Do Singapore’s Gen Zs still know how to party? Here’s what’s really happening in nightlife

Step into Marina Bay Sands’ Marquee nightclub on a Wednesday night, and one finds a curious answer to the question: Do Gen Zs still know how to party?

Tourists and expatriates are in the minority here. Instead, the venue is packed with young adults in their early 20s, complete with long queues for the indoor ferris wheel and screaming glee as the nightclub drops a blanket of balloons on the dance floor.

But, behind this glittering facade, the establishment has been working overtime to court new blood.

This particular party is one of Marquee’s FTW themed nights, when the nightclub opens an hour earlier at 9pm, offering complimentary admission and free-flow drinks until midnight for a limited number of partygoers. Marquee’s typical maximum capacity is just under 2,000 people.

It is part of a strategy that includes $40 student discounts on “infinite pour” drink promotions, exit vouchers for free entry the following week and e-mails enticing past patrons to come down with guests for free.

This strategy pays off in volume. Marquee has seen month-on-month growth in patronage since January, says Mr Patrick Robertson, Marina Bay Sands’ director of nightlife operations.

“At the start of this year, we noticed a shift in partying trends within Singapore’s nightlife scene, which prompted us to refine our operations,” he says.

“With a larger Gen Z crowd today, the key difference in the industry is the pace of change. Nightlife trends used to shift every two to three years, but we now see them evolving every few months.”

Even as liquor licensing hours were recently extended till 4am in limited parts of Singapore, a subtler shift is happening beneath the surface at Singapore’s major nightlife players.

Underground party collective Thugshop has begun hosting Higher Sundays events with $1 cover charges and cheaper drinks, while offering free drinks and waiving cover charges through its Telegram channel.

Nightclub Zouk, too, has been wooing the young adult crowd with promotions at its Redtail bar, while blasting its over 12,000 fans on Telegram with promotions alongside Gen Z-infused meme culture.

Such measures reveal a fundamental shift: Gen Zs will party, but only if the barriers are lowered – a trend that has some operators worrying about sustainability.

Mr Kavan Spruyt, founder of nightclub and event space Rasa, points to aggressive cost-cutting as a sign of the “kind of sacrifice that operators now need to make in order for crowds to come in”.

“What’s separating the clubs that have vibrancy versus the ones that don’t is the ability to invest a lot of money,” he says. “Why are we offering free entry? Because people can’t afford it otherwise.”

The 44-year-old had his first brushes with Singapore’s party culture in the 1990s and 2000s, which he says felt like a different economic reality.

“Back then, if I had $50, I could go out, share a jug with my friends,” he recalls. “If I had $80, I could get a little bit wasted. Now, $80 is only going to get you cab fare.”

Shorter attention spans, higher expectations

As more Gen Zs come of age and enter the scene, the biggest changes in party culture are not just economic.

“Their attention span is shorter, so you have to grab them really quick,” says Ms Sheryl Sho, 28, resident DJ at Thugshop.

“With the younger crowd, you can see when they start to fade away when a track has gone on a bit too long, and you have to transition faster to get them back.”

This extends beyond music.

For extremely online Gen Zs like Mr Sim, a 27-year-old draughtsman who declined to share his first name, gone are the days of partygoers going to the same established venues every weekend.

Instead, Gen Zs pay attention to Telegram channels and the social media accounts of party collectives like Culture, which curates events catering to what Gen Zs want.

As social media is a key shaper of what a good time looks like, parties have increasingly become fodder for businesses’ TikTok and Instagram accounts. Checking an establishment’s Instagram story is one way consumers discern whether it has a lively enough vibe to merit a visit.

“We speak to Gen Zs in their own digital spaces,” says Ms Christine Tan, Zouk’s brand and marketing manager. “Our Telegram channel, for example, has a completely different tone and vibe from our other platforms.”

The most visible expression of this comes from the smash success of coffee clubbing collective Beans&Beats’ takeover of Funan mall on Aug 29 and 30.

“Can a group of 20-year-olds take over an entire shopping mall to throw a sober youth music festival?” one member of the collective asks in a TikTok clip that drew more than 300,000 views on the platform.

“For the past month, we spent sleepless nights planning something that has never been attempted in Singapore.”

The result of that campaign was more than 5,000 partygoers cramming into Funan’s basement foodcourt and two other party zones upstairs from 10pm to 1am.

Peeling back the curtain and getting up close with party organisers has long been a hallmark of content created by Gen Z collectives, which have used social media to identify niches and build communities at unprecedented speed.

Beans&Beats co-founder Aiden Low says that when the team produces TikTok videos or Instagram reels, revellers love to get in front of the camera and become part of the collective’s content. “Social media has impacted how we think of parties.”

This sober party collective began as a friends-and-family gathering that its trio of then-20-year-old founders recorded and posted online in 2024.

“People were reaching out saying, ‘this is so cool, where is this happening?’” Mr Low recalls. That initial virality inspired them to launch their first public party of over 100 attendees at Pearl’s Hill Terrace.

Their main selling point: trading booze for coffee in daytime or earlier-evening sober parties – avoiding hefty alcohol bills and late-night transportation costs, while creating more mindful crowds bonding over shared interests rather than liquid courage.

“Because you’re not intoxicated, you’re able to enjoy the music as it truly is,” Mr Low says.

This article was originally published in The Straits Times.