Feb 26 • Jo Cox-Brown

Nightlife Is Not a Luxury: A Critical Review of the Nighttime Economy Report 2026

The Nighttime Economy Report 2026 is a timely intervention in a climate where nightlife is still treated as politically expendable.

Launched at Davos, the report makes an ambitious claim: nightlife isn’t entertainment. It is urban infrastructure. And it should be planned, funded, protected and governed with the same seriousness as daytime economies. 

On this central premise, the report is absolutely right. 

But if the Nighttime Economy Report 2026 is to become the global benchmark it aspires to be, we need to engage with it critically, not to diminish it, but to sharpen it. Because the report’s strongest contribution is not that it answers everything, but that it opens a door. 

This blog offers a respectful but clear-eyed review: what the report does well, what it misses, and what needs to come next if we truly want “nightlife policy” to become the mature field it is rapidly evolving into. 

What does the report get 'right'?

1) It reframes nightlife as civic infrastructure (not a subculture) 

This is the report’s greatest gift. Across decades of public discourse, nightlife has been regularly framed as: 
  • a policing problem 
  • a noise nuisance 
  • a youth issue 
  • a tourist add-on 
  • a moral question 
The report shifts the lens: nightlife becomes infrastructure, like transport, health systems, public realm design, or housing. 

This is an important structural move because it changes the question from: “Do we like nightlife?” to: “How do we manage and invest in the part of the city that operates after dark?” 

If you work in any part of this ecosystem, night mayors, city planners, licensing authorities, venue owners, BIDs, arts organisations, this framing is not just philosophical. It’s strategic. 

Because infrastructure implies:  
  • governance 
  • investment 
  • measurement 
  • long-term strategy  
  • democratic access 
  • workforce planning 
  • resilience 
This is the correct direction of travel. 

2) It highlights a genuine investment injustice 

NTER estimates the global night-time economy generates $3–4 trillion annually and contributes around 3% of global GDP, yet it receives less than 0.1% of global venture capital investment. 

Even if one disputes the precision of those figures (and we should always question big, composite claims), the logic is undeniable: 

Nightlife creates significant economic value and cultural identity, yet remains chronically undercapitalised and structurally fragile. 

For those of us working to save grassroots venues, protect cultural space, fund safety programmes, or embed night-time strategy into city planning, this point is crucial: 

Underinvestment is not accidental. It is structural. 

3) It acknowledges the rise of night governance as a global movement 

The report documents that 80+ cities now have some form of night governance role or office and suggests budgets have increased substantially since 2019. 

This matters. 

Because it confirms what many practitioners have seen from the inside: night governance is no longer a fringe experiment. It is becoming part of formal municipal architecture. 

In many cities, the “night-time economy” is no longer confined to: 
  • licensing enforcement 
  • alcohol management 
  • event programming 
It is increasingly connected to: 
  • transport planning 
  • women’s safety strategies 
  • public realm design 
  • cultural regeneration 
  • workforce and fair work agendas 
  • climate targets and sustainable night operations 
The report correctly frames this as a global policy direction, and that matters for legitimacy. 

Where does the report fall short?

1) It calls itself global, but the data is not globally representative 

The report positions itself as global, yet the strongest datasets and most detailed case studies are largely concentrated in: 
  • London 
  • Australia (especially NSW) 
  • the United States (selected cities like Philadelphia) 

These are all valuable contexts. But they are also:
  • Anglophone 
  • relatively high-income 
  • culturally similar governance environments 
  • more likely to have mature monitoring and data infrastructure 

What’s missing is a robust spread across:
  • Africa 
  • Latin America 
  • the Middle East 
  • South Asia 
  • Southeast Asia 
  • and much of Eastern Europe 

This matters because nightlife does not exist as a singular “system.” It is shaped by: 
  • cultural norms 
  • informal economies 
  • policing and political context 
  • religious frameworks 
  • public transport realities 
  • safety norms for women and LGBTQ+ communities 
  • conflict/post-conflict realities 
  • urban density and informal settlements 
  • different legal realities (e.g. permits, bribery, informal enforcement) 

A report that aims to shape global investment and governance needs a more globally distributed evidence base, or it risks exporting a narrow policy model into contexts where it may not fit. 

In short:  Global framing + Western case studies ≠ global analysis.

2) It repeats powerful statistics without always showing methodology 

Some of the headline figures are compelling, but the report sometimes reads like it wants to influence before it has fully proved. 

When we’re trying to shift policy, numbers matter. But how those numbers are built matters just as much. 

For example: 
  • How do we define the “night-time economy” consistently across cities? 
  • What activities are included? 
  • What time bands count as “night”? 
  • How are informal economies accounted for? 
  • How does this interact with tourism and cultural spending? 

If this report is to become the benchmark, it needs to lead in methodological transparency as well as narrative power. 

Because when the sector is challenged, by councils, residents, regulators, newspapers, the first thing they attack is: 

“Where’s your evidence?” 

A global report should make that defence effortless. 
Write your awesome label here.

3) There is not enough attention on power, inequity, and displacement 

The report rightly notes that real estate pressures, rising rents, and energy costs are killing grassroots culture. 

But it doesn’t go far enough into the true structural issue: 

Nightlife creates value that others extract. 
  • Grassroots venues, queer spaces, immigrant-led cultural spaces, and DIY scenes often: 
  • make places desirable 
  • attract visitors 
  • drive footfall 
  • build identity 
  • activate underused areas 

Then property markets rise, and those very spaces are displaced. 

This is not a side problem. It is the central story of nightlife in many cities. 

A truly future-facing report would address: 
  • cultural extraction 
  • the ethics of development 
  • cultural land trusts 
  • cooperative ownership models 
  • anti-displacement policy 
  • planning protections (agent of change isn’t enough) 
  • long-term security of tenure 

The report gestures towards new ownership and hybrid finance, but doesn’t fully land the political implications. 

4) The report is optimistic about “tech solutions”, but underplays ethical risk 

It’s obviously written in AI, and attention to detail on removing the tell-tell M-dashes that pepper all AI written documents would give it more credence.  

Tech and AI are positioned as inevitable tools of the future night-time economy: mobility, safety, venue optimisation, entry systems, digital identity. 

There are opportunities here. 

But there are also risks, including: 
  • surveillance creep 
  • discriminatory entry systems 
  • data privacy harms 
  • bias against marginalised groups 
  • punitive enforcement disguised as “safety innovation” 
  • inequity in who benefits from “smart city” systems 

Night-time culture is, by definition, where people experiment with freedom. The report needs a stronger ethical framework on what “technology after dark” should and should not become. 
Write your awesome label here.

What I’d love to see in NTER 2027 (and why it matters) 

This report is an excellent beginning. But next year, the project must become bolder, not only in ambition, but in scope and rigour. 

Here is what would make NTER 2027 a true global benchmark: 

1) A genuinely global city dataset 

Include deep case studies from: 

  • Latin America (e.g., Bogotá, São Paulo, Mexico City) 
  • Africa (e.g., Lagos, Nairobi, Cape Town) 
  • Middle East (e.g., Beirut, Amman, Dubai) 
  • South Asia (e.g., Mumbai, Karachi, Dhaka) 
  • Southeast Asia (e.g., Bangkok, Manila, Jakarta) 


Nightlife in these contexts is rich, resilient, informal, politically complex, and deeply instructive. 

2) A standardised global measurement framework 

Not just “nightlights” or surveys, but a benchmark toolkit with: 

  • agreed time bands 
  • categories of night work 
  • venue typologies 
  • mobility access metrics 
  • safety experience metrics 
  • cultural equity indicators 
  • displacement indicators 
  • liveability and resident conflict metrics 

Without measurement, nightlife stays vulnerable. 

3) A stronger political economy analysis 

Nightlife is always about power: 

  • who gets to occupy public space? 
  • who is policed? 
  • who is protected? 
  • whose culture is valued? 
  • who profits? 

NTER would benefit from a sharper analysis of these dynamics. Because when we talk about “infrastructure”, we must also talk about: justice. 

Write your awesome label here.

Final thoughts

The Nighttime Economy Report 2026 should be read widely. 

It’s optimistic, ambitious, and deeply strategic in its key message: nightlife is civic infrastructure worthy of investment. 

But the report is currently more accurate as: an international, Anglophone-led policy framing document rather than a globally representative evidence baseline. That isn’t a failure. It’s a phase. 

If NTER becomes iterative, expanding the dataset, strengthening methodology, centring cultural equity and protecting grassroots ecosystems, it has the potential to become one of the most important annual publications shaping the future of cities after dark. 

And we need that. Because the truth is simple: 

Cities without nightlife lose their soul. And cities that fail to protect nightlife are not building progress, they’re building monotony.