The Night at a Glance
Armin van Buuren opens Amsterdam Dance Event 2026 on Wednesday 21 October at Gashouder in Amsterdam, sharing the bill with Dutch hard house artist Benwal. Doors open at 23:00 and the night runs until 06:00. The event is 18+.
The Gashouder event page lists the night as sold out, with resale tickets available. ADE itself runs from 21 to 25 October and is celebrating its 30th year; see our ADE 2026 Trance Guide for the rest of the week.
Timetable
The official timetable from the Gashouder event page:
| Time | Artist |
|---|---|
| 23:00–01:00 | IDEMI |
| 01:00–02:15 | Benwal |
| 02:15–03:15 | Armin van Buuren b2b Benwal |
| 03:15–04:30 | Armin van Buuren |
| 04:30–06:00 | Olive Anguz |
The highlight for many will be the one-hour Armin van Buuren b2b Benwal set from 02:15, followed by 75 minutes of Armin on his own.
Who Is Benwal?
DJ Mag describes Benwal as a “Dutch hard house revivalist”. The Gashouder page frames the night as the two artists bringing “their worlds together on one dance floor” — Armin’s trance and Benwal’s hard house — which is what makes the b2b set unusual.
Gashouder’s Return
According to DJ Mag, Gashouder is reopening for ADE after renovations that began in January 2025. Mixmag NL reports that the ADE shows are a pre-opening season ahead of a full reopening in November, with seven ADE showcases from 21 to 25 October. Armin’s night is the opening show of that series.
Mixmag NL also notes the venue’s long history with electronic music, including Awakenings events and landmark live performances in its circular hall.
Update: Gashouder’s full reopening landed on 30 October 2026, as reported by Decoded Magazine. The new underground level — built beneath the listed monument, with cloakrooms, a lounge, a kitchen and dressing rooms — is now open, and capacity sits above 3,500. The opening programme leans more towards electronic/alternative and live music than trance specifically (Overmono, Bonobo, Puscifer, Skepta and JPEGMAFIA are all booked), alongside a run of “Harmony” immersive music ceremonies in November and a 2027 performance by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra.
How the Night Went
According to a review by Seth de Wildt for VPRO 3voor12, the night was the venue’s first real party since its roughly 18-month renovation closure (the official reopening follows on 30 October), with the basement still closed and toilets and lockers in a tent outside. The reviewer describes a euphoric mood with a clear generational split in the crowd — younger fans for Benwal, older fans for Armin.
Benwal opened his solo slot with a laser “UFO” descending from the roof, playing piano-driven euphoric hard house that stayed in that lane through to his last record. The b2b hour opened with a heavy trance track dropped straight from Benwal’s hard house, included a trance remix of Pegassi’s “227kg,” and closed on Armin’s own “This Is What It Feels Like” — the reviewer wished it had run longer.
Armin’s solo 75 minutes opened hard enough to make the concrete floor vibrate, mixed in new releases plus brief acid and techno detours, and peaked with trance remixes of “Born Slippy,” Faithless’s “Insomnia” and Ben Hemsley’s remix of “In And Out Of Love” — a stretch the reviewer called a genuine goosebumps moment. The review’s conclusion: trance is back in fashion.
AMF Recap: A Surprise B2B with Amelie Lens, and the Full Set Online
Gashouder wasn’t Armin’s only ADE 2026 moment. On Saturday 24 October he closed out the festival’s flagship show, Amsterdam Music Festival (AMF), at the Johan Cruijff ArenA — a sold-out, roughly 40,000-capacity bill alongside David Guetta, Afrojack, Amelie Lens, Marlon Hoffstadt, ARTBAT, D-Block & S-te-Fan and Korolova (see our ADE 2026 Trance Guide for the rest of that day’s programme). According to EDMTunes, Armin opened the night with his Dance Department radio show broadcast live from the arena before stepping into his set, where he premiered ‘What If I Told You’ with Douwe Bob ahead of its official release and played trance-leaning edits of ‘Here In My Arms (Enjoy The Silence)’, Jeff Wayne’s ‘The Eve Of The War’ and Empire Of The Sun’s ‘Walking On A Dream’.
Separately, and without any prior announcement, Armin joined techno artist Amelie Lens for a surprise back-to-back set during an EXHALE takeover at G-Star Rawfactory in Amsterdam, as reported by We Rave You. Lens shared clips from the set on her Instagram afterwards; no full recording has surfaced. A week after AMF, Armin uploaded the full AMF 2026 set to his YouTube channel, letting fans relive the performance start to finish — worth a watch via his official site or YouTube channel.
Armin’s New Single: ‘U Got 2 Know’
On the day the Gashouder show was announced (22 May 2026), Armin released ‘U Got 2 Know’ with Hannah Laing and Wippenburg, a reimagining of Capella’s 1993 dance anthem of the same name (source: DJ Mag).
More Armin in 2026–27
- A State of Trance London — 14 November 2026 at Drumsheds
- A State of Trance Rotterdam 2027 — 26–27 February 2027 at Rotterdam Ahoy, including a five-hour Friday set
- A State of Trance LA — 11–12 June 2027
A Listener’s Note
As a weekly A State of Trance listener, a trance and hard house b2b is not something I expected from Armin, which is exactly why this night stands out in the ADE programme.