Refuge NYC Marks One Year With 15-Night Anniversary Run Featuring Deep Dish, David Morales and The Martinez Brothers
Refuge NYC has announced a 15-night, four-week anniversary run beginning September 4 and closing September 27, celebrating the Brooklyn club's first year of operation. The lineup, revealed on August 12, opens with salute and ends with Brothers Macklovitch — the duo of A-Trak and Dave 1 of Chromeo. In between, the schedule brings Gabriel & Dresden, David Morales, The Martinez Brothers, 2 shell, and a 12-hour set from Deep Dish (Billboard).
The club was founded by John Dimatteo and Craig "Shorty" Bernabeu and opened in September 2025. In its first year, Refuge NYC hosted more than 210 events and welcomed over 100,000 guests, according to figures the founders provided in a joint statement to Billboard. Eventbrite data cited by Dimatteo and Bernabeu showed that guests travelled to the venue from approximately 1,300 cities across 73 countries and six continents.
That reach sits against the club's physical footprint. The venue's official website, refuge.nyc, identifies it as "Refuge Hi-Def Dance Club," a 500-capacity underground nightclub. A separate social media post from July noted that the club is open to the public 24 hours a day, 365 days a year (Facebook).
Before the anniversary run begins, the venue is expanding its physical space. Refuge NYC has added a custom-built, four-corner analog sound system for a new outdoor area the founders call "version 1.0 of the Refuge Courtyard." That space opens August 15 with Julian Fijma, followed by Tee Em Dee on August 16. Stacey Pullen, joined by Kilopatrah Jones, is also booked for an August 15 appearance at the club (Instagram). The venue's Friday programming includes Magda, Voigtmann, Amelia Holt and Julian Anthony (refuge.nyc).
David Morales, who appears on the anniversary lineup, has an existing relationship with the venue. He began a residency at Refuge NYC earlier this year that, according to his own social media post, runs through June 17, 2026 (Facebook).
For a club that did not exist 12 months ago, the anniversary billing carries weight simply by naming the acts on it. Deep Dish, the Iranian-American duo of Ali "Dubfire" Shirazinia and Sharam Tayebi, reformed in 2024 after a long hiatus; a 12-hour set from them is a booking that pulls attention from beyond New York. The Martinez Brothers are among the most booked house DJs working internationally. David Morales is a Grammy-winning producer and remixer whose career spans four decades. That these names are playing a 500-capacity room, rather than a festival stage, is the kind of detail that tells its own story about what the founders have built and what they are spending to mark year one.
The full anniversary run spans September 4 through September 27.
