Tragedy struck again in the early hours of New Year’s Eve. A fire that broke out in a nightclub in the Swiss resort of Crans-Montana left “several dozen” dead and a hundred injured among attendees celebrating the arrival of 2026. The causes are still being investigated, but the first information points to a failure of the pyrotechnic material.
The event joins a long list of disasters that have occurred in nightlife spaces in recent years. Despite technical advances and safety regulations, the combination of closed spaces, flammable materials and mass events remains lethal on too many occasions.
Recent tragedies
Less than a month ago, in December 2025, another fire caused 25 deaths in Arpora, a tourist town in the Indian state of Goa. The fire started in the kitchen of a popular club and spread quickly, trapping employees and visitors.
Nine months earlier, in March 2025, the magnitude of the disaster was even greater in North Macedonia. A pyrotechnic flame, launched in the middle of a show at the Pulse club in Kocani, set the roof of the venue on fire and caused a deadly stampede. 63 people died and more than 200 were injured.
In Türkiye, in April 2024, fire devastated the Masquerade nightclub in Istanbul during renovation work. Although the premises were closed to the public, 29 workers were trapped in the basements of the residential building where the club was located.
And just a few months earlier, in October 2023, Spain faced its own tragedy: the fire of three connected nightclubs in Murcia left 13 victims. That event revealed deficiencies in licensing and security measures and opened a debate about the inspection of leisure venues.
A repeating pattern
Each tragedy has a different context, but the result is always the same: dozens of lives cut short in seconds.
In January 2022, two consecutive fires in clubs in West Papua (Indonesia) and Yaoundé (Cameroon) left 36 dead. In both cases, the flames started during confrontations or celebrations in places with combustible materials and blocked exits.
The pattern is constant. From the Colectiv in Bucharest in 2015, where 64 young people died during a rock concert, to the Cromañón in Buenos Aires in 2004 – one of the largest tragedies of this type with 194 victims – official reports usually point out the same causes: excess capacity, flammable materials, lack of emergency exits or use of fireworks indoors.
Further back in memory are the fire at the Lame Horse nightclub in Perm (Russia, 2009), with 152 deaths; that of the Santika club in Bangkok on New Year’s of that same year, with 67; or that of the Oakland Ghost Ship (USA, 2016), where 36 people attending an electronic party lost their lives among labyrinthine illegal structures.