Emo Night Manila, the DJ-driven event series that has built a cult following around 2000s emo and pop punk, is celebrating its second anniversary with its loudest, most ambitious party yet. The event takes place this June 14 at McKinley Whisky Park in BGC, headlined by none other than Filipino emo rock veterans Chicosci. This is more than just a crowd screaming lyrics over DJ decks; the emo kids are doubling down, turning nostalgia into something louder and heavier.
What started in a small bar in HQ, Poblacion, has grown fast in the past two years. Emo Night Manila was never built for mass appeal, but it found its audience anyway: millennials chasing a version of themselves from the past alongside Gen Z kids drawn to a sound and scene they barely caught the first time. The soundtrack might be filled with heartbreak and eyeliner, but what keeps people coming back is the collective release, and the sense that someone else still feels this way, too.
“Emo Night Manila was never about nostalgia alone,” the production team notes on social media. “It’s about creating a space where people can enjoy that concert-like euphoria of singing their favorite songs with others and just belong. The music is the anchor, but the community is what makes it powerful. The connections and new friendships we’ve witnessed along the way empower what we do even more.”
Chicosci’s live performance is a milestone for the production. It’s one thing to spin the songs that shaped a scene. It’s another to bring the artists who wrote them onto the stage. Around that set, the full DJ roster from Emo Night Manila will keep things explosive, curating emotionally loaded, high-energy mixes that run from classics to deep cuts that still hit hard.
