Events Calendar

A State of Trance Festival is the live festival edition of Armin van Buuren's weekly ASOT radio show, traditionally held each February or March at Jaarbeurs Utrecht in the Netherlands to mark a milestone radio episode number. The all-day, multi-stage event has run yearly since the ASOT 500 weekend in 2011, with successive editions tied to ASOT 600, 700, 800, 900, 1000, 1100, 1150, and 1200. Line-ups span the full uplifting / progressive / tech / vocal / psy axis of the trance genre, with Armin himself closing.

Dreamstate San Francisco is the SF Bay Area sister edition to Dreamstate SoCal, run by Insomniac and staged at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in downtown San Francisco. Smaller than the November SoCal flagship but a fixture of the US trance touring calendar, Dreamstate SF runs as a single-day or two-day production typically early in the year. Line-ups are line-up'd on the Insomniac / FSOE / Armada axis: Aly & Fila, Paul van Dyk, Andrew Rayel, Gareth Emery, and Ferry Corsten are recurring headliners, with the same broad uplifting / progressive / psytrance / vocal stage palette as the SoCal flagship.

Above & Beyond's Group Therapy milestone shows are not an annual festival but a recurring series of one-off arena productions tied to round-number ABGT radio episodes. Each major milestone — ABGT100 (Madison Square Garden, 2014), ABGT200 (Rotterdam, 2016), ABGT250 (Prague, 2017), ABGT300 (Hong Kong, 2018), ABGT400 (LA, covid-shifted 2020), ABGT500 (The Gorge, 2022), ABGT550 (MSG, 2023) — is a destination event for the global Anjunabeats / Anjunadeep audience, with full live-band productions, bespoke visuals, and the trio's full-length set as the closing act.

Dreamstate Mexico is the Mexican edition of the Insomniac Dreamstate brand, held annually in Mexico City. The first edition staged in 2017 made it the first dedicated trance festival in Latin America at scale, opening the LATAM circuit for the global trance touring economy. The festival typically runs at the Pepsi Center WTC in Mexico City with a single- or two-day format, and line-ups are anchored on the Dreamstate / FSOE / Armada axis with Aly & Fila, Andrew Rayel, Paul van Dyk, and Ferry Corsten as recurring headliners.

Aly & Fila's Future Sound of Egypt milestone shows are the FSOE-equivalent of the ABGT series — recurring one-off arena productions tied to round-number FSOE radio episodes (500, 600, 700, 800). The most-cited modern milestone is FSOE 600, broadcast in 2019 from the Pyramids of Giza, with the duo's home country playing host to a global online and on-site audience. The FSOE label umbrella (FSOE Recordings, FSOE Excelsior) anchors the line-ups, with Aly & Fila plus a rotating roster of Bryan Kearney, Standerwick, Andrew Rayel, and other FSOE-affiliated artists.

Pure Trance is Solarstone's brand-and-event series, curated around the back-to-classics pure-trance ethos he codified through the Pure Trance Recordings label and his weekly Pure Trance radio show. The events run as recurring touring nights — UK and continental Europe primarily, with US editions — and are line-up'd around the Pure Trance roster of Solarstone, Allen Watts, Standerwick, and rotating uplifting-and-tech guests. The Pure Trance ethos rejects the EDM-adjacent compression of the genre and centres long-form mixing, classic 138 BPM tempo, and the original trance-arrangement structural template.

Subculture is John O'Callaghan's UK-rooted party brand, running recurring one-night events primarily in the UK and Ireland with select international editions in the Netherlands, Germany, and the US. Founded in 2003 with O'Callaghan as resident, the brand has built a tightly-defined uplifting-and-tech-trance identity over more than two decades, with a recurring artist roster of Bryan Kearney, Will Atkinson, Sneijder, Simon Patterson, and Standerwick joining O'Callaghan as resident headliners. Subculture is the backbone of the contemporary 138 BPM scene's club-night calendar.

Anjunabeats Open Air London is Above & Beyond's outdoor London edition, programmed around the full Anjunabeats label roster and held at Victoria Park in the East End. The brand has expanded internationally with editions in New York, Buenos Aires, Sydney, and the Gorge / Red Rocks (in the form of ABGT milestone arena shows), but London remains the flagship outdoor production. Above & Beyond, Andrew Bayer, ilan Bluestone, Genix, Yotto, and Tinlicker headline a line-up that spans the full Anjunabeats / Anjunadeep editorial axis.

Anjunadeep Open Air is the Anjunadeep counterpart to Anjunabeats Open Air, programmed around the deeper / progressive / melodic-techno-adjacent Anjunadeep roster — Lane 8, Yotto, Ben Böhmer, Tinlicker, Cubicolor, Mind Against. The London edition is held at The Drumsheds in north London (a converted industrial gasworks site that has become the city's flagship large-scale electronic-music venue). New York 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.

Electric Zoo is the long-running New York City dance festival, founded in 2009 and held annually over the Labor Day weekend at Randall's Island Park in the East River. Trance reaches the festival via the Sunday School stage, which has hosted dedicated trance line-ups in multiple editions, with Armin van Buuren, Above & Beyond, Paul van Dyk, Andrew Rayel, and Aly & Fila across the festival's run. Sunday School has been an A State of Trance partnership in select years, broadcast as part of ASOT's tour calendar.

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, 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. Boom is also a UNESCO-cited reference for sustainable festival production, with composting toilets, on-site renewable power, and a permanent year-round permaculture installation.

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. The festival has been the single most prominent platform for trance since 2008, when Armin van Buuren's A State of Trance was given a dedicated stage that has run every year since. Tiësto, Above & Beyond, Paul van Dyk, and Vini Vici have all played mainstage sets, and the festival's elaborate stage productions and global broadcast reach (millions of livestream viewers per weekend) have made it the most-watched trance event on Earth.

Ultra Europe is the European edition of the Ultra Music Festival brand, held annually in mid-July at Poljud Stadium in Split, Croatia, since the inaugural 2013 edition. The three-night main festival is followed by the Destination Ultra island events at Hvar and Brač, extending the run into a week-long Adriatic dance experience. Trance reaches Ultra Europe via the Resistance stage and (in the years it has been programmed) the A State of Trance stage, with Armin van Buuren, Above & Beyond, and Paul van Dyk as recurring closers.

Coldharbour Day is Markus Schulz's annual flagship label event, celebrating the Coldharbour Recordings imprint that he founded in 2003. Editions have rotated between Avalon Hollywood, Marquee New York, and other US venues, with select international editions in the EU and Asia. The format is typically a Markus Schulz open-to-close set (six to eight hours) supported by the Coldharbour roster — a deliberate counter to the festival mainstream that prizes the depth-of-field a long single-DJ set can produce. The events have run since the mid-2000s and remain a fixture of the US trance underground calendar.

Transmission is one of trance's flagship festival brands, with the original and most-cited edition staged annually at the O2 Arena in Prague each autumn. Each edition is built around a yearly themed concept (Mystica, Behind the Mask, Beyond the Senses, The Spark) that drives the stage design, narrative video content, and choreographed lighting. The line-up axis is uplifting and tech-trance: Paul van Dyk, Aly & Fila, Simon Patterson, Andrew Rayel, and Giuseppe Ottaviani are recurring headliners. Transmission has expanded internationally to Bangkok, Beijing, Sao Paulo, and other touring editions.

Creamfields is the long-running British dance festival operated by Cream, the Liverpool superclub brand, held annually over the August Bank Holiday weekend at the Daresbury Estate in Cheshire since 2006. Originally launched in 1998 as a one-off to mark Cream's fifth anniversary, it has grown into a four-day, multi-stage festival drawing more than 70,000 attendees per day. Trance has been a fixture since the founding edition, with a dedicated stage typically curated around the ASOT / Anjuna axis and Armin van Buuren, Above & Beyond, and Paul van Dyk as recurring headliners.

Psy-Fi Festival is the Dutch psytrance festival held annually in mid-to-late August at the De Groene Ster outdoor recreation area near Leeuwarden in the northern Netherlands. Running since 2013, Psy-Fi serves as the Benelux centre of gravity for psytrance scene gathering, with its lakeside Mainstage, Sacred Circle ceremonial space, and dedicated progressive-psy and dark-psy stages. Astrix, Captain Hook, Ace Ventura, Liquid Soul, and Ranji have all played multiple editions; the festival is widely attended by the Dutch and German trance / psy crossover audience.

Sonica Festival is the Italian psytrance festival held annually in early August in the central Italian Marche region. Sonica has been a fixture of the European psytrance circuit since the early 2000s and is widely regarded as Italy's primary psy gathering, running alongside Boom (Portugal) and Ozora (Hungary) as one of the canonical EU psy festival destinations. The festival's Italian-rural location, Mediterranean weather, and continental psy lineup (Astrix, Captain Hook, Ace Ventura, Liquid Soul) draw an audience from across Italy and the wider European psy community.

Untold Festival is Romania's flagship dance festival, held annually in early August at Cluj Arena and the surrounding streets of Cluj-Napoca. Launched in 2015, it won the European Festival Award for Best Major Festival in its inaugural year and has scaled to four-night editions drawing more than 350,000 attendees. Trance is anchored by the Galaxy stage, which has hosted Armin van Buuren, Above & Beyond, Aly & Fila, Andrew Rayel, and Vini Vici across multiple editions.

Dreamstate SoCal is the flagship North American trance festival, produced by Insomniac (the EDC / Pasquale Rotella company) and held each November at the NOS Events Center in San Bernardino, California. Launched in 2015 as a single-stage event and rapidly expanded into a multi-stage two-day production, Dreamstate has become the largest dedicated trance event in the United States. Line-ups typically span the full uplifting / progressive / psytrance / tech axis, with Ferry Corsten, Aly & Fila, Paul van Dyk, and Gareth Emery as recurring headliners. Sister editions have run in San Francisco, Mexico, and Europe.

EDC Las Vegas is Insomniac's flagship US festival — three nights at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway each May, drawing more than half a million attendees over the weekend. Trance has been part of the festival since the Las Vegas relocation in 2011 via the Quantum Valley stage, programmed in the same Insomniac lineage as Dreamstate, with Armin van Buuren, Above & Beyond, Tiësto, Andrew Rayel, and Aly & Fila as recurring headliners. The festival also runs Asia and Mexico editions under the same brand.

Hilltop is the long-running open-air psytrance venue at Vagator beach in north Goa, India — the geographical and cultural epicentre of the original 1990s Goa trance scene. More a permanent venue than a single festival, Hilltop runs a season of weekly outdoor parties each October through April, with the New Year's Eve and Christmas / New Year's Day editions widely regarded as scene fixtures. Astrix, Captain Hook, Vini Vici, Astral Projection, and Infected Mushroom have all played the venue, often returning year after year as part of the canonical Goan trance pilgrimage.

Luminosity Beach Festival is the canonical Dutch outdoor trance festival, staged on the beach at Bloemendaal aan Zee just north of Zandvoort each late June. Run since 2010 by Luminosity Events, it has become the spiritual home of contemporary uplifting and tech-trance — Aly & Fila, John O'Callaghan, Bryan Kearney, Simon Patterson, and Allen Watts are recurring fixtures, with FSOE, Subculture, Pure Trance, and VII Records all running stages. The festival is the closest thing the modern 138 BPM scene has to a flagship outdoor home.

Mayday Festival is the long-running German hard-trance and hard-dance festival, founded in 1991 and held annually at the Westfalenhallen arena complex in Dortmund each late April or early May. Mayday is one of the oldest continuous dance-music festivals in the world and the historical home of the harder side of German trance — Paul van Dyk, Cosmic Gate, Ferry Corsten, and an extensive hard-trance / hardstyle roster have all played multiple editions across the festival's three decades. Each yearly edition is built around a themed concept and an exclusive Mayday compilation album.

Ozora Festival is the Hungarian psytrance festival held annually at Dádpuszta in central Hungary. The site's psytrance lineage traces to the 1999 Solipse total-eclipse gathering, with the modern festival running continuously each late July into early August since 2004. Ozora is renowned for its multi-stage architecture — the Main Stage (Dome), the Pumpui ambient stage, the Dragon Nest darkpsy area, and the Chambok House live electronic stage — and for the visual installations and ceremonial sunrise sets that define the festival's identity. Astrix, Captain Hook, Ace Ventura, and Liquid Soul are recurring headliners.

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. Later editions have rotated between Goa, Pune, and Delhi as the festival's scale grew and logistics shifted. 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 two-decade run.

Tomorrowland Winter is the ski-resort sister event to the main Belgian summer festival, held annually at Alpe d'Huez in the French Alps each March since 2019. The week-long festival combines daytime skiing on the resort's slopes with evening stage productions in the same elaborate Tomorrowland aesthetic, with mainstage and dedicated stages for trance, progressive, and house. Armin van Buuren, Above & Beyond, and Tiësto have headlined recurring editions.

Ultra Music Festival Miami is the original Ultra brand event, held annually at Bayfront Park in downtown Miami each late March in conjunction with Miami Music Week. Trance has been a fixture since 2013, when ASOT 600 was broadcast live from the festival's first dedicated A State of Trance stage; the ASOT stage has run almost every year since, with Armin van Buuren, Above & Beyond, Paul van Dyk, and Andrew Rayel as recurring closers. The Resistance stage carries adjacent progressive / melodic-techno material.

Universo Paralello is Brazil's flagship psytrance festival, held biennially over the New Year transition at Pratigi beach in southern Bahia state. Founded in 2001, UP is the largest South American gathering of the global psytrance scene, drawing an international crowd of 30,000 across its week-long run. The festival's beach-and-jungle location, sunrise sets, and Latin-American hospitality have made it a destination event distinct from the European psy circuit; Astrix, Infected Mushroom, Vini Vici, Symbolic, and Captain Hook have all played multiple editions.