In a time of heightened challenges and threats to the queer community, people around the world are coming together in solidarity to raise awareness, support one another and celebrate.
Each year, during Pride celebrations across Europe, July 26 marks an important day in the Berlin community and beyond, highlighting the diverse representation of people from across the queer, LGBTQIA+ and FLINTA communities. Berlin — home to SoundCloud’s founding headquarters — welcomes folks from around the globe to conjoin into the hot, sticky, hedonistic fun that the capital’s queer party scene offers, culminating on the big blowout weekender known as Christopher Street Day (CSD). Annually, these events attract partygoers and attendees from cities worldwide, commonly from New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Mexico City, London, Athens and more.
As a cultural hub, Berlin is renowned for its relevance as the key stakeholder in techno, with millions racing in — and crawling out — of the city each year to experience its relentless club scene. In 2024, Berlin received official recognition as a UNESCO World Heritage Site for techno, further cementing its place as a main driver of tourism to the major European city. For those unfamiliar or just getting acquainted, the underground music scene in Berlin is essentially synonymous with the queer party scene. Whether you’re a seasoned local or just visiting, it’s widely heralded that the city’s hotspots to be at are the parties brought to you by queer party collectives — and there’s no shortage of events to explore and sounds to discover.
Berlin’s queer party culture provides a playground, offering innumerable opportunities for experimentation of any kind imaginable, and where partygoers can shapeshift and find something that suits them, their mood and their identities; on any night of the week. As a trusted purveyor of uninhibited partying, the impact that the queer party has on the culture at large is undeniable, with countless different groups of DJs, producers, artists, performers and dancefloor enthusiasts cultivating community and driving new sounds forward.
Get to know the stories of these tastemaking queer DJ collectives, each representing different niches in Berlin’s vibrant and ever-expansive electronic music scene.
Mala Junta
Formed in 2018, Mala Junta’s playful sense of humor, creative events, championing of marginalized voices and love of underground electronic music have made them a firm fixture of the contemporary Berlin club scene. Mala Junta takes its name from the Spanish phrase “bad influence,” and this comes through in the renegade spirit of their parties. There’s less black leather and rolling techno, more colorful dressing up, gender fluid expression, beats inspired by Black and Latin diasporas, and even a Halloween edition. Led by three icons: Hyperaktivist, DJ TOOL and Nayme, the crew represent a truly international take on club music.
Hyperaktivist, aka Venezuelan artist Ana Laura Rincón, ran (and continues to run) her own femme-forward club concept MESS before co-forming Mala Junta, driven by a need to inject diversity within what she viewed as an overtly cis-masc club scene, bringing the latinx warmth and rhythms to the table and many years experience organizing events for the community. DJ TOOL, aka Joachim Palsby, a former punk Dane, brings his dynamic, homegrown signature styles of techno and trance into Mala Junta; a flavor apart from the steely, Germanic techno sound that defined Berlin for much of the last decade. Mala Junta’s creator director, Nayme — who is originally from France — is also entrusted with safeguarding the vibe at Mala parties in Berlin and around the world by curating a fun, diverse crowd and safe space for all.
After outgrowing their original home of Diskotek Melancholie 2 — a rough and ready spot hidden behind a fake Späti refrigerator door — the crew has expanded year over year. Resident DJs D.Dan, Why Be and Yazzus have joined the fold, bringing a broader scope of sounds to the Mala Junta dancefloor; from progressive house to free tekno and UK garage, the musical vibe is raw, high energy and open-minded. Additionally, Mala Junta has welcomed two new international residents this year: Kim Ann Foxman, who hails from the NYC queer scene, and, from Venezuela, the legendary DJ Babatr, who originated the Changa Tuki or Raptor House movement, a genre that’s now taking over dance floors across Europe and beyond with huge momentum.
“SoundCloud’s endless discovery is like a treasure chest we dive into headfirst, opening doors to fresh beats, wild edits and secret gems you’d never find otherwise,” says Mala Junta’s co-founders collectively, on how the platform plays a role in their music discovery. “The algorithm works remarkably well, surfacing tracks you didn’t know you needed, which creates so much excitement to share those finds with friends. For our residents, SoundCloud isn’t just a promotional tool. It’s a platform designed to showcase their work to a global audience of real, passionate music lovers.”
In a world increasingly roiled by anti-queer legislation and crackdowns on underground clubbing, Mala Junta is defying the mainstream by spreading their vision of queer, diverse togetherness at home and abroad. In Berlin, they’ve gone on to curate Berghain’s Klubnacht twice so far and have found kindred spirits in Kilowatt, African Acid Is The Future and Puticlub, who bring a rich range of electronic music influenced by Latin and Black diasporas. These crews also embody a push for crowd diversity and social awareness, as exemplified by the FLINTA sex-positive party SLIT or prog-house parties like LA NOCHE and MP3. Beyond Berlin, Mala Junta have hosted events at noted clubs such as Tbilisi’s Bassiani, New York City’s Basement and London’s FOLD, and played in cities as far flung as Bogota, Chengdu, Mexico City and Kyiv. Additionally, Mala Junta also has a monthly radio show on NTS, where audiences can expect throwback trance, souped up ‘90s basslines and party music of a high tempo flavor.
When it comes to Berlin’s party culture, the Mala Junta collective shares sage advice: “We’d just say: dive in [to the club scene]. It’s a bit like deep-sea diving: you need to be prepared, know yourself, be grounded and have a support system. The deeper you go, the more intense it gets. It can be murky at times, maybe even overwhelming. But it’s also full of beauty, mystery, and unexpected wonders. Which will make you discover yourself in ways you did not expect. Words don’t quite capture it; you really have to experience it to understand.”
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Lunchbox Candy
When half of Lunchbox Candy Stephanos Pantelas moved from his native Cyprus to London in the 1990s, he became absorbed in the rave scene. Taking the DJ name Elninodiablo, he played at clubs like Turnmills, Fabric and Heaven, and explored his queer identity through the underground electronic music community. By the time he moved to Berlin in 2016, he was a committed music producer, DJ and artist who brought his experiences into a new party project; a riotous fusion of music, art and performance.
Teaming up with DJ and Tasmanian-born director Adam Munnings, they created Lunchbox Candy: a sex-positive collective that fosters togetherness across genders and sexualities, playing music to dance to and disrupting straight and much too serious clubbing in Berlin. The party moves across venues in Berlin, but the aesthetic and sound remain consistent. Taking inspiration from the 1970s Paradise Garage era to the ‘90s club kid culture that birthed icons like Leigh Bowery — where fashion-forward queer costuming took center stage — Lunchbox Candy brings color, sensuality and a devilish sense of fun to the dancefloor. It’s “like a rave, but cuter,” they jest.
“As you enter the party, the word LOVE is stamped on your wrist and that’s not something random or something that we take lightly,” Elninodiablo says. “We are literally endeavouring to embody as much love as possible.” He and Munnings, who share resident DJ duties, are informed by their broad tastes, collected over many years of living in dance music hotspots across the world. The Lunchbox Candy sound is sexy and dynamic: funky percussive rhythms from Latin America, rolling techno and stomping EBM blend with hard house, bass and breakbeats into a high energy ride.
Speaking on the culture in Berlin, Munnings adds, “The way people show up and embrace nightlife here in Berlin is like nowhere else in the world and nobody does it like the queers to be honest. It’s unapologetic, beautifully shameless and ever evolving. It can be gritty and messy at times but there’s so much joy, community, culture and self discovery that can be found in the scene.”
Additionally, the Lunchbox Candy collective is committed to ensuring that everyone can experience a night in their universe, even if unable to attend IRL. As Munnings explains, “SoundCloud is such an amazing platform for discovery, archiving, sharing and celebrating music and moments. Recording sets at Lunchbox Candy and then being able to share them online for people to have that lil’ moment of nostalgia, or give access to sets that maybe people couldn’t experience IRL, is super beautiful. We want everyone to be able to jam to the sounds of Lunchbox Candy and SoundCloud helps achieve that.”
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Hoe_mies
In 2017, Gizem Adiyaman, aka DJ Meg10, found herself empowered to take action and create Hoe_mies in response to the rampant underrepresentation of women and gender minorities in the hip-hop scene.
Speaking of the club night and label’s formative days, she explains how Hoe_mies was born out of “the need to create spaces where we run the show (quite literally).” Expanding on this, Meg10 adds, “I knew there was a need, but women weren’t entrusted to pull crowds, and as promoters, we were generally not taken seriously at first. There were no female hip-hop promoters at the time. For me, it was more about forming a counter-balance to a very cis, straight male-supporting genre, and giving femme and nonbinary DJs a spotlight.”
To bring the concept of Hoe_mies to fruition, she teamed up with friend and fellow DJ Lucia Luciano in 2017 to create a hip-hop club night that focused on booking femme and nonbinary minority artists, with the name a playful riff on “hoe” and “homies” that aims to destigmatize sex work and promote feminist sex positivity. In recent years, Meg10 has operated Hoe_mies solo, often hosting parties at OXI, among other Berlin venues. With a cross-genre approach and an affinity for showcasing sounds for electronic music enthusiasts who also love rap and pop, Hoe_mies attracts a diverse group of artists and ravers under the banner of FLINTA — a German acronym for female, lesbian, intersex, nonbinary, transgender and agender — who may have lacked connection with the steely Berlin techno sound and the scene’s more heteronormative, masculine aesthetics. In 2024, Meg10 expanded from a party to a record label; the first release, a compilation of club edits titled ‘Hoe_mies 4 Palestine,’ raised money for the charity Doctors Without Borders.
“Berlin is very community-oriented and caring; about political issues, and each other’s well being,” Meg10 says, reflecting on Berlin’s queer scene. “Every queer party I know has an awareness team and is knowledgeable about harm reduction. It’s extremely expressive and avant-garde… The queer party scene is where the people dare to break out of that classic look associated with Berlin and experiment with fits and their naked bodies.”
This empathetic awareness translates in Meg10’s love of collaboration and uplifting others, too; working with fellow queer, minority-centric parties like London’s 2CPERREA and Berlin’s Puticlub, including for a collaborative day and night Pride party on July 27, as well as uplifts Kilowatt, a Black electronic music collective showcasing a variety of electronic genres and artists. In addition to events in Berlin, Hoe_mies has also taken over dancefloors in Barcelona, Lisbon, London, Amsterdam, Brussels, Glasgow, Melbourne, Tokyo and Basel.
Today, the Hoe_mies sound palette has diversified beyond hip-hop-adjacent styles to include more global club music genres, including Brazilian baile funk, Jersey club, Latin techno and drum & bass. Once isolated, Meg10 has cultivated a place in Berlin that she and her hip-hop-loving FLINTA ravers can truly call home.
Speaking to how she utilizes SoundCloud, Meg10 explains how the platform was the first place she found herself digging for music online, as well as a home for her to upload original productions and mixes to.
“I would listen to them over and over to improve my skills, and I still get a dopamine rush every time my music resonates with people,” she explains. “As a collective, we’ve been showcasing DJs from our community in our mix series, so that promoters who’d say things like ‘We want to book more women or nonbinary DJs but we can’t find any’ don’t have any more excuses.”
FOLLOW HOE_MIES ON SOUNDCLOUD.
SEVEN
Taking up a different, daytime-friendly role in the Berlin club scene, SEVEN is a triple threat: a record label, mix series and (less frequently) a party, all devoted to pushing a FLINTA-focused, uplifting vision of house and tech house music. Brand new and co-founded in 2024 by Lucas Kreimeie, aka DJ and producer CRYME, and Glenn Elliott — SEVEN’s A&R and label manager respectively — the collective has amplified a queer and minority electronic artists across their releases, mixes and parties with a 360-degree approach to promotion.
On the label roster, there’s an international outlook: from German house favorite Cinthie to Swiss techno artist Deetron and UK champion Bailey Ibbs, among many others. The mix series promotes not just their in-house DJ talent and production catalogs, but those of their queer club scene siblings, like the FLINTA-only collective Layers. “Queer sexuality can have seemingly endless variety and the Berlin scene matches that,” says CRYME, “and what’s super nice is how often these collectives work together and collaborate.”
Rounding off the project’s work, the SEVEN club night gives the DJs a platform to bring their skills to the dancefloor. What makes SEVEN a somewhat unique prospect is their more tailored approach to running parties. Rather playing weekly, or even monthly, SEVEN “plan two or three parties in Berlin each year,” says Glenn. “This means we can put a huge amount of love and production into them.”
In May 2025, a Sunday event at ELSE included a line up of b2b DJ sets, a pop-up store for customized merchandise and seven drag artist hosts. Their next party, scheduled for August 2025, will have a BBQ and ice cream stand for partygoers. It’s a way of operating that stands apart from the classic Berlin club vibe, of barely-lit warehouses and spartan aesthetics. “We love a happy, daytime party with a wholesome experience and fun for everyone,” says CRYME.
“SoundCloud has been — and is — essential to us in building our community, sharing our music and finding our fans,” Elliott says, speaking to how the platform plays a key role in helping them to discover and amplify the community they are building. “We use it to premiere all of our label releases and we run a weekly mix series on SoundCloud sharing one-hour DJ mixes from our artists every Saturday. So it’s hugely important to us, without it I don’t know what we would do!”
The label’s mix series, which runs on SoundCloud with a new DJ mix every weekend, is also a key way that the label discovers and surfaces new talent. “For our end of summer event in Berlin, three of the four artists playing we discovered and debuted on our SoundCloud mix series,” adds Elliott. “It’s an amazing way for us to find new talent.”
FOLLOW SEVEN ON SOUNDCLOUD.
Follow these DJ collectives on SoundCloud and be the first to know when a new set drops. Throughout Pride Summer 2025 and beyond, these crews will be spotlighting queer talent from their parties, curating playlists and sharing exclusive music that soundtrack the vibrancy of the Berlin party scene.
CREDITS: Photos courtesy of Mala Junta, Lunchbox Candy, Hoe_mies and SEVEN, respectively. Words: Lauren Martin, Dana Cleavenger. Editor: KC Orcutt.
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