Wasteland is the largest international fetish fantasy event in the world, and the party that brought Dutch fetishism out of the underground. It began in 1994 with a piece of theatre nobody has repeated: two venues facing each other across a main Amsterdam street, joined by a bridge built between them and a banner unveiled overhead, while Saturday-night traffic slowed underneath to look up. The scene it announced turned out to have a far wider audience than anyone expected, and Wasteland has run ever since as the event where the straight and LGBTQ+ fetish communities gather in the same rooms.

What defines it is transformation rather than dress-up. Wasteland's stated position is that a plain black rubber or leather outfit is enough to get into a fetish event but not enough here — guests are expected to build a costume, and every edition is given a theme to push the décor and the outfits further. The result is closer to a production than a club night: six show stages and four dance floors at the Amsterdam edition, opera singers alongside suspension performers and circus acts, visuals, special effects, blacklight body painting, fetish fashion shows, dungeon and play areas, massage, lounges and chill-out space. The dress code is checked at the door by the organisation's self-styled Doorbitches, whose decision is final and carries no ticket refund.

The music is broad — house, tech house and techno on the main floors, with smaller areas used to experiment with electro, disco, classical and live performance in support of the theme. The crowd is deliberately mixed: alternative and fashionable clubbers, burlesque performers, fetishists and BDSM community members, straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender guests, with an audience the organisers describe as spanning ages 21 to 91.

Wasteland runs in two cities. Its main location is the North Sea Venue on the Hemkade in Zaandam, just outside Amsterdam, twice a year, joined by the Halloween Ball at Radion in Amsterdam and an annual Berlin edition inside the KitKatClub. A post-apocalyptic Summerfest closes the calendar outdoors in July. The press file it has accumulated over three decades — Cirque du Soleil meets Marquis de Sade, a pansexual pilgrimage, the Super Bowl of fetish — is why the event draws an international crowd to a Dutch industrial hall in November. Browse EroticAdvisor for current edition dates, dress codes, ticket prices and the Amsterdam fetish venues around them.