18 September 2025 | Photos: GWR
“My hope is that my passion could inspire new generations to learn more about the wonderful history of the house and techno revolution”
Marco Brusadelli from Italy has been officially recognised by Guinness World Records as the holder of the world’s largest collection of nightclub flyers.
Beginning in 1991, during his travels through cities and clubs across Europe, Brusadelli would peel the posters from walls and lampposts and carefully file them away. Over the course of 24 years, this practice evolved into a living archive that today spans 113,012 individual flyers, covering the spectrum of electronic music culture from the mid-1980s to 2015.
“This collection represents more than 25 years of electronic music history and its contemporary art,” Marco said. He explained that “[the] best DJs, art directors, promoters, graphic designers and traders/collectors have helped me to make this project a global project… I’m sure that this is the largest collection in the world because I’m trading with major flyers collectors worldwide and nobody [has] so many different ones!”
Organised with near-curatorial precision, the flyers are housed in drawers within his music room, catalogued by country, party, and format. The archive includes over 12,000 rave flyers, more than 17,000 club flyers, 11,611 from the United Kingdom, and over 40,000 from across Italy. Beyond Guinness’s strict guidelines, Marco has also kept an additional 5,003 items, bringing the true total to 119,897.
Far from being ephemera, the flyers reflect the grassroots design languages that gave visual form to subcultures. “From the poster’s inception, to the event’s planning and flyer’s design, all DJs, promoters, art directors, graphic designers, flyer collectors, clubbers and ravers all over the world are involved in this form of artistic and musical expression,” Marco explained. Today, these works are celebrated in books, exhibitions, and archives as a vital strand of contemporary art history.
For Brusadelli, recognition by Guinness carries a personal resonance. “To be able to participate [in] the Guinness World Records is a dream that has come true for me. When I was younger I was given a Guinness World Records book by my parents every Christmas,” he recalled. “I used to tell myself that one day I would have been part of it.”
He added: “So I have worked for more than half of my life to create this collection for no [monetary] reasons. My hope is that my passion could inspire new generations to learn more about the wonderful history of the ‘house and techno revolution.’”
Having secured his place in Guinness World Records, Brusadelli has since stepped away from actively collecting, dedicating what he calls his “new life” to helping less fortunate people. Yet his collection, he insists, remains open to anyone with a love for the world of nightclub flyers. “It makes me happy to share my passion with people that appreciate my hard work,” he said.
