🇮🇳Hilltop Goa
ANNUALHilltop 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.
Headliners
ASSOCIATED LABELS
Map
View larger on OpenStreetMap →Past Editions
Related Events
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.
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.
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.
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.