On October 27, 2025 Amsterdam will celebrate the entire year for its 750th birthday.

The celebration will include a number of different events happening both in the city and on the water. 

Among these events, the opening concert in the Ziggo Dome kicks off the celebrations with program director Sietse Bakker saying how the anniversary will “really come alive” through the concert and will be a “symbolic moment”.

Alongside the concert, there will also be a host of musical and visual spectacles all paying tribute to both the historic and modern Amsterdam.

But if you thought all are welcome to this year-long celebration you could be in for a shock.

Amsterdam has long held the reputation of being tolerant when it came to unruly tourists.

Being a city where cannabis has been legal for recreational use in coffee shops since 1976 and being home to the red-light district, tourists taking it to another level has unfortunately seen the city grow wearisome to rowdy behaviour. 

As such, the city has clamped down on overtourism with a campaign to actively discourage large groups of people from coming to the city to party.

This clamp down on tourists is due to record-high numbers from visitors which was up from 12.6 million in 2019 to 15.1 million in 2023.

Amsterdam has even implemented a “Stay Away” campaign which will see a series of initiatives solely aimed at discouraging loud and drunk tourists from visiting the city.

The campaign was said to be directly aimed at boozy Brits which involved an online advertising campaign that saw British men aged between 18 and 35 showing how their nights went horribly wrong.

In the video, background noises of police sirens add to the danger and nuisance such behaviour brings to a city.

Deputy mayor of Amsterdam, Sofyan Mbarki previously said: “Visitors remain welcome, but not if they misbehave and are a nuisance. Then we as a city say: rather not, stay away.

“To keep our city livable, we now opt for limitations instead of irresponsible growth.”

Boozy Brits were not the only ones targeted in this Stay Away Campaign from Amsterdam as people from cruise ships have also been targeted.

In 2022, the city’s mayor blamed cruise tourists for swarming the city once embarking off the cruise ships but doing little to nothing to give back to Amsterdam.

This meant the city redirected many cruise liners to terminals outside Amsterdam in another bid to stop rowdy tourists causing havoc.

Other initiatives to combat the war on tourism from Amsterdam include a major halt on new hotel licences, major restrictions on short-term lets and expensive tourist taxes.