IFEMA MADRID

Oíza's gesture at the gates of Barajas

Francisco Javier Sáenz de Oíza signed the door of the new Madrid fairgrounds with a strange and exact building: square on the outside, circular on the inside. On December 20, 1991, King Juan Carlos inaugurated the Ferial Juan Carlos I there, in the Campo de las Naciones, an expansion then almost empty between the M-11, the M-40, and the airport. IFEMA had been organizing competitions in the Castellana and the Casa de Campo since 1980. The leap in scale was built by the Junquera and Pérez-Pita warehouses: eight pavilions and 14,000 parking spaces. The brand is presented today as IFEMA MADRID. The venue has grown to 13 pavilions, some 200,000 m² covered, 85 rooms, two convention centers, and a crown of outdoor spaces.

The warehouse as a club

There is no resident DJ or usual bar here: there are cubic meters. Pavilions 2, 6, and 12 are open-plan, without columns. A closed pavilion admits up to 17,000 people; the exterior, up to 35,000. That box is what has turned the fairgrounds into the large room of Madrid's electronics. In 2019, DGTL Madrid occupied pavilions 1 and 3 from 20:00 to 06:00, with the Modular and Generator stages and a club techno lineup—Tale Of Us, Dixon, Ben Klock, Óscar Mulero. Since 2023, Circoloco—the DC-10 party in Ibiza—has made Pavilion 12 its Madrid winter dancefloor, with sold-out nights and a fourth consecutive year. Blackworks plants industrial hard techno in pavilions 12 and 14. Medusa has programmed a winter indoor for 9,000 people. Under the IFEMA MADRID LIVE label, the venue rents and produces large-format leisure: the architecture is fixed; the sound system is that of each setup.

Metro at the door and fair until dawn

The Feria de Madrid station, on line 8, leads to the South Gate. Inside there is a city of services: restaurants and bars on the Central Avenue, Wi-Fi, healthcare, Business Centre, PRM access, and a ring of parking lots. The Ricardo Bofill Municipal Palace, managed by the consortium since 2019, is another venue attached to the complex. There is no nightclub schedule: it opens when there is a fair, congress, or concert. An event like DGTL managed to run from 20:00 to 06:00. In 2026, the works for the Spanish Formula 1 Grand Prix cut off access and the south pedestrian gate for months. What is permanent is the type of space: warehouses next to Barajas, ready for a fair on Friday and, if the promoter fits, a rave on Saturday.