Section
Long-form guides to the events worth travelling for, with the logistics that decide whether the trip is any good.
A Barcelona institution that spent decades split between a daytime site and an overnight one, dropped the split in 2026, and still has the best technology programme of any music festival.
Barcelona, Spain
The Netherlands turned large-scale outdoor techno into an organisational discipline. Awakenings is the clearest expression of it.
Hilvarenbeek, Netherlands
A festival in a forest outside Amsterdam that built its reputation on curation rather than headliners, and on a crowd that is there to listen.
Amsterdam, Netherlands
A German institution built around a single idea: put a serious sound system in a huge hall and run it until the morning.
Mannheim, Germany
An American techno festival held in the downtown plaza of the city where the music was invented, with an afterparty circuit that dwarfs it.
Detroit, United States