The Question: Trend or Structural Shift?
In 2026, trance is back on festival main stages and inside the wider conversation around dance music in a way it has not been for more than a decade. Headline DJ sets at Tomorrowland, EDC, and Ultra are putting uplifting breakdowns and 138 BPM kicks in front of audiences that grew up on EDM, festival-pop, and the post-2018 melodic-techno wave. The question is whether this is a passing cycle — the genre's turn on the nostalgia carousel — or a structural shift driven by something more durable.
Five threads are visible across the year so far. None of them, taken alone, would settle the question. Read together, they describe a return broad enough to look structural rather than seasonal.
Uplifting Trance Returns to the Centre
In December 2025, the listener-voted A State of Trance Tune of the Year went to Bryan Kearney feat. Plumb — “God Help Me,” released on ARMIND. The vocal source was Plumb's own song of the same name, originally an acoustic-leaning track from her 2018 album Beautifully Broken; Kearney's rework recasts it as a full uplifting trance anthem. It is the second Kearney/Plumb collaboration to win the listener vote, following “Take This” in 2022.
The same pattern — a singer-songwriter's acoustic original reworked into an uplifting trance record — recurs across recent releases. Paul Webster's remix of Bo Bruce's 2013 indie-pop track “Holding The Light,” released on Armada Captivating and supported across the WHO'S AFRAID OF 138?! rotation, is the most visible example. The vocal lineage runs back to material outside the genre; the trance record is the destination, not the starting point.
Trance Meets Techno
The 2025 edition of the A State of Trance festival, held at Ahoy Rotterdam, ran under the banner “TRANSFORMATION” — a rebrand intentionally positioning the event at the intersection of trance and techno. The official compilation mixed by Armin van Buuren placed Drumcode-aligned techno producers (Adam Beyer, Maddix, ARTBAT) on the same tracklist as long-running trance figures (Ferry Corsten, Aly & Fila, Ben Gold). The framing of the festival itself, not just the after-the-fact lineup, marked the change.
The symbolic track of the crossover is Armin van Buuren & Adam Beyer vs. D-Shake — “Techno Trance,” released 5 September 2025 on Armada. The single is a contemporary rework of D-Shake's 1992 record of the same name, a piece from the moment when techno, acid house, and early trance were not yet separate categories. Premiered during Armin and Beyer's back-to-back set at ASOT Rotterdam 2025, it has since become a fixture in both artists' sets.
Acid, Hard Trance, and the Eurodance Revival
A parallel revival is running through harder and faster material. Mid-1990s sounds — acid-influenced basslines, hard-trance kick patterns, eurodance vocal hooks — are returning to club rotation and warehouse parties, particularly across Berlin, London, and continental European underground circuits.
The most visible name in this strand is Marlon Hoffstadt, the Berlin-based producer and DJ who, with MALUGI, founded the Club Heart Broken label and party series. Their back-to-back Boiler Room London set in 2024 became one of that year's most-watched streams. In May 2025 Hoffstadt played the EDC Las Vegas mainstage between Tiësto and Armin van Buuren, and signed to Capitol Records the same week — a clear signal that the eurodance/trance crossover has moved out of the underground and into major-label release calendars.
Legends Return
Three of the genre's founding-era figures are simultaneously back in trance-first release cycles. Tiësto announced a 2026 album positioned as a return to his trance roots, beginning with the single “Bring Me To Life” featuring FORS; the campaign is being marketed as the “T8” era, with the logo treatment echoing his 1999 Live At Innercity identity.
Above & Beyond released Bigger Than All Of Us on 18 July 2026, their first fully electronic studio album in seven years, on Anjunabeats. The sixteen-track record features long-running vocal collaborators Zoë Johnston, Richard Bedford, and Justine Suissa alongside new voices. Separately, Ferry Corsten revived his Gouryella alias for the new single “Marama (Moon & Stars)” and a 25 Years of Gouryella retrospective during Amsterdam Dance Event 2025. Three returns, three separate label homes, all inside a twelve-month window.
ASOT 25: The Festival Year
The institutional centre of the year is the 25th anniversary of A State of Trance. The main anniversary festival takes place at Ahoy Rotterdam on 27 and 28 February 2026, with the standard two-night format. The longest-running radio-show brand in dance music is using the occasion as a calendar anchor for the rest of the year — spring tour dates, the ASOT 2026 compilation release, and the standalone ASOT-stage appearances at Ultra Miami, Tomorrowland, and ADE all hang off the Rotterdam moment.
The official ASOT 2026 anthem is “Always You,” credited to Armin van Buuren, Richard Durand & Dicosis — the first studio collaboration between van Buuren and Durand on a single, premiered during van Buuren's ASOT-stage set at Ultra Miami 2025 and confirmed as the 2026 ELEVATION-edition anthem. The track has been in heavy rotation across ASOT episodes and headline festival sets through the lead-up to the Rotterdam dates.
Why It Looks Structural
The five threads above run on different timelines and through different communities. The uplifting Tune-of-the-Year canon, the techno crossover, the eurodance/hard-trance club revival, the founding-generation album cycle, and the ASOT 25 institutional moment do not share a single audience — they share only the timeframe.
That breadth is the case for calling this a structural shift rather than a single-niche fashion. Nostalgia accounts for part of the underlying interest, and a generation that came up on streaming-era melodic dance music is now meeting trance halfway. The combination — existing fans plus new listeners arriving through several different doors — is what separates a durable return from a one-cycle revival.