Why Dagelan Built Dageland: What a Night Market in Blok M Taught Us

From 31 July to 2 August 2026, Dagelan opened Dageland Pasti Simpati at Blok M Hub in South Jakarta, the first edition of its own night market and one of the zones of myBCA JSD Blok M Festival 2026, the district festival we initiated together with Tabiat Group. We handed the corner to the Dagelan team so it could build a carnival out of the everyday humor Dagelan has curated for its fans since 2014, and the communities who came along over those three nights made it louder than anything we had planned on paper.

Dagelan already has its own place where fans hang out at Warkop Junto Dagelan, alongside community programs such as Bertawasya, so the question we kept hearing while we prepared the event was a fair one. Why would Dagelan need a whole night market in Blok M as well? This article is our answer, written from the inside, covering why we built Dageland, what we were aiming for, what it delivered, and what we learned along the way.

Why Dagelan built a night market

For twelve years, Dagelan fans have shared the same everyday jokes from different phones, and over that time we have learned that those jokes always land best when someone is laughing right next to you. Warkop Junto Dagelan gives fans a place to sit together on any given day, and we wanted a format that could gather a much larger crowd of strangers into the same joke at the same moment. Dageland was Dagelan's way of giving that shared laughter a place to happen together, at the scale of a festival weekend.

We chose the grammar of a pasar malam for the first edition because almost every Indonesian already knows how to walk through one, from the queue at a game stall to the small prize carried home at the end of the night. That familiarity meant visitors needed no instructions before joining in, and it let the Dagelan team spend its creative energy on the jokes layered on top of a structure people already trusted. The festival gave us the right stage as well, because JSD Blok M Festival was organised around the way young Jakartans actually spend a weekend, and a crowd moving between sneakers, music, fashion and food was already in the mood to wander into a corner that promised something to do.

What we were aiming for

Our aim was to get fans playing together, so we built the floor around a coin-based mechanic in which every game paid out in coins that could only be redeemed for Dagelan merchandise at a booth on another corner of the floor. A coin won at one stall and spent at another kept people moving through the whole space, and it gave a crowd of strangers the same little mission to finish together.

We kept the activities simple and familiar, with a mechanical bull and a dunk tank running through the afternoons, while DJ sets and performers carried the corner from sunset into the night. The energy we were hoping for was the one fans already create in the comment section on Dagelan's Instagram, where everyone reacts to the same joke at once, and this time everyone was standing in the same room.

What Dageland delivered

Over three days, ==1,500+ people== played their way through Dageland with ==20+ community collaborations== joining in, while online, Dagelan's Blok M Festival content reached ==19.2M accounts across 93 posts and drew 34.8M views==.

The moment we remember most came from the communities who arrived together and brought their own energy with them, because their chant of "Dageland Pasti Simpati!" ended up as the soundtrack of every video we made from that weekend. That much laughter happening at the same time, in one place, is exactly what we built Dageland for.

What we learned

Fans settle in fastest when the format already feels familiar. The night market gave Dagelan fans a structure they knew how to enter within moments of arriving, and once that structure was in place, Dagelan's humor started working from the very first step onto the floor.

A media IP feels most alive in person when it gives people something to play together. The coin mechanic turned visitors into participants who shared the same errand, which is the kind of relationship Dagelan wants to keep building with its fans wherever it meets them.

Communities give a space its credibility. Groups that already carry their own following bring people who trust them, and with those groups on the floor, the event started to feel like a gathering its visitors helped make.

The event and the content work best when they are planned as one product. Each night the Dagelan team cut a same-day recap and published it shortly after midnight, so the fans who could not come to Blok M could follow the weekend while it was still happening.

Taken together, these lessons convinced us that Dageland is one of the best mediums we have found for Dagelan fans to laugh together.

Made for Fun, Made for Fans

At INFIA, everything we build has to be genuinely fun and has to serve the fans first, which is what Made for Fun, Made for Fans means to us. We describe our model as finding stories people love, protecting them, amplifying them, and bringing them to life everywhere fans want to experience them, and Dageland is Dagelan living that promise with the fans in the middle of the game.

What comes next

Dagelan will keep trying new formats, with plenty of trial and error along the way, so fans always have another way to enjoy it together. Dageland is now Dagelan's own event program, and every edition will take a new shape around a new place and the people who come with it, including the partners and collaborators who want to build those experiences alongside us. What stays with every edition is the promise that started with the creators behind Dagelan, which is to take the small, shared jokes of everyday Indonesian life and give fans a reason to enjoy them together.

Made for Fun. Made for Fans. From the Creator.

INFIA Corp is Indonesia's Creative IP Powerhouse. Founded in 2014, INFIA builds, manages, invests in, and revives 40+ IPs across media, character IP, and placemaking, with 140M+ Fans worldwide.