Events Calendar

A State of Trance Festival is the live festival edition of Armin van Buuren's weekly ASOT radio show, which first aired on 1 June 2001. The festival has cycled through Dutch venues: Brabanthallen in Den Bosch hosted the landmark milestone editions ASOT 500 (9 April 2011) and ASOT 600 "The Expedition" (6 April 2013, drawing about 30,000 attendees across four stages including the Main Stage and "Who's Afraid of 138?!"). Jaarbeurs Utrecht then hosted ASOT 800 (2017), ASOT 900 (2019), and ASOT 950 (2020). The 1000th-episode celebration ASOT 1000 was originally scheduled for September 2021 but was postponed twice due to covid measures; it ultimately took place across two nights on 3–4 March 2023 at Jaarbeurs Utrecht with five areas. The festival relocated to Rotterdam Ahoy starting with the inaugural edition there on 23–24 February 2024. The 2026 edition (27–28 February at Rotterdam Ahoy) celebrates 25 years of A State of Trance. Line-ups span the full uplifting, progressive, tech, vocal, and psy-trance spectrum, with Armin himself closing.

Tomorrowland Winter is the ski-resort sister event to the main Belgian summer festival, held at Alpe d'Huez in the French Alps. The week-long festival combines daytime skiing on the resort's slopes with evening stage productions in the same elaborate Tomorrowland aesthetic, with a mainstage and several themed stages distributed between mid-mountain locations (reached by gondola) and the resort town itself. The inaugural edition ran 13–15 March 2019 under the theme 'Hymn of the Frozen Lotus' and sold roughly 30,000 tickets across the music programme. The 2020 edition was cancelled by the French government on 5 March 2020 due to COVID-19, and the 2021 edition was cancelled on 6 October 2020 for the same reason. The festival returned in 2022 (19–26 March) with a scaled-back indoor mainstage configuration, then 2023 (18–25 March, ~18,000 visitors) and 2024 (16–23 March, ~18,000 ticket allocation). In November 2023 the Alpe d'Huez municipal council authorised renewal of the partnership for a further five editions through 2030, including provisions for an enlarged outdoor mainstage. Armin van Buuren, Above &amp; Beyond, Tiësto, and Cosmic Gate have headlined recurring editions; see the broader <a href="/events/tomorrowland">Tomorrowland</a> summer entry for the parent festival.

Luminosity Beach Festival is the canonical Dutch outdoor trance festival, run by Luminosity Events. The organisation was founded in 2006 and the first edition followed in 2007 on the Dutch coast; the festival has been held annually since, except for 2020 when it was cancelled due to Covid-19. It has cycled through nearby beachclubs (Beachclub Fuel in Bloemendaal aan Zee earlier, Beachclub Bernie's in Zandvoort from 2024 onwards) and runs as a four-day late-June event. It is widely regarded as the spiritual home of contemporary uplifting and tech-trance, with FSOE, Subculture, Pure Trance, and VII Records all hosting stages. The 2026 edition (25&ndash;28 June at Beachclub Bernie's, Zandvoort) features over 120 artists across the bill &mdash; headliners include Aly &amp; Fila, John O'Callaghan, Bryan Kearney, Ferry Corsten, Markus Schulz, Paul van Dyk, Giuseppe Ottaviani, Mauro Picotto, and Will Atkinson.

Ultra Europe is the European branch of the Ultra Music Festival brand. For comprehensive coverage of the Ultra series — including the original Miami festival since 1999 — see the main Ultra Music Festival page. Ultra Europe debuted in Split, Croatia in 2013 at the Poljud Stadium and relocated in 2019 to the adjacent Park Mladeži, less than a kilometre away, after Hajduk Split's concerns about pitch damage. The three-night main festival is followed by the Destination Ultra island events on Brač, Hvar, and Vis, using Split as a base for a week-long Adriatic circuit.

Tomorrowland is the world's largest electronic dance festival, held every late July at De Schorre municipal park in Boom, Belgium across two consecutive weekends. Founded in 2005 by brothers Manu and Michiel Beers (originally an ID&amp;T production), the festival's first edition was a single-day event on 15 August 2005 that drew roughly 9,000 attendees; today it draws approximately 200,000 visitors per weekend (around 70,000 per day) across some fifteen stages, including the Mainstage, Freedom, Atmosphere, Core, and Q-Dance. The dedicated A State of Trance stage debuted on Friday 28 July 2017 (Weekend 2), hosted by Armin van Buuren with the bill including Ruben de Ronde b2b Rodg, Ben Gold, David Gravell, Orjan Nilsen, MaRLo, Andrew Rayel and NWYR, and has returned in subsequent editions. Armin van Buuren has been a recurring Tomorrowland headliner since the inaugural 2005 edition. The 2026 festival is officially announced for July 17&ndash;19 and 24&ndash;26.

Ozora Festival is the Hungarian psytrance festival held annually at Dádpuszta in central Hungary, and described by Trax Magazine as the principal hub of psytrance culture in Europe. The site's psytrance lineage traces to the 1999 Solipse Festival, a gathering organised around the total solar eclipse of 11 August 1999 that drew roughly 15,000-20,000 attendees. Solipse had a sequel in Zambia in 2001 (timed to the 21 June total eclipse), but the Hungarian site lay dormant until the first Ozora Festival in 2004, after which it has run annually. The 2026 edition runs July 27 to August 4 (gates open July 24). Ozora is staged across multiple thematic areas: the main Ozora Stage for psytrance and progressive, the Dome for chill-out and psybient, Pumpui for techno and house, Dragon Nest for live and world-music programming, and Ambyss for deep atmospheric soundscapes. Permanent clay-and-wood structures on site include the Mirador lookout-and-visionary-art tower, the Chambok House lecture hall, and the Artisans workshop area. Astrix, Captain Hook, Ace Ventura, Liquid Soul, Ranji, Vini Vici, and Infected Mushroom are recurring headliners.

Dreamstate SoCal is the flagship North American trance festival, produced by Insomniac (the EDC / Pasquale Rotella company). The brand launched on 27–28 November 2015 as a single-stage indoor experiment at the NOS Events Center in San Bernardino, California, and grew into a multi-stage two-day production at NOS over the following years. The festival relocated to the open-air Queen Mary Waterfront in Long Beach in 2023 and has remained there since. The 2024 edition (22–23 November) ran across stages branded The Dream, The Vision, The Sequence, and The Void, with Armin van Buuren, Above & Beyond, Markus Schulz, Paul van Dyk, Vini Vici, Solarstone, and John O'Callaghan among the line-up. The 2025 edition (21–22 November) marked the 10-year anniversary; Paul van Dyk and Aly & Fila performed a historic first-ever B2B set, with their collaboration "Is This Only A Dream?" serving as the official anthem. The 2026 edition has been officially announced for 20–21 November at the Queen Mary Waterfront. Sister Dreamstate editions also run in San Francisco, Mexico, and Europe.

Universo Paralello is Brazil's flagship psytrance festival, held over the New Year transition in southern Bahia. Founded at the turn of the millennium in the highlands of Goiás, Universo Paralello has been held at Praia de Pratigi in southern Bahia since 2003, and shifted to a biennial cadence in 2011. UP is the largest South American gathering of the global psytrance scene, drawing an international crowd of ~20,000 across its nine-day run. The previous edition ran over the New Year of 2024–2025 with multiple stages; the next edition is confirmed for 27 December 2026 – 4 January 2027. Astrix, Infected Mushroom, Vini Vici, Captain Hook, and Ace Ventura have played past editions.

Boom Festival is the canonical psytrance and transformational festival, held biennially on the shores of Idanha-a-Nova lake in inland Portugal. Founded in 1997 at Herdade do Zambujal near Águas de Moura and relocated to the current Idanha-a-Nova site from 2002, Boom is widely regarded as the spiritual home of the global psytrance scene, with the Dance Temple stage as its flagship — Astrix, Infected Mushroom, Vini Vici, Captain Hook, Ace Ventura, Liquid Soul, and Astral Projection have all played multiple editions. Following the 2020 covid cancellation, the organisation ran consecutive 2022 and 2023 editions before returning to the biennial cadence with the next edition confirmed for 18–25 July 2027. The venue area sits within UNESCO's Naturtejo Global Geopark, and the festival has been a repeat Greener Festival Award recipient since 2008.

Anjunadeep Open Air is the Anjunadeep label's flagship outdoor event series, programmed around the deeper / progressive / melodic-techno-adjacent Anjunadeep roster — Lane 8, Yotto, Ben Böhmer, Tinlicker, James Grant & Jody Wisternoff. The London edition debuted at Three Mills Island in August 2018 and returned to the same venue in 2019; after the covid pause it restarted at The Drumsheds in 2021 and has since rotated outdoor venues — Finsbury Park in 2023 and 2024 (Above & Beyond, CRi, Eli & Fur, JGJW), then the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich for the 2025 edition. New York and other international editions are staged at outdoor amphitheatre and pier locations. The events sit at the intersection of progressive trance and melodic techno that defines the modern Anjunadeep sound.

Creamfields is the long-running British dance festival operated by Cream, the Liverpool superclub brand founded in October 1992 by James Barton, Darren Hughes, and Andy Carroll at the Nation nightclub on Wolstenholme Square. The inaugural Creamfields was held on Saturday 2 May 1998 at the Matterley Estate in Winchester, Hampshire — a one-day event with roughly 25,000 attendees and a line-up including Sasha, Paul van Dyk, Daft Punk, Tony De Vit, The Chemical Brothers, Paul Oakenfold, and Carl Cox. The festival relocated to Liverpool's old Speke Airfield in 1999, then settled at the Daresbury Estate in Cheshire in 2006, where it has run on the August Bank Holiday weekend ever since. It now operates as a four-day multi-stage event with a per-day capacity in the 70,000+ range, making it one of the largest dance-music festivals in the UK. The official A State of Trance stage debuted on Saturday 23 August 2014 — the first dedicated <a href="/glossary/asot">ASOT</a> programming in the festival's history at that point — hosted by Armin van Buuren with Aly &amp; Fila, Cosmic Gate, Andrew Rayel, Ørjan Nilsen, Jochen Miller, and MaRLo on the bill. Trance has remained part of the regular Creamfields rotation since, with Armin van Buuren, Above &amp; Beyond, and Paul van Dyk as recurring headliners.

Untold Festival is Romania's flagship dance festival, held annually in early August at Cluj Arena and the surrounding streets of Cluj-Napoca. The inaugural 2015 edition was tied to Cluj-Napoca's European Youth Capital designation and drew more than 240,000 attendees across four days, winning the European Festival Awards Best Major Festival in its first year. By the 2023 edition the four-day attendance had grown past 420,000, and UNTOLD ranked #3 in DJ Mag's Top 100 Festivals 2024. Trance at UNTOLD is anchored by the Fortune stage &mdash; staged on the fa&ccedil;ade of a renovated 1800s former casino designed like a Roman pavilion &mdash; which programmes trance, progressive house, melodic techno, psy, and euphoric hardstyle. Recurring trance headliners at Fortune and the Main Stage include Armin van Buuren (whose 2019 &ldquo;Armin Untold&rdquo; custom show ran for roughly seven and a half hours and opened with the Romanian anthem performed by members of the Romanian National Opera Orchestra from Cluj-Napoca), Above &amp; Beyond, Aly &amp; Fila, Andrew Rayel, Markus Schulz, ATB, Richard Durand, and Vini Vici on the psy side.

EDC Las Vegas is Insomniac's flagship US festival — three nights at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway each May, drawing more than 500,000 attendees across the weekend in 2024 (it is the largest electronic dance music festival in North America). EDC was founded in 1997 by Pasquale Rotella at the Shrine Expo Hall in Los Angeles and relocated to the Las Vegas Motor Speedway in 2011. The festival is organised around themed stages including the kineticFIELD main stage and circuitGROUNDS. The dedicated trance stage, quantumVALLEY, debuted in 2017 and is presented in partnership with Insomniac's Dreamstate brand, programmed across the uplifting, progressive, tech, and psy-trance spectrum. Aly & Fila have played quantumVALLEY repeatedly (including 2017, 2019, 2021, 2022) and Andrew Rayel has appeared in recent editions; Paul van Dyk, Gareth Emery and Darude are confirmed on the 2026 quantumVALLEY bill, while Armin van Buuren and Above & Beyond have appeared on the kineticFIELD main stage. The 2027 edition has been officially announced as the festival's first two-weekend format (14–16 + 21–23 May).

Hilltop is a long-running open-air psytrance venue at Vagator in north Goa, India, and the host of the annual HillTop NYE Festival each late December — a three-day event that opens around December 30 and welcomes around 5,000 local and international attendees across three stages. Outside of NYE, the venue runs a wider season of parties from October through April, with frequent 24-hour 31-December and 24-December events. Vagator is the geographical and cultural epicentre of the original 1990s Goa trance scene, and the venue is known for distinctive psychedelic decor — neon and blacklight installations spiralling palm trees, glow-in-the-dark mushroom and star shapes, 3D mapping, laser shows, and fire performances. Recurring headliners include Astrix, Captain Hook, Vini Vici, Ace Ventura, and Liquid Soul, often returning year after year as part of the canonical Goan trance pilgrimage.

Pure Trance is Solarstone's brand-and-event series, not a fixed annual festival. For the full Pure Trance story — label history (founded 2012 with Orkidea in partnership with Black Hole Recordings), weekly Pure Trance Radio show, and compilation series — see the Solarstone artist page. The touring events run as recurring extended-set nights across the UK and continental Europe with select US editions, curated around the open-to-close pure-trance ethos and a roster of Solarstone, Allen Watts, Standerwick, and rotating uplifting-and-tech guests.

Subculture is a touring trance brand led by John O'Callaghan, not a fixed annual festival. For the full Subculture story — label history, radio show, tour residencies — see the John O'Callaghan artist page. The Subculture Recordings imprint was founded in January 2010 as a Black Hole Recordings sublabel, and the brand's touring events run as recurring one-night shows primarily across the UK and Ireland, with documented London editions at The Gallery, Ministry of Sound.

Sunburn Festival is India's flagship dance festival, founded in 2007 with its first edition staged on the beach at Candolim in Goa. Early editions were the formative document of the modern Indian dance-music scene, drawing both the established Goa psy-and-trance audience and a new mainstream Indian electronic audience. The festival ran at Vagator, Goa from 2008 through 2015, then relocated to Pune, Maharashtra for the 2016–2018 editions, before returning to Vagator in 2019. The 2024 edition (18th overall) ran 28&ndash;30 December at a new venue in Dhargalim, North Goa (Pernem taluka), 15 km from the newly opened Mopa International Airport. Trance has been a constant — Armin van Buuren, Above & Beyond, Aly & Fila, Andrew Rayel, and Vini Vici have all played multiple editions across the festival's run.

Ultra Music Festival is the flagship Ultra brand event, founded in Miami in 1999 by Russell Faibisch and Alex Omes as a one-day beach show at Collins Park, Miami Beach, on March 13, 1999. The festival relocated to Bayfront Park in downtown Miami in 2001 and has run there every late March since, now staged as a three-day event in conjunction with Miami Music Week. Trance has been a fixture of the Miami event since 2011, when the festival's first dedicated A State of Trance stage hosted the ASOT 500 celebration on March 27, 2011. The ASOT stage has run almost every year since, with Armin van Buuren, Above & Beyond, Paul van Dyk, and Andrew Rayel as recurring closers. Carl Cox first appeared at Ultra Miami in 2001, and the Carl Cox & Friends arena (launched in 2005) evolved into the Resistance stage and Megastructure concept that now anchors the festival's house and techno programming. Ultra expanded to Europe in 2013 with the inaugural Ultra Europe in Split, Croatia, originally at the Poljud Stadium (2013-2018) before relocating in 2019 to the adjacent Park Mladeži, where the festival has remained. Ultra Europe runs each mid-July as a three-night main festival, followed by the Destination Ultra island events that extend the run across Brač, Hvar, and Vis using Split as a base — Ultra Beach on Hvar, the Regatta Party and Resistance sessions on Brač, and closing parties traditionally inside Fort George on Vis.