Bathhouse Atlantic Avenue Opens Saturday With a 100-Plus-Seat Event Sauna

Bathhouse opens its third New York City location, Bathhouse Atlantic Avenue, on Saturday, May 16, 2026, at 540 Atlantic Avenue in Downtown Brooklyn, two blocks west of Barclays Center. The build-out features four indoor heat rooms, with an outdoor sauna due this summer, anchored by what the company calls “the largest event sauna in the Northeast Hemisphere” and what the organizers of Aufguss USA Nationals 2026 describe as the largest event sauna in the country, with capacity for more than 100 guests in a single session. Day passes start at $29. The opening lands three days before the venue hosts the Aufguss USA Nationals Show Aufguss Competition on May 19 and 20.

Four heat experiences in Downtown Brooklyn

Bathhouse Atlantic Avenue runs four distinct heat environments under one roof, and the company says an outdoor sauna in the backyard space follows this summer. The Event Sauna tops out at 175 degrees Fahrenheit and is designed for guided, ritual-based heat sessions including complimentary Aufguss programming for day-pass holders. The Banya, a Russian and Eastern European format, runs between 185 and 195 degrees Fahrenheit and is heated by basalt stones in a furnace. The Infrared Sauna radiates at 160 degrees Fahrenheit. The Steam Room sits at 115 degrees Fahrenheit. Three thermal pools complete the contrast loop: a hot pool at 104 degrees, a neutral pool at 98 degrees, and a 50-degree cold plunge.

Day passes start at $29, the lowest entry price in the Bathhouse system; passes at Williamsburg and Flatiron start at $39. Memberships across the company’s NYC locations range from $145 to $225 a month. The Atlantic Avenue site also includes a Canteen for food and drinks, plus the body-treatment menu offered at the other Bathhouse properties.

A 100-plus-seat event sauna, built for programmed heat

The Atlantic Avenue Event Sauna is the centerpiece of the new venue and the reason the Aufguss USA Nationals 2026 competition chose Bathhouse Brooklyn as its primary stage. Aufguss USA organizers have described the room as the largest event sauna in the country, built to hold more than 100 spectators in a single performance window. Bathhouse’s own opening message stretched that further, calling it “the largest event sauna in the Northeast Hemisphere.” Capacity, not hemisphere, is what matters here: a room that seats triple digits is what makes spectator Aufguss commercially viable in a country still building its competitive scene.

The room hosts Aufguss USA Nationals 2026 on May 19 and 20 with the Show Aufguss Competition: nine performances across three four-hour sessions, where competitors combine heat, scent, music, choreography, and towel work into multi-sensory theater at performance intensity. The traditional Modern Classic Cup runs May 21 at Bathhouse Flatiron. Top finishers earn slots at the Aufguss World Championships at Satama Sauna Resort & Spa in Germany in September. The infrastructure underneath that competition is now permanent: a purpose-built event room rather than a borrowed one.

Inside the $35 million expansion

The Atlantic Avenue opening is the first new venue Bathhouse has launched since SaunaNews reported on May 8 that the company raised $35 million led by Imaginary Ventures, the consumer-brand firm co-founded by former Net-a-Porter chief Natalie Massenet. The round funds expansion into Philadelphia, Chicago, Downtown Brooklyn, Berkeley Heights (New Jersey), Minneapolis, Nashville, Stamford (Connecticut), and Los Angeles. The marquee project is an 85,000-square-foot complex at the former Amoeba Music site on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, on a 25-year lease targeted for early 2028.

The Atlantic Avenue site continues the design partnership between Rockwell Group and Colberg Architecture that shaped Bathhouse Williamsburg and Bathhouse Flatiron. Beauty Independent reported in May that each of Bathhouse’s existing NYC locations covers roughly 35,000 square feet, with thermal pools, dry saunas, steam rooms, cold plunges, a café, and treatment rooms. The company has not publicly disclosed the Atlantic Avenue square footage, and the opening message did not name an exact event-sauna seat count beyond the “largest” framing. Aufguss USA’s “more than 100 guests” figure remains the most concrete public number.

Co-founders Travis Talmadge and Jason Goodman pitch Bathhouse as a social, ritual-driven venue rather than a quiet luxury spa. The model arrives in a New York market that Vanity Fair labeled the “sauna wars” in January, with Othership, Lore Bathing Club, Schwet (now opening in Tribeca this October), and Altar all opening or expanding within blocks of each other in Manhattan and Brooklyn. Atlantic Avenue is Bathhouse’s first move into Downtown Brooklyn, a neighborhood whose foot-traffic profile is anchored by Barclays Center events and the Atlantic Terminal transit hub. Day-pass pricing that opens at $29 is the most aggressive entry-point in the chain to date and reads as a deliberate test of whether a 25 percent lower price draws meaningfully different demand from the Williamsburg and Flatiron sites.