October Gym Round Up
October saw plenty of exciting developments across Europe but many more slipped past us! If your climbing gym is expanding, moving, acquiring another business or hiring get in touch and we will shout about it.
Alex Megos Opens a Gym
World renowned climber Alex Megos has opened his first commercial climbing gym in Forchheim, just outside Nuremberg, Germany. Frankenjura Academy is a full service gym complete with boulder and lead walls, adjustable Kilterboard and spraywall with an obvious focus on climbing hard, but with plenty of boulders and routes for new climbers.
The gym has actually been reborn from the old Magnesia Hall and has undergone an almost full rebuild by VerSys Climbing Walls to bring it up to the modern, bright standard that climbers have come to expect. As they said in an Instagram post, the old-school double wave overhang feature simply isn't suitable for today's large macros so definitely had to go!
Their doors opened on 20th October and are fully up and running.
Spanish Climbing Hotspot Welcomes new Gym by Edu Marin
On October 5th Edu Marin and his business partners opened Fanatic Lleida, in the beautiful town a short drive from some world class sport climbing including Santa Linya and Terradets.
The gym hosts substantial bouldering and lead walls, autobelays, fully adjustable Kilterboard and an absolutely massive, 14m wide spraywall. The build was carried out by DreamWall and matting installed by Instalaciones Poti.
Boards Only Gym Coming to Bath
October 9th saw the announcement of ‘Britain’s smallest bouldering gym’, LUMA Climbing will be opening its doors in the second quarter of 2025 in the historic city of Bath in western England.
LUMA (shortened from the owners names Lucy and Matt) hopes to have 2 boards consisting of a 2024 MoonBoard and either a fully adjustable Tension Board 2 or KilterBoard along with a small training setup.
Of particular interest for the UK climbing industry is LUMA have stated that the gym will be open ‘unmanned 5am-11pm’ - how this will work in the insurance and practicality context we shall have to wait and see!
BoulderWelt Hamburg Progress Update
The German Bouldering gym chain has given a firmer update on the expected opening date along with layout pictures. The gym hopes to open at the ‘end of December’ and progress is coming quickly with cafe installation and routesetter recruitment. The wall is being built by CityWall and includes BoulderWelt’s classic globe feature.
Bold, Boutique Entrant to London's Busy Climbing Scene
On October 27th an instagram post appeared and quickly became the talk of London climbers; MURO Peckham was announced as a “boutique, high-end Japanese style gym with a high density comp wall and London's largest spray wall”.
We've reached out and will be organising an on-site interview with them before their January 2025 opening. In the meantime we're excited to see what they bring to an already busy collection of gyms!
