Walk beyond the velvet rope of Baccarat and you notice one thing immediately: a lot of money has been spent on making this arguably the most stylish and extravagant music club in Kraków. Covered in plush upholstery and full of fine touches including every elegant chandelier and lamp, the giant mirrorball DJ station, and even a room with a dancepole and wallsize mirror that can be coyly curtained off, Baccarat clearly raises the bar on Kraków's nightlife scene. What may not be so self-evident is that this swanky swish tank is non-smoking (commence jaw to dropping). Could this be the tipping of that first domino that eventually hearkens the death of the smokey Krakowian cellar bar? We leave you and your potential patronage to ponder that on your own.
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Long gone, it would seem, are the days when you'd just throw some chairs in a basement, some beer in a fridge and call it a club. Base continues Kraków's current cash-on-the-cuff club trend by pimping a spectacular 400 square metres of cellar space into another posh pleasure den, this one dire [...]

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BonTon's biggest draw is the daily drink specials luring young lads and lasses down the long corridor and into this oasis closed off from the rest of the world. A ground floor bar features a few tables that make use of the sky as a ceiling, while down a unique set of stairs with water flowing under [...]

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One of Kraków's best clubs for several years running, Cień is a wet dream for foreign lads weaned on commercial house music and enjoying favourable exchange rates while being fawned over by bombshell blondes who make a sport of their sex appeal. It may be all smoke, mirrors and false phone numbers under the interrogation lamp of the morning, but witness yourself scrambling back for more. More posturing than truly exclusive, your impatience with the door queue is the most likely thing to keep you out of Cień's dark medieval cellars, as long as you've made the effort to look the part and can stand up straight.
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What began as a cosy cafe and jazz club has morphed into something much more thanks to persistent expansion, and remains basically the first and last port of call for those on the piss in Podgórze. Three unique venues in one, Drukarnia's ground floor features a candlelit, antique-laden cafe leading on to a surprisingly long American-style tandem bar more focussed on fancy drinks. The massive downstairs still serves as a fantastic concert space, but has become just as noteworthy for outrageous dance parties packed full of prime meat on weekends.
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Making use of a neglected, oft-unnoticed 19th century Austrian bastion north of the Old Town, Forty Kleparz has emerged as Kraków's hippest new destination for live music and club nights. Drawing an impressive number of quality national and foreign artists to its stage since opening, the 200 p [...]

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This main line meatmarket is full of eager students, men with wandering hands, sweaty couples making out and an overabundance of dudes with spikey hair. If you aren't keen to dance there's really no place to hide in this relatively small cellar club where extremely loud music is managed by quality [...]

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Heard from blocks away, this downstairs club boasts a top notch sound system from which DJs drop the umpts-umpts on an unabashed student crowd slopping up the pink dancefloor during regular party nights. Visually the interior's a bit of a dump, with crushed glass details, gangster murals and FTV - [...]

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Gone are the days when clubbing in Kraków meant turning up in a hoodie before squelching across sticky floors. Kijów is the new face of clubbing, Kraków-style, with a design that’s seen every spare shekel spent on turning it into a bit of a masterpiece. Filled with shiny surfac [...]

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Enjoying a sophisticated reputation thanks to legendary electro nights, if that's not your scene then Klub Pauza is great for little more than asphyxiating to death. Cavernous, subterranean drink-dwellings have become somewhat unremarkable in Krakow, and though this one gets cred for being just as [...]

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Having achieved cult status in Łódż with their eponymous club, the vanguard Łódż Kaliska art collective came to Kraków to give us this gleamer full of antique furnishings, glass and chrome, smoke and mirrors, bare bums and absurdist art. Indeed, th [...]

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A mangy first floor apartment doubles as one of the best addresses in town. Different rooms accommodate boozing and dancing, and pink lamps and Bruce Lee posters generate a quirky 70s ambience. Music is a jumble of genres, from disco to new romantic, and a shabby projection screen often plays cult [...]

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White is apparently the new black as this interior exercise in silver, white, gold and...white once again affirms. A large cellar lounge with high arching ceilings, white walls, stools and loveseats, colour-changing lamps and lots of reflective surfaces, for all of its lookers and looking glasses, [...]

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Descend a level from One Lounge and you've traded the white stools for black in this posh new cellar club for 'young managers.' The main design detail of One Club is the thin illuminated strands hanging from the corners of the high vaulted ceilings; dangerously similar to Christmas lights, but successful in their slight novelty. Marble floors, crystal chandeliers, an unapproachable 'Versace Diamond VIP Room,' a cocktail list 100 drinks deep and nightly house music DJ sets have One Club hoping to set a higher standard of exclusivity, and judging from a look around - it's working; Kraków's newly minted all seem to be on the outside looking elsewhere (probably at their own clubs).
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One of the oldest and most infamous student clubs in Kraków, Pod Jaszczurami mixes academic sophistication and sophomoric mayhem. Effectively a smoky extension of the university common room, students and alumni gather for weekly events ranging from political lectures to poetry readings to film [...]

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This cave-like basement with a door queue rates as one of the best clubs on call in Krakow. Look your best to make it past face control then take your place on the dance floor alongside delicious looking party creatures. Imported DJs and the cream of Polish house music keep the party rocking into silly o’clock. [...]

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What looks like a dirty, dingy, unkempt tenement from the outside, is actually...well, just that, but with thousands of people herding themselves through it every weekend.  One of Kraków's most legendary late night destinations, 4 separate clubs sling shots inside the sloppy confines of this 3-story fumbling free-for-all. As none employ strict face-checks or entry fees, it's easy to stagger from venue to venue (though you can't take your drink with you) - creating a never-ending house party throughout the building from 20:00 to 8:00 in the morning every uninhibited night of the week.

On the ground floor, Playground represents a more mainstream, bare-bones Polish discotheque with booming techno music, barely-legal girls and messy patrons unable to climb the stairs. Should you survive the ascent yourself, you'll find two of Kraków's more unique clubs: Caryca and Łubu-Dubu. The object of a recent renovation and dancefloor expansion, Caryca has sadly traded much of the evocative candlelit atmosphere and saggy furnishings that made it popular with hipsters as a laid-back alternative to its neighbours, for a louder soundsystem with little leftover space to escape from it. Music varies from electro to reggae to hardcore techno on the small sweaty dancefloor in the back, depending on the order of the evening. Across the hall is Łubu-Dubu, a communist-themed disco playing old school dance hits like ABBA and MJ. Strewn with second-hand furnishings, red tide relics and spilt beer, Łubu is a contagious, fun-loving venue filled with students, holiday-makers and mirthy mavens letting their hair down and picking their feet up. Should Łubu close its doors on you (sometime around 6 am), you can bet your final złoty that upstairs Kitsch won't keep you out. The city's foremost meat-market, Kitsch is often referred to as a gay bar by track-suited locals - perhaps the only social group the club doesn't smile upon. A friendly, colourful, fur-fringed disco with a massive dancefloor full of foreigners on the prowl and dressed-down, sex-up students who'll make out with almost anything including the mirror, Kitsch is a sticky-floored, shameless, shambling sex-pit, the likes of which you're not likely to forget. A swarming dancefloor with brass poles provides Pole-on-pole action while pop hits that cater to the club's name keep the crowd gyrating. While the four clubs are owned separately, they all share one thing in common: quite possibly the most offensive toilets your five senses have ever had the misfortune of encountering. Though the neighbours have been trying in vain to shut down this hedonist haven for the last six or seven years, Wielopole 15 continues to be the most popular party in town; a visit to which any pleasure-seeker is obliged to make. Stumble out of the doors on a Sunday morning and wander into nearby Hala Targowa's weekly flea market for one of the most absurd bender-enders of your blessed little life. Sleeping is giving in... [...]

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