Why Not opens at 10pm on Friday and Saturday and runs to 6am, three floors of dancing in the heart of the first district. It has done so since 1980, which makes it the oldest gay disco in Vienna.
Why Not sits at Tiefer Graben 22, a quiet first-district street that drops below Am Hof and the old city core. The address gives no warning. By midnight the staircase is full and three bars are working across three floors.
Vienna's official tourism board, wien.info, lists it plainly as the city's oldest gay and queer disco, open since 1980. More than four decades of weekends have made it the anchor of the local scene.
Few queer venues anywhere in central Europe can point to that kind of continuity. Why Not opened the year Vienna's club scene was still taking shape, and it has held the same address through every shift since. That staying power is the reason QueerCityPass still files it first among the city's gay nightlife.
The room
The club spreads over three floors linked by a narrow staircase. There is a main dancefloor, three separate bars, chill-out corners and what the venue calls a funroom. The travel guide TravelGay describes it as a three-floor club with bars, a dancefloor and quieter rooms to step into when the main floor fills.
Lighting is low and the resident DJs run house, disco and techno built for movement rather than conversation. This is a room for dancing, not for a slow first drink. The first-district setting is the surprise, a serious club tucked under residential windows a short walk from Stephansplatz.
What to order
Why Not is a club, not a cocktail laboratory, and the drinks match. The three bars pour long drinks, beer, shots and the standard spirits, built fast for a moving crowd rather than stirred to order. Keep it simple, a vodka long drink or a beer, and spend the night on the floor where the value sits.
Entry is charged at the door on event nights, and the cover moves with the lineup. Check the current listings on why-not.at or the QueerCityPass guide before you go, since drag nights and guest DJs change the price and the start time.
The three floors give the drinking its own rhythm. The main bar by the dancefloor works fastest, while the quieter upstairs bars and the chill-out corners suit a slower round between sets. Order at whichever floor matches the part of the night you are in.
Who it is for
This is for the dancer and the night owl, not the seated drinker. Why Not is the long-running base of Vienna's queer nightlife, a reliable Friday and Saturday fixture that has outlasted nearly every club around it. Drag programming is regular, with nights such as Dragaholic listed on rainbow.at.
For a calmer Vienna evening, our guide to the best cocktail bars in Vienna points to the city's drink-first rooms. The late-running Wirr in Vienna and the inventive Moby Dick in Vienna cover Neubau when you want a bar before the club.
Best time to go
Arrive after midnight. The doors open at 10pm on Friday and Saturday, plus the night before public holidays, but the floor does not fill until well after twelve. The club runs to 6am, so there is no rush.
For more of the city, start with our Vienna bar guide and the wider cocktail bar collection. Few addresses in the centre keep the lights on this long.
Sources: wien.info venue listing (Why Not, 2026); TravelGay, WHY NOT Vienna; QueerCityPass, Why Not Disco; rainbow.at event calendar; Yelp listing, Tiefer Graben 22, 1010 Wien.
