Anjunabeats Warehouse Tour 2026: Reclaiming the Soul of Trance in the British Underground

For over two decades, the global trance community has associated Above & Beyond and their iconic label, Anjunabeats, with scale and grandeur. From the awe-inspiring vistas of the Gorge Amphitheater in Washington to the legendary halls of Madison Square Garden, the trio has consistently delivered massive, stadium-sized spectacles designed for tens of thousands of souls.

Yet, in October 2026, the trio is staging a remarkable paradigm shift with the launch of the Anjunabeats Warehouse Tour 2026. This tour is a calculated, deeply artistic return to the dark, raw, and unvarnished industrial warehouses of the United Kingdom, traveling through Liverpool, Birmingham, and Bristol. By trading massive LED screens and outdoor fireworks for bare brick, cold concrete, and intimate, sweat-dripping underground spaces, Above & Beyond is issuing a bold critique of the over-commercialized festival landscape. It is a deliberate effort to reconstruct the primal, shared community experience that defined early rave culture.

The spark that ignited this national warehouse tour was struck in the subterranean depths of London on May 28, 2026. To celebrate the launch of their highly anticipated compilation album, Anjunabeats Volume 17, Above & Beyond hosted an intimate pop-up event at Leake Street—a graffiti-lined tunnel hidden directly beneath the city. Far removed from the high-production amphitheaters where the group usually performs, this was a confined, high-intensity pop-up rave that focused entirely on raw energy and close-quarters intimacy. With a strictly limited capacity, the night felt less like a polished arena concert and more like a sweaty, heavy-bass, back-to-basics warehouse party from electronic music's golden era.

The physical proximity between the artists and the crowd was unprecedented, with fans standing mere centimeters away and high-fiving Jono, Tony, and Paavo as they performed. The musical journey was rich with label history and future-facing tracks. Oliver Smith made a special guest appearance to drop his highly anticipated "Fiji (Oliver Smith Remix)", while station2station delivered a blistering live performance of their collaboration track "Hi-Tech".

The defining moment of the night arrived when a cover of Axwell and Errol Reid's 2008 house classic "Feel The Vibe" erupted through the tunnel. The response was absolute madness; the crowd bounced from wall to wall, hands clapping in unison, causing the physical structure of the tunnel to tremble. A massive singalong followed during the club mix of "Sailing Off The End Of The World", where the collective voice of the intimate crowd swelled to fill the space, proving that pure musical connection could easily outshine any massive stadium spectacle. This unforgettable night redefined Above & Beyond's creative direction, inspiring them to take this high-energy, stripped-back rave philosophy on the road.

To translate the intimate intensity of Leake Street into a national showcase, the tour is taking over three historic industrial monuments in key UK regional cities across three consecutive weekends, each featuring extended eight- to nine-hour sets:

• Blackstone Street Warehouse (Liverpool): Located in the Northern Docks of Liverpool, this massive former industrial warehouse stands as a legendary monolith of the northern rave scene. Renowned for hosting world-class house and techno events, the venue has a massive capacity of up to 10,000 people on a single, vast open floor. While local authorities once investigated the venue over unsanctioned road closures and capacity limits, they ultimately praised the venue's robust management and safety operations. Architecturally, Blackstone Street Warehouse features towering, raw brick walls and a high ceiling that creates a signature, echoing reverberation. Far from being a flaw, this natural acoustics profile adds a hypnotic, raw, and deeply immersive edge to repetitive trance and techno sub-bass lines, wrapping the crowd in a swirling storm of sound.
• GASWRX (Birmingham): Nestled in the heart of the historic Digbeth district on Adderley Street, GASWRX is a newly opened cultural venue for 2026. Housed in a historic gasworks facility originally built in 1909, the building's central concept is the beautiful transition of a space that once generated physical energy for the city into a powerhouse that generates spiritual and cultural energy through electronic music. The massive 1909 industrial infrastructure is divided into multiple specialized areas: a cavernous "Main Room" built for headliner sets, a tight and sweaty underground "Basement," a VIP-focused "Mezzanine," and an open-air "Terrace". While the venue boasts the raw industrial infrastructure needed to host monumental audio-visual spectacles like Eric Prydz, it still retains the dark, heavy, and raw atmosphere of an underground club.
• The Prospect Building (Bristol): Located on Feeder Road in St. Philips, this 25,000-square-foot former Ministry of Defence torpedo warehouse (previously known as Propyard) has been completely reimagined. The visionary creative team "AMAAD"—the minds behind legendary London venues like Printworks and Junction 2—invested approximately £500,000 to transform the space into a state-of-the-art cultural hub. AMAAD's primary technical triumph at The Prospect Building is its sound system. By installing a world-class L-Acoustics K2 and KARA II speaker array in Room One, they have managed to tame the chaotic acoustic reflections typical of warehouse walls. The system delivers a crystal-clear, bone-rattling sub-bass experience inside the venue while ensuring zero sound leakage to the surrounding neighborhood. Additionally, the venue features a 360-degree circular amphitheater-like platform where the crowd can look down at the DJ. To further encourage a pure connection with the music, the main room is strictly bar-less, removing the distraction of alcohol service from the dancefloor itself.

The architectural brutality of these warehouses demands a radical shift in the music itself. The sprawling, open-air melodies of Above & Beyond's mainstage festival sets—often criticized by purists as being tailored for algorithmic festival stages—are replaced by a dark, driving, and hypnotic sonic palette. In these concrete caverns, the music moves away from commercial vocal anthems and leans heavily into bass-driven tech-trance, driving progressive, and deep grooves.

This sonic direction is deeply connected to the tracklist of Anjunabeats Volume 17, particularly its first disc, which explores retro-infused 90s trance nostalgia, tribal rhythms, and deep progressive soundscapes, featuring artists like CVMRN and Simon Gregory. The tour's carefully curated lineups are built to exploit the raw acoustics of these industrial environments. In Birmingham, a back-to-back set from Grum and J Ribbon, alongside sets by Genix and veteran producer Darren Tate (famous for his 2000s trance work under the Jurgen Vries alias), will push heavy, driving basslines that physically shake the concrete walls. In Liverpool, the legendary Ferry Corsten and progressive star Marsh will lead a deep, hypnotic journey that gradually builds the tempo over several hours, drawing the audience into a state of collective trance that would feel lost in a stadium setting. By focusing on texture, repetition, and physical bass, the Warehouse Tour acts as a massive laboratory for the labels to rediscover their underground heritage.

The announcement of the warehouse tour has sparked immense excitement and relief within the "Anjunafamily" global community. Across digital platforms like Reddit, old-school fans have expressed great joy over this back-to-basics approach, praising the Leake Street show's success and celebrating the label's return to raw club environments. Many long-time followers who felt that the label's focus had become too commercialized and pop-oriented in recent years view this tour as the definitive moment where Anjunabeats has reclaimed its true identity.

The intense enthusiasm for this tour is also explained by the unique demographics of the Anjunafamily. The community consists of relatively mature, professional individuals—including engineers, professors, and accountants—who prefer mutual respect (Respect) and deep musical immersion over the chaotic, noisy atmosphere of modern EDM festivals. The stoic, focused warehouse environment perfectly matches their musical standards and evokes memories of the legendary trance golden era. For this mature fanbase, the Warehouse Tour is not just another event; it is a sacred homecoming.

Beyond its cultural significance, the Anjunabeats Warehouse Tour represents a vital economic and social statement during a highly challenging period for the British music industry. According to alarming data from the Night Time Industries Association (NTIA), the UK's nightlife economy is in a state of severe crisis, with 405 late-night venues closing down between the start of the pandemic and early 2025, and a 4.1% reduction in late-night businesses in 2025 alone. As independent clubs in regional cities struggle to survive, the infrastructure of electronic music is being threatened.

By bypassing London's massive arenas and bringing their high-profile tour directly to the industrial venues of Liverpool, Birmingham, and Bristol, Above & Beyond is providing a crucial financial lifeline to local nightlife economies. At Bristol's The Prospect Building, this support is amplified by a highly innovative daytime event model, with the show running from 12:00 PM to 10:00 PM. This clever schedule encourages the massive crowd to flow directly into smaller, grassroots local clubs, bars, and venues after the main show ends, spreading economic benefits throughout the city's nightlife ecosystem. Through this regional tour, Anjunabeats is actively fighting to preserve the grassroots spaces that keep UK club culture alive.

The Anjunabeats Warehouse Tour 2026 is far more than a simple nostalgia trip. By taking inspiration from the raw, sweaty underground tunnel of Leake Street and scaling it across the industrial monuments of Blackstone Street Warehouse, GASWRX, and The Prospect Building, Above & Beyond is laying down a powerful manifesto for the future of electronic music. They have successfully demonstrated that electronic music is at its most potent when it escapes the commercial pressures of the festival mainstage and returns to the physical intimacy of the dark warehouse. Through this tour, Anjunabeats has healed its relationship with its oldest fans, injected vital energy into a struggling UK nightlife economy, and proved that the soul of trance will always belong to the underground.