The members'-club opening calendar has not slowed since 2022, but the ratio that defines the category — what the initiation buys against what the club actually delivers — has moved decisively. A handful of clubs are now charging six figures to join and producing the experience to justify it. Others are charging the same and producing nothing more than a quieter dining room. The 2026 class divides cleanly along that line, and the divide is now visible enough to plan around.
The Aman Club at Aman New York remains the most expensive in the city — initiation around two hundred thousand dollars, plus annual dues, plus a tightly controlled member list. What the membership buys, however, is genuinely differentiated: full access to the Aman New York spa floor that has no public availability, the dining rooms with their own kitchen separate from the hotel restaurant, and the residential adjacency to the Aman tenants upstairs. The price-to-experience ratio, for the client who would otherwise stay at the hotel four times a year, makes structural sense. The club is one of the few in the city that justifies the entry on use alone.
Casa Tua opened at The Surrey on the Upper East Side in late 2024, anchoring the Italian house's New York move. The restaurant and lounge sit on the ground floor; the members' club operates on the second. Reciprocity runs across the existing Casa Tua addresses — Miami, Aspen, Paris — and that reciprocity is, for the client who already moves between those four cities, the actual purchase. The initiation is meaningfully lower than the Aman number, and for the family that uses three of the four locations annually, the math is the cleanest in the category.
ZZ's Club in Hudson Yards — the Major Food Group entry — has settled, after the noise of its 2022 opening, into a steadier rhythm. The restaurant downstairs is now reservable for members at the difficult evening slots that would otherwise require months of lead time. That is the membership, in practical terms. Whether the broader club programming justifies the dues is, for me, the open question. The clients who use it primarily for the restaurant access find the math works. The clients who expected programming above and beyond have been quieter.
Casa Tua Paris and Soho Mews — the Soho House London satellite that opened to current Soho House members at a premium tier — round out the class. Both work for their respective demographics. The summary the year produces is simple enough: the Aman is justified by the residential integration, the Casa Tua network is justified by the reciprocity, the ZZ's is justified by the restaurant access. The clubs that cannot answer the question of what the entry actually buys are the ones I have stopped recommending. The category has matured. The buyer should too.
— Camille Vedy
