Beirut’s Iconic B018 Is Reopening This July

Main image via bernardkhoury.com.

After nearly two years of silence, B018 is set to reopen this July, marking the return of one of Beirut’s most iconic nightlife spots.

The underground club, housed in a windowless bunker in Karantina, has been closed since 2024 following a dispute over the land it sits on. It’s the latest twist in a history that’s never exactly been calm. The space survived the 2020 port explosion almost intact despite the devastation around it, kept running through years of economic collapse, and somehow never lost its standing as one of the city’s most recognizable nightlife landmarks.

It started in 1984

B018’s story began in 1984 as late-night music therapy sessions in founder Naji Gebran’s apartment, built around his own record collection. The concept went public a decade later, opening as an underground space in Sin El Fil in 1994, with no signage and no real address. It found its permanent, iconic home in Karantina in 1998, in a subterranean bunker designed by Bernard Khoury and built in just six months.

Reopening and the return to the vision

This reopening is being framed as a return to that earlier idea rather than a new expansion. Musical direction is now in the hands of Naji’s son, Omran Gebran, who’s stripping back some of the commercial layers that had been built up over time. There’s no elevated DJ booth this time, and no central stage. Instead, a new 360-degree sound system, reportedly the first of its kind in Lebanon, is being installed throughout, lined with volcanic insulation for isolation, so that people end up facing and dancing toward each other rather than all towards a DJ.

There’s something almost familiar about the timing of it all. Watching a beloved club come back to life while so much else here still feels under attack is its own kind of dissonance.

B018 is expected to officially reopen its doors this July.