Best Trance Tracks of January 2026 — Top 10 Picks of the Month

The first month of 2026 was unusually loaded with headline releases. Above & Beyond opened the year on January 9 with a four-track Anjunabeats salvo, signalling that the duo's rumoured 2026 album cycle had begun in earnest. Paul van Dyk and Ciaran McAuley delivered "When I Found You" on Black Hole at month's end, the kind of tech-trance reunion that Pure Trance and Subculture audiences immediately played out. And Beatport's Best New Trance (R/D/H) chart continued to surface the slower, raw-trance material that has driven much of the genre's 2025-2026 audience expansion.

Above & Beyond's January 9 Anjunabeats release contained four singles released simultaneously: "Carry Me Home" (with Zoë Johnston), "Ride At Dawn" (with Zoë Johnston), "Quicksand (Don't Go)" (with Zoë Johnston), and "Blood From A Stone" featuring Richard Bedford. Each occupies a different position in the duo's late-period vocal-led catalogue: "Carry Me Home" is the most immediate radio-friendly track, "Ride At Dawn" the longest and most patient arrangement, "Quicksand" the most rhythmically forward, and "Blood From A Stone" — the only Bedford track in the batch — the one with the strongest connection back to "Sun & Moon"-era OceanLab vocal lineage. Together they suggest the 2026 album will be the duo's most varied since We Are All We Need (2015).

"When I Found You" (Black Hole Recordings, January 23) is the kind of mid-tempo (140 BPM) tech-trance reunion that Paul van Dyk's late-career catalogue has been quietly stacking up. Ciaran McAuley's production fingerprints are visible in the rolling bassline and the acid-tinged mid-range hooks; van Dyk's contribution is in the breakdown, which deploys the kind of patient pad-led architecture that has been his signature since the late 1990s. The track has slotted cleanly into Subculture and ASOT mainstage rotation since release.

Three more January mainstage releases that earned heavy play. Paul Glazby's "Kick It 2025" (Vicious Circle Recordings, 2026-01-23, 150 BPM) sits squarely in the modern hard-trance revival lane that the Sneijder profile in the Artists section treats in detail — fast, loud, and deliberately unfashionable in the most rewarding way. Olav Basoski, Sil and Entasia's "Windows" (Armada Music, 140 BPM) crosses Olav Basoski's house DNA into the trance R/D/H register without losing the propulsion. And Vhyce's "AcidSeq2" (Saint Vaast Recordings, 130 BPM) brought the Berlin acid-trance scene into the month's most-played short list.

The Raw / Deep / Hypnotic side of the genre delivered three January cuts worth attention. Hoopoe's "Aryaduta (Bam Jerapah Remix)" (Hedjog Records, 137 BPM) updates the original with the kind of melodic-techno crossover that Mind Against and the Afterlife scene have made central to 2026 trance audiences. Keistep's "Last Mantra" (Celestial Records, 132 BPM) is the more contemplative of the picks, with extended pad work that rewards full-track listening rather than excerpting. Both sit at the lower-BPM end of what counts as trance in 2026 — an expansion of the genre boundary that the spirituality-of-trance essay in this catalogue treats at length.

The big February release on the calendar at month-end was already announced: Armin van Buuren's "Always You" with Richard Durand and Dicosis, the official A State of Trance 2026 ELEVATION Anthem timed for the 25-year ASOT festival editions in Rotterdam. Beyond that, the Anjunabeats release pace suggests Above & Beyond will continue dropping singles through Q1, and the FSOE release calendar has Aly & Fila collaborations queued. The first month of 2026 looks like the start of a more release-dense year than 2024 or 2025 produced — which, for committed trance listeners, is exactly the year-opening signal worth wanting.