Stefana Żeromskiego 117 – Łódź, Poland
Willa is one of the more unusual venues on Łódź’s electronic music map. Located at Żeromskiego 117, inside the large Poniatowski Park, it combines a small club, café, garden and cultural space inside a historic villa surrounded almost entirely by greenery. During the day it can function as a relaxed park café; after dark, the same building becomes a compact electronic music club.
The house itself predates the club by approximately a century. Built around 1920–1925 in the Polish manor-house style and designed by architect Wiesław Lisowski, it stands in the central part of Poniatowski Park, one of Łódź’s major historic green spaces. Its original residential purpose creates an unusual environment for electronic music: rather than adapting a factory or warehouse — the architecture most commonly associated with Łódź nightlife — Willa places the dancefloor inside a relatively small domestic building surrounded by trees.
From Squat to Club
The current project opened in 2022 and initially retained a strongly DIY character. Its own second-anniversary announcement described the transformation directly: after two years of renovation, “Willa is no longer a squat” but a functioning club, café and eventually bistro. This gradual development remains visible in the venue’s identity. Willa feels less like a purpose-designed nightclub than a building that has slowly accumulated different uses around a community.
Electronic music forms an important part of the programme, particularly techno, house and electro, but Willa is deliberately broader than a genre-specific club. Concerts, open decks, workshops, food events and daytime gatherings coexist with weekend parties and afterhours. In summer, the garden and surrounding park become almost as important as the rooms inside.
The recurring The Villa Techno Dancing series illustrates the more underground side of the programme, bringing local and Polish selectors into the relatively intimate interior for stripped-down techno and electro nights. Artists appearing in the series have included Hekato, Daisy Cutter, MKO, FM and G-Sound. The club has also developed relationships with the wider Polish electronic scene rather than operating only locally.
A particularly good example is its post-Audioriver collaboration with Jasna 1 and Tama. In 2026, the three clubs again combined their crews for an afterparty spread across two stages at Willa, with Joana, Kovvalsky, MATRIX3K, PAWEL, WRK and others. The concept used the character of the venue particularly well: heavier music inside and a lighter programme outside in the garden.
Club in the Park
The contrast between the two environments is ultimately what defines Willa. Inside, the club describes its own atmosphere through “bass, concrete and strobes”, supported by a Funktion-One sound system. Outside is one of the largest parks in central Łódź. A night can therefore move between a dark, compact dancefloor and an outdoor garden surrounded by mature trees.
This gives Willa a position quite different from Łódź’s larger electronic venues. It does not need the scale of a warehouse or a major international booking every weekend. Its strength lies instead in flexibility: café in the afternoon, garden in summer, concert space, local meeting point and small electronic club after dark.
That mixture also preserves something of the project’s DIY origins. Willa is neither exclusively a nightclub nor simply a cultural café that occasionally hosts DJs. It sits somewhere between the two — a century-old house in the middle of a park that gradually became part of Łódź’s contemporary electronic music scene.
