Pacha Sells Sunday. Our File Kept Landing on Thursday.

A club of this size does not have a season so much as a timetable. At Pacha this summer Monday belongs to Sonny Fodera. Tuesday, through late April and May, belonged to Franky Rizardo's FLOW, a four-week run. Wednesday is Blond:ish and Abracadabra, from the middle of May to the end of July. Sunday is Solomun's, as Sunday has been for eleven years before this one, one guest a week, a residency old enough to have its own alumni. The bookings are announced in blocks, in February, to people buying flights.

Thursday, from the last day of April to the middle of June, belonged to Shimza. Shimza & Co. ran eight of them. And it is those eight nights, more than the Sunday everyone flies in for, that put this building at the top of the first room index we have published.

EIGHT THURSDAYS

Read the Thursday bills in order and the shape of the thing is obvious. It opens on 30 April with Andrea Oliva and a live set from Bora Uzer. Francis Mercier the following week, then Gordo and Elderbrook, then DJ Tennis. On 28 May it is Mahmut Orhan with Jan Blomqvist playing live and Kitty Amor. Then Alex Wann and Culoe du Song; then Henrik Schwarz, live, with Arodes. It closes on 18 June with Damian Lazarus, Darque, and a live PA from Tyla.

That is a promoter building a room out of Afro house and live electronics for seven weeks and then, on the eighth, booking a pop star. Our own chart has nothing to say about the programming. What it has is a number on the man whose name is on the door: Shimza tops our South African chart this week at 88.2, the highest we score anyone in that scene.

Our appearance ledger holds him at Pacha twice — 28 May and the 18 June closing. Both are Thursdays inside his own residency. Neither is a surprise to anyone who was there. Both were news to us, because the ledger is assembled from what artists and rooms post afterwards, not from what was advertised in February.

WHAT THE FILE CAUGHT

Seven nights, then, from a room that ran five a week for four months. Two Thursdays from a run of eight. Rounds two and three of a four-week FLOW, and nothing from rounds one or four — then Rizardo again on 18 August, months after that residency ended, which is a booking and not a residency and we would not have known to look for it.

The Sunday we caught is the one that mattered: 31 May, the opening night of Solomun's twelfth season. One night out of a run that goes to 4 October. If you wanted a single image of what this index is and is not, that is it. We hold the opening and none of the eighteen weeks after it, and the number we publish is computed as though those seven nights were the room.

THE ROW WE KILLED

One entry did not survive the week. Our matcher had WhoMadeWho at Pacha on Thursday 21 May, at high confidence. The post it read is captioned “b3b energy w/ @blondish @whomadewho @nicobernardiniofc”. Blond:ish plays Pacha on Wednesdays. 21 May was a Thursday, and the Thursday bill was Shimza's. Ibiza Spotlight puts WhoMadeWho with Nico Bernardini at Ushuaïa on Wednesday 20 May.

Wrong night, and on the evidence wrong room. We have excluded it, which is why this piece counts 7 appearances and not eight, and why the index moved before publication rather than after it. A second row from the same date — Ry X, captioned “DJ sets with @shimza.dj” — we have kept and flagged: it names the right residency, but Ry X is not on the published bill for that night, and guests get added to bills without anyone updating the listing.

WHAT WE ARE NOT TELLING YOU

We were not in the room on any of these nights and we do not review from imagination. Nothing here describes how a set sounded, what a crowd did, or what any of these bookings were worth. Where we name a bill we are reading a published listing, and listings are marketing documents that go out months early and change.

The index itself is a small number built on a small pile. Four artists we score, seven appearances, one room. It rewards a room that books high-momentum names repeatedly, and it is blind to every night played by someone we do not track — which on Pacha's Thursdays is most of the bill. A room's position moves when our coverage moves. Read it beside the count of what we actually hold, which is printed next to it for that reason.

And we have not spoken to Pacha, to Shimza, or to any promoter named here. The room is #1 of 29 on the index we built. It is not on the venue chart we publish every week, because that chart measures how fast a room's own following is moving, and a building whose audience arrived decades ago has no momentum left to find.

1Pacha81.8

2Amnesia78.4

3Hï Ibiza63.3

4[UNVRS]61.7

TOP 4 OF 6 ROOM INDEX · APPEARANCE-WEIGHTED

Ground Frequency Data Desk — Western Europe. "Pacha tops the Spain room index at 81.8." GF Rising, 2026-W35. https://www.groundfreq.com/charts/rising/spain/2026-W35/

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GROUND FREQUENCY DATA DESK — WESTERN EUROPE EDITED AND SIGNED OFF BY RICHARD SONG 2026-08-25 WHY WE BYLINE DESKS →

@pachaofficial · PROFILE IMAGE, MIRRORED

The deepest venue registry we hold — a club economy old enough that movement in it usually means something. This is an organisational byline, not a person pretending to be local — drafted from a locked extract, fact-checked against it, and signed off by a named human editor. The Western Europe desk · Corrections