Printworks Refuses to Stay Buried: Inside London's Long Road Back to 2026

For three years, "Printworks is coming back" has been the electronic music world's most persistent rumour, repeated at every closing party, every industry panel, every half-confirmed headline. It is no longer a rumour. Southwark Council has granted planning consent for the redevelopment of the former Printworks site in Rotherhithe, and under the approved scheme the venue's cavernous Press Halls will remain a working music space, even as the rest of the site is rebuilt as offices and retail. Broadwick Live, the promoter that built Printworks into a global reference point for club production, has confirmed a 2026 reopening, though it has not yet named a month.

That is a rare thing to write about UK nightlife right now. Most stories about British clubs in this decade end in closure. This one, for once, ends in a green light.

What did Southwark Council actually approve?

The council signed off on plans submitted by site owner British Land, working alongside pension fund AustralianSuper, to redevelop the wider Canada Water site while carving out the Press Halls as a permanent, protected music and events venue. The wider scheme, part of British Land's multi-billion-pound Canada Water regeneration, will deliver new office space, shops and homes across the roughly 53-acre site, with the Press Halls and neighbouring Inkwells space preserved rather than demolished. Resident Advisor reported that British Land's head of Canada Water, Emma Cariaga, said the ambition was to build "a permanent cultural venue" for the site, one with a broader remit than the club-only programme Printworks ran before closure. DJ Mag's coverage of the submitted plans describes the same split: Press Halls staying live, the remainder of the building converted into workspace and retail.

This is a meaningful reversal. When British Land first won consent to redevelop the site back in 2022, the plan simply turned the whole building into offices, full stop, with no venue at all. Community pushback, an operator willing to keep negotiating, and a council apparently willing to be persuaded changed that outcome. Ibiza Live Radio's write-up of the approval quotes Michael Kill, chief executive of the Night Time Industries Association, calling the decision a genuinely positive moment for the capital's nightlife economy, not just a win for one venue.

Why did Printworks matter enough to fight for?

Printworks opened on 4 February 2017 inside the former Harmsworth Quays printing plant in Surrey Quays, southeast London, a building that had been Western Europe's largest newspaper printing facility, producing the Evening Standard, the Daily Mail and Metro until presses fell silent there around 2012. Broadwick turned the six-acre site into seven distinct industrial spaces, but it was the Press Halls, the old print floor itself, still two storeys high with catwalks, gantries and a 60-metre LED wall running the length of the room, that became the venue's signature. The room held around 6,000 people and was tuned with an L-Acoustics line-array system engineered to fill that scale of space without the dead zones or smear that usually plague warehouse rooms of that size.

The venue opened with Seth Troxler, Loco Dice and The Martinez Brothers, and over six years the booking sheet became a near-complete record of the era's defining electronic artists: Bicep, Nina Kraviz, Charlotte de Witte, Peggy Gou, Honey Dijon, Adam Beyer, Sub Focus, Marco Carola and Helena Hauff all played there, alongside orchestral and audiovisual programming that stretched past straightforward club nights. It ran a seasonal model, similar in structure to Manchester's Warehouse Project, staging clustered runs of shows rather than operating as a year-round club. Wikipedia's entry on the venue notes it placed second in DJ Mag's Top 100 Clubs ranking in its final year, a startling result for a venue that was already closing.

When did Printworks close, and why?

Printworks shut after a farewell run in late April and early May 2023, with a closing weekend that featured Peggy Gou, Bicep and Black Coffee among others. The closure was never about the club failing commercially. British Land owned the building and needed it for the Canada Water Masterplan, its long-planned regeneration of the wider docklands site, which is why the venue always operated on borrowed time even at its commercial peak. Broadwick Live's Simeon Aldred said at the time that the team hoped Printworks could return within roughly three years and that discussions with British Land would continue, a promise that, unusually for this industry, appears to be holding.

What's actually changing about the venue itself?

The footprint shrinks. Previously Printworks occupied essentially the whole print works building; going forward, the Press Halls and Inkwells will share the site with office blocks and retail units built into the rest of the structure. Broadwick has signalled the new venue will host a wider mix of programming than before, electronic music remains central, but exhibitions, orchestral performances and other art forms are explicitly part of the plan this time, rather than club nights being the sole draw.

Who is Broadwick Live, and can they pull this off?

Broadwick Live is the operator behind some of London's most ambitious large-capacity spaces, including The Drumsheds, a roughly 15,000-capacity venue built inside a former IKEA warehouse near Meridian Water in Enfield, and Field Day, the long-running festival brand it has hosted there. The company also runs Broadwick Live Presents, a curatorial partnership with smaller London rooms including Studio 338, Electric Brixton and Phonox. In other words, this is not a promoter betting everything on one comeback; it is an operator with a track record of opening, closing and reopening major spaces across the capital, which is part of why the industry is taking the 2026 timeline seriously rather than filing it under wishful thinking.

How does this fit into the broader UK club closure story?

Badly, in the sense that Printworks is the exception rather than the trend. The Night Time Industries Association has tracked the crisis in blunt numbers: roughly 65 UK nightclubs closed between December 2023 and June 2024 alone, a rate of about three a week, on top of 2023 already being described as the worst year on record for grassroots venue closures. Rising energy costs, business rates, licensing friction and property pressure have combined to strip the country of hundreds of clubs since the pandemic. We covered the mechanics of that squeeze, and what reform proposals are actually on the table, in Why the UK Keeps Losing Its Nightclubs, and What the New Licensing Reforms Actually Propose. Printworks' return doesn't undo any of that arithmetic. But it is proof that a closure driven by property development, rather than by a venue simply going under, doesn't have to be permanent if an operator, a landlord and a council are all willing to keep negotiating.

While you're waiting on Broadwick Live to actually name a month, RTS.FM's own stream keeps running the way it has since 2006, no redevelopment plans pending. Tune into the live broadcast at rts.fm, dig through the label's back catalogue on Bandcamp, or drop into our Telegram if you want the reopening news, and everything else we're tracking, as it lands.

Printworks was never supposed to be permanent even the first time around, a temporary use for a building awaiting redevelopment that ended up outgrowing its own premise. That it's getting a second act, on largely its own terms, in a decade when British nightlife keeps losing rooms it can't get back, is worth marking properly when Broadwick Live finally puts a date on the calendar.

Frequently Asked Questions

When did Printworks London close?

Printworks closed after a farewell weekend at the end of April and start of May 2023, with closing sets from artists including Peggy Gou, Bicep and Black Coffee. The closure was planned well in advance and tied to the site's redevelopment timeline, not to the venue underperforming.

Why did Printworks close in the first place?

The building's owner, British Land, needed the site for the Canada Water Masterplan, a large-scale regeneration of the surrounding docklands area agreed with Southwark Council. Printworks had always operated as a meanwhile use inside a building slated for redevelopment, so the closure was a function of that property timeline rather than the club's popularity or finances.

When is Printworks reopening, and where?

Broadwick Live has confirmed a 2026 reopening in the same Press Halls space at the Canada Water site in Rotherhithe, following Southwark Council's approval of the redevelopment plan. No specific month, opening lineup or ticket on-sale date has been announced yet.

What's changing about Printworks the second time around?

The venue's footprint will be smaller than before, sharing the redeveloped site with new office and retail space rather than occupying the whole former print works building. Broadwick Live has also indicated it plans a broader mix of programming beyond club nights, including exhibitions and other live art forms, alongside the electronic music the venue is best known for.

Is Printworks' return part of a wider recovery for UK clubs?

No, it's largely an exception. The Night Time Industries Association has documented dozens of UK nightclub closures a year through the mid-2020s, driven by costs, licensing and property pressure. Printworks surviving its closure is more a case study in one landlord, one operator and one council choosing to keep a venue alive within a redevelopment, rather than evidence that the underlying closure crisis has eased.