My Kinky Day Out at a Berlin Sex Tech Festival

It’s a surprisingly cold Sunday morning in May as I scurry, in desperate need of coffee, to Berlin’s riverside Funkhaus building. Once, this was a broadcasting complex for the Communist government of East Germany, now it’s home to club nights, installations and—as is the case today—festivals put on by the sex industry.

As God intended, I spent the early hours of the morning at a sex club, alongside hundreds of sweaty bodies swaying to hypnotic techno while averting their eyes from the couples fucking on sofas set up around the dancefloor. My mouth is dry, my head is pounding, and my eyes are like the conveyor belts at Brandenburg airport: weighed down with bags. In short, I am hungover, and unprepared for the long day of latex and sex products that is about to unfold.

But around me, in the sparsely occupied smoking area where I am hanging my head, the grind has already begun. “Anything anal… scat…” a woman mutters into her phone. I look up, making brief eye contact. “Sorry,” she smiles. “I’m just replying to a client.”

The crowds who’ve turned out for day one of SXTech Festival and Conference 2025 have come for the porn performers, dominatrices, and erotic content creators for whom it is a kind of summit, meaning it’s full of tongue-tied fans. The main reason I’m here? Well, I was promised erotic dolls. To level with you: I’m a sex writer by trade and despite having tried all kinds of highgrade vibrators—from octopus-shaped toys to turbo-charged clit suckers—I’ve never come face-to-face with a cybernetic baddie before. So, now’s my chance to make an acquaintance with the automated divas who may well render IRL sex obsolete in the future.

Following the scent of horny men, I find myself face-to-face with Micaela Schäfer: the reality star and glamor model who’s Germany’s answer to Katie Price or Stormy Daniels. Except it’s not the real Schäfer: it’s a meticulous 3D-scan of her body, enshrined in silicone. Even with her vacant eyes, she’s still objectively hotter than me. The doll’s displayed alongside two other models—one of whom repetitively rocks her head back and forth, for reasons I am sure you can deduce—and comes courtesy of Housedoll. Both a sex-doll rental service (how do they clean these dolls, I wonder?) and retailer, the company claims to sell 100 models a month.

A representative manning the booth named Wilhelm waxes lyrical about the brand’s, erm, altruistic ideals as if he’s working in the Peace Corps. “According to the World Health Organisation, loneliness is worse for your health than smoking. We don’t call our products ‘sexbots,’ they’re ‘emotional support devices,’” he says. “For example, one of our clients is an old man and his wife has died. He has a model with AI and she reminds him to take his pills, or that it’s his birthday… he’s not lonely anymore.” I appreciate the sentiment. But if you spend $5,000 customizing your emotional support device’s vagina, you’re definitely—at least partially—in it for the sex. And that’s OK!

Stepping away from the dolls, I peruse other companies pushing their wares, including the audio erotica purveyor Siren Audio Stories—seemingly the only Black-operated stall at the event—and Diva Dive: a line of fleecy, water-proof blankets designed for the 10 to 54 percent of women and people with vaginas who are lucky enough to squirt. Alena Zackova, the brand’s founder, explains her mission: “My aim was to lift a sex product to more of an interior design space: this blanket is designed to be on your bed 24/7, without shame.” Amen.

Outside of the expo room, I bump into Rubber Missy, a model bedecked in a second skin of latex. I don’t speak German, but I’m enthusiastic enough that she gets the gist of what I’m saying and poses for a photo. Downstairs, there’s a DJ booth and bar while upstairs, there’s a spillover area (dubbed the ‘voyeur hall’) where attendees are sipping Prosecco between talks with titles like ‘What Being A Dominatrix Taught Me About My Own Sexuality.’

Bizarrely, a man brandishing a selection of neon 3D printed thongs and nipple pasties is making the rounds. He’s disappointed when he fails to convince me to try on a thong (normally, I’m up for anything, but bright yellow is so not my colour), although one member of the crowd is adventurous enough to try a set of his pasties on her nipples.

While I eschew all things 3D-printed, later I do engage in a little bit of dress-up thanks to club wear store The Code, which has set up an ‘office fantasy’ photoshoot – complete with racks of rubber and leather, and a professional hair and makeup team. The trade-off is that you sign a waiver allowing the brand to use your images on their social media platforms but, hey, fetish clothes are expensive and I am on assignment for VICE, after all.

I pick out my outfit and then a team of hot women oil me into some latex before I walk on set and a gruff, tattooed photographer (who bears more than a passing resemblance to Berghain bouncer Sven) snaps away. However, in such a formal setting, I struggle to get into character—I’m a Gen Z freelance writer: my office is my bedroom.

Upstairs, talk among the crowd turns to Venus Berlin, the world’s largest porn trade show and a major date in the adult entertainment industry calendar. It’s cherished by thousands globally, yet according to SXTech EU founder Ola Miedzynska, today’s event defines itself in opposition to its brasher, more established competitor. “We’re everything that Venus is not. For the new generations, Gen Z and millennials, you can’t just copy-and-paste and expect them to be comfortable in this old, male-centric format,” she says. “I know Venus is very commercial and good for businesses, but the audience is 80 percent old, drunk men.”

The festival’s team has, admittedly, curated a very chill vibe here; I have gone the entire day without being sexually harassed, which is always a plus. Another key difference between the two events is how SXTech EU engages with creators, who more than any company power the industry. As Miedzynska explains, SXTech EU hopes to facilitate scenarios where influencers, dominatrices, strippers, and sex workers have a voice and can educate the wider industry.

These efforts seem, in the main, to have been successful. “We’re sex workers here in Berlin,” says Akash, a dominatrix who’s attending the event with a friend also in the sex industry. “The [festival] is very important to us; there’s lots of necessary topics being discussed and I have friends who’re presenting [at the conference].”

While the festival is global in ambition, one of the main positives is the way it platforms the local sex worker community. Among the highlights from the program are a number of performances from Mei Magdalene, Edie Montana, and Lana Diamond of Slut Riot, FKA Berlin Strippers Collective.

After catching glimpses of them throughout the day, clip-clopping towards the backstage area in Pleasers, I finally see the trio deliver a routine that afternoon, soundtracked by hair-banging classics like “Killing in the Name.”

In front of a slack-jawed crowd, they display their well-honed core strength: not just scaling the pole, but suspending themselves at its height and interlocking legs to twirl around it. They close their performance to whoops and fanatical applause.

As a small queue forms to speak to the three women, including a very persistent guy who will just not stop talking, I pull Lana aside to hear more about Slut Riot. “We started in 2019 as Berlin Strippers Collective. At first, it was just fun and we wanted to make shows and events,” she says. “Then, we became Slut Riot to be a company that can expand to other sex workers in Berlin and beyond. We’re just trying to give opportunities to sex workers to afford them a level of good living from performance, as well as a platform to be seen as artists.” As I leave, the same persistent guy attempts to dominate Lana’s attention—some things never change.

Understanding that the event has peaked, the Slut Riot crowd, tired from a long day, begins to thin out. But while the audience and delegates might be taking a break, they’re not done yet: tomorrow, there’s a second day focused more on the conference side of things. But, don’t worry, I have it on good authority that it’s far from boring—and it’s followed by an official after-party in a swingers’ club because, well, of course.

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