🇬🇧Creamfields
ANNUALCreamfields 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 & 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 & Beyond, and Paul van Dyk as recurring headliners.
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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&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 17–19 and 24–26.
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.
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).
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.