Best Clubs in Ibiza — The Buildings, and What Each One Does to a Night

The clearest split on the island. Ushuaïa on the Playa d'en Bossa strip is an outdoor venue built around a stage and a pool, so it starts in the afternoon and is finished by the evening. It is the closest thing here to a festival and it is a completely different experience in daylight than any indoor room.

When it ends, most of that crowd walks across the road to Hï Ibiza and carries on until six. Two venues facing each other producing one continuous day-into-dawn arc, with no car required at any point — which is why this strip is the easiest base for a first trip.

Elsewhere, Cova Santa and a few other open-air spots inland run late-evening events in a garden setting rather than a club one. Pleasant, slower, and not where you go if you want a main room at four in the morning.

Pacha sits beside the marina in Ibiza Town and has done since 1973. It is not one big room but several connected ones in a converted old building, which means the night depends heavily on where in it you end up. Smaller, warmer and more segmented than the newer venues, and the walk there from the port is part of the evening.

Lío, nearby on the water, is dinner and a cabaret show first and a club second, which makes it the only real option if you want an evening that starts sitting down and ends dancing. It is small, it is expensive, and for two people it is often the better choice than a big room.

Staying in town or Talamanca puts all of this within ten minutes, which matters more than it sounds at five in the morning.

Amnesia sits at Sant Rafel, inland between Ibiza Town and Sant Antoni. Two rooms — a big main room and a terrace — and a crowd that has been coming for decades. Nothing about the location is convenient and nobody who goes there minds.

DC-10 is out near the salt flats behind the airport, and it is the least polished building on this list by a distance. Low ceilings, no view, no interest in impressing anyone. It is where the island's most serious dance-music crowd goes, and its long-running Monday fixture is the clearest example of a party mattering more than a venue.

Both mean arranging transport in each direction before you leave. That is the actual cost of these two, not the ticket.

Sant Antoni has its own circuit: the west-facing sunset strip on the water, the pool-party venues on the edge of town, and clubs in the centre that run later. Younger, cheaper and less concerned with dress than the port.

It works well as a whole night on its own and badly as one stop in a night that started elsewhere, because it is a genuine 40 minutes from Santa Eulària and further still from the north. Pick a side of the island for the evening and stay on it.

Buy online. The door price is consistently higher, the big nights sell out, and there is no advantage whatsoever to turning up hopeful. Entry generally starts from around thirty euros and goes up sharply depending on the night.

Drinks inside are expensive enough to surprise people who were braced for expensive. Eat first, which you will do anyway because dinner here is at ten. Tables only make sense above about six people, and the VIP club page explains how the minimum spend arithmetic works.

Dress is smart but not formal: no beachwear, no sportswear, shoes rather than sandals. For how the hours fall across a whole night, read the nightlife guide; for pacing several nights across a week, the party guide.