brim; our night out is saved! One room blasts pop classics while the other plays bashment and R&B. And even better, a double vodka lemonade costs less than a tenner. The place continues to get busy as more people arrive – many of them coming from other venues which they, too had found to be disappointingly quiet.

A few hours later and it’s 5am; the Village Inn is closing up. My legs are aching from all the steps I had to climb (and maybe a bit of dancing, too). It’s time to end the night the traditional way: in a heaving cafe, with a massive burger and portion of greasy chips.

While our night ended on a high, nightlife in Birmingham clearly isn’t what it used to be. But it’s not simply that young people are avoiding clubs: of the UK’s three largest cities, Birmingham is the least dense, with 11,400 people per square mile, compared with 13,210 people in Manchester and 14,980 people in London.

“There aren’t many actual residents in Birmingham’s city centre,” says Andy Milford, a veteran promoter who runs a night at Digbeth Dining Club. This means getting home is often a costly challenge. “Outside a really expensive taxi ride, Birmingham is really difficult to get out of after midnight.”

It wasn’t always this way. During the second world war, Birmingham, seen as an important industrial hub, was a key target for the Nazis, who unleashed a relentless bombing campaign across the city. After this, the council demolished inner-city homes, some (but not all) of which were badly damaged, and replaced them with tower blocks.

Milford has worked all over the world, including in London. “People there live in proximity to a lot of the hotspots. You could say the same about Manchester,” he says. But in Birmingham, he believes “most of the people living in the city are students”, which means “there’s no real long-term community to build that culture any more”.

Milford also says recent events have hit the scene hard, including a spate of fatal stabbings in the city that created “real fear for people” heading out. Covid lockdowns and the advent of working from home have meant fewer people travel into the city centre during the week – and, in turn, residential areas on the outskirts have seen a boom in night-time venues. Perhaps the Saturday night out isn’t dead, it’s just relocated? The Hare and Hounds, a Victorian pub where UB40 played their first gig in leafy, suburban King’s Heath, for example, has managed to thrive as one of the city’s top party spots.

The cost of living has been another blow to venues and partygoers. “I’m in my early 50s, and I remember a time when it was quite affordable to go out three or four times a week,” Milford says. “Young people now are having to make choices about whether to go out three or four times a month.”

More broadly, the nightlife sector is “under a huge amount of economic pressure”, says Michael Kill, the CEO of the NTIA, which lobbies on behalf of bars, nightclubs and other late-night venues. The organisation has released a string of stark reports in recent years warning of the industry’s dire state. Kill says venues are struggling after seeing “a 30% to 40% increase in operating costs since 2020”, government budgets that have raised national insurance contributions and the minimum wage, plus a looming energy crisis caused by the war in Iran, which could cause even more fiscal pain. Even successful venues, he says, “feel that they’re either just breaking even or losing money”.

There are other factors at play, too. Cities are increasingly being gentrified, with areas that were once cheap (if a bit grungier) being redeveloped, leaving fewer spaces for cash-strapped creatives looking to develop their craft without worrying about eye-watering rents. Many of the areas that once housed nightclubs, music venues and warehouse raves are now littered with fancy high-rise blocks. The venues that do survive can find themselves pitted against their new, noise-averse neighbours.

Night & Day cafe, a famed local music venue in Manchester, was threatened with closure after complaints from neighbours in newly built flats next door about loud music at night. After a three-year row, the venue was told to limit loud noise in the small hours. Kill says there is a “huge void between licensing and planning departments” within local councils, who hand out licences to venues to perform late-night activities on the one hand and give permission for new-build blocks on the other, which “tends to create that clash between development of residential space and cultural spaces”.

Soho in central London has also seen a battle play out between local pubs and clubs – who say their businesses keep the area’s status as a vital cultural hotspot in the capital alive – and residents, who have complained about noise and antisocial behaviour from partygoers. While there are still several court cases looming between venues, Westminster council and local residents, the government appears to be taking notice. This month, it was announced that London mayor Sadiq Khan could be handed powers to overrule councils that block pubs and clubs from opening late.

Kill says councils need to have a “greater understanding of the value of night-time economy and hospitality”, not just locally, but globally. “We’re known for our clubs, our events and our festivals,” he says. “People see us as a destination for creatives to start their careers. We have to recognise how important it is.”

As for me, my evening in Birmingham reminded me of how great a nightclub in full swing can be. I had retreated from club nights in recent years, after often being disappointed by half-full venues and overpriced drinks – and was happy to discover that, if you find the right spot, it doesn’t have to be this way. Cheers to the next Saturday night out.