Two nights, two cities. Shimmy Beach Cape Town on Friday 26 April 2013 and Johannesburg the following night. The South African tour that established the international template every post-2016 Space event has since followed.
The South African tour is the earliest entry on the Space Ibiza On Tour wall that is still well-documented in English-language press — and it pre-dates the original club's closure by three-and-a-half years. The tour matters because it shows the touring model that everything after 2016 grew out of: international headliners, a beach-club daytime venue, and a multi-city run inside the same week. That template would later become the Studio 338 mini-festival, the Greenwood NYD residency and ultimately Space Riccione's opening fiesta.
Shimmy Beach Club is a beachfront venue at the V&A Waterfront in Cape Town — private beach, swimming pool, indoor main floor and an outdoor terrace looking at Table Mountain across the water. It is South Africa's closest venue-DNA match to the original Space Ibiza: a daytime-to-night format with pool, beach and dance floor stacked into the same property.
On Friday 26 April 2013, Shimmy hosted Space Ibiza On Tour for one night only. The line-up was a clean reflection of Space's house and big-room programming taste at the time:
The pricing was contemporary South African festival-club pricing: R280 general admission via Computicket, R300 at the door, and R500 for VIP with access to separate viewing decks and bathrooms. By Cape Town nightlife standards in 2013, that was high-end. By Ibiza standards it was a fraction of the equivalent table-and-bottle minimum.
The South African run was a two-night two-city tour, not a one-off. The Cape Town date on Friday rolled directly into a Johannesburg date the following night, Saturday 27 April 2013. The same headline trio — Roger Sanchez, Camilo Franco, Danny Marquez — played both, supported by local Joburg openers.
That two-night-two-city format is significant. It established that Space was prepared to fly headline DJs across continents for a single weekend's run, and that the brand could fit a "tour" inside 48 hours when the destinations and venues lined up correctly. The same logic would later sit underneath every multi-stop international tour of the post-closure era.
South Africa 2013 was not the first Space international touring date — the brand had already run versions of On Tour in New York, Tel Aviv, Sao Paulo, Dubai, Beirut and Mykonos — but it is one of the most cleanly-documented and most often referenced in subsequent archival material. Three specific elements went on to become the post-closure operating manual:
Shimmy is the prototypical Space international venue: outdoor, pool, beach, main floor, sea view, day-to-late operating licence. The original Space terrace was not literally a beach club — but its DNA was the same. Every major post-2016 venue Space has touched (Studio 338's terrace, the Greenwood's heritage courtyard, the four-area Space Riccione, the Cyprus 2026 pool format at AYA Resort) carries traces of the Shimmy template.
The Cape Town — Johannesburg back-to-back model is the original Space tour rhythm. The post-2016 era reuses it (Studio 338 mini-festival + a continental date, or the European-summer + Greenwood NYD pairing).
The decision to feature Pascal & Pearce, Dean Fuel and Headphase on the Cape Town side stages was deliberate brand-localisation. Every successful post-2016 touring stop has involved local DJs on lower billings — the Cyprus 2026 line-up is no exception, with Cypriot and regional artists alongside the international names.
| Date | Venue | City | Headliners |
|---|---|---|---|
| 26 Apr 2013 | Shimmy Beach Club | Cape Town | Roger Sanchez, Camilo Franco, Danny Marquez |
| 27 Apr 2013 | Johannesburg venue | Johannesburg | Roger Sanchez, Camilo Franco, Danny Marquez |
It is worth being clear about timing. The South African tour was April 2013. The original Space Ibiza Playa d'en Bossa club did not close until 2 October 2016, three years and five months later. So the SA dates are pre-closure tour history, not post-closure.
That timing is exactly why the tour matters: it established the touring infrastructure and brand-extension model that the original club's owners then leaned on heavily after 2016. When the Playa d'en Bossa room closed, Space did not have to invent a touring business from scratch — the South African (and other pre-closure) dates had already proved the model. The post-closure era scaled an existing system; it did not start a new one.
The iconic Space theme at every venue. — Contemporary description of the Space Ibiza On Tour production approach, used across the 2012-2013 international stops.
Yes — on Friday 26 April 2013 at Shimmy Beach Club in Cape Town, followed by a Johannesburg date on 27 April 2013. The tour was headlined by Roger Sanchez, Camilo Franco and Danny Marquez, with South African DJs Dean Fuel, Headphase and Pascal & Pearce on the side stages.
Before. The South African dates were in April 2013, three-and-a-half years before the original Space Ibiza closing fiesta on 2 October 2016. The SA tour is part of the pre-closure international touring history that established the template later expanded after 2016.
Shimmy Beach Club is on South Arm Road in the V&A Waterfront area of Cape Town, South Africa. It is a beachfront day-to-night venue with a private beach, pool, restaurant and main floor — the closest South African venue format to the original Space Ibiza terrace-and-pool DNA.
Main floor: Roger Sanchez, Camilo Franco and Danny Marquez. Side stages: Dean Fuel, Headphase and Pascal & Pearce. The Johannesburg night the following day featured the same three international headliners with local Johannesburg openers.
R280 general admission via Computicket, R300 at the door, and R500 for VIP (access to separate viewing decks and bathrooms) for the Cape Town date. Johannesburg pricing was broadly equivalent at the time.
Sources include Cape Town Magazine event coverage (April 2013), the Boring Cape Town Chick venue review, and the Space Ibiza On Tour archival listings. This page is editorial and is not affiliated with the official Space Ibiza brand or Shimmy Beach Club.