Every trance festival
worth your weekend.

Trance emerged in Germany in the early 1990s, born from the same acid house wave that produced techno but pushed toward longer, more melodic, more emotionally driven tracks. Frankfurt was the epicentre — Sven Väth's Harthouse and Eye Q labels released the foundational records in 1992 and 1993, with tracks like Dance 2 Trance's "We Came in Peace" and Jam and Spoon's "Stella" defining the template. The sound crossed into the UK and the Netherlands within a year and became the dominant dancefloor genre of the late 1990s.

The golden era ran roughly from 1998 to 2004, centred on Dutch producers Tiesto, Armin van Buuren, Ferry Corsten and Paul van Dyk, with labels like Anjunabeats, Armada and Black Hole defining what commercial trance could sound like. Tiesto's In Search Of Sunrise mix series and Armin's A State Of Trance radio show turned the genre into a global brand. BPMs settled around 138 to 140, arrangements ballooned to seven or eight minutes, and the long build to a euphoric breakdown became the defining structural feature.

Trance never really went away, but it lost its main-stage dominance to EDM and house through the 2010s. A revival has been underway since roughly 2020, with uplifting trance, psytrance-adjacent sounds and classic 138 sets drawing new crowds alongside the original faithful. The long build, the euphoric breakdown, the arms-in-the-air peak — these remain the genre's emotional signature.

Trance crowds are the most loyal in dance music. Many have been going since the late 1990s and treat the genre almost like a religion — the term "trance family" is used without irony. Expect a wider age range than most EDM festivals, from teenagers discovering the genre through A State Of Trance to forty-somethings who were at Gatecrasher in 2001. The dress code is open: everything from glow-stick accessories to full festival kandi to simple T-shirts.

Set structure matters more than at any other genre. A classic trance set builds for 45 minutes to an hour before peaking, with long mixed intros and outros, multiple euphoric breakdowns and vocal tracks that function as singalong anthems. At A State Of Trance weekend or Luminosity Beach Festival, headline sets routinely run two hours and cover three or four emotional arcs. The crowd knows the anthems — "Adagio For Strings," "For An Angel," "Strong Ones" — and sings every lyric.

Production is heavy on lasers and emotional lighting rather than pyro. Lasers cut through fog at the breakdown, white lights flash on the drop, and the entire room raises its hands on cue. First-timers should know that trance is the genre where crying on the dancefloor is not only accepted but almost expected.

Armin van Buuren is the central figure of modern trance and has been since the early 2000s. His weekly A State Of Trance show and festival has shaped the scene for two decades. Tiesto left the genre for commercial EDM but his early catalogue remains canonical. Paul van Dyk, Ferry Corsten, Above and Beyond and Aly and Fila are the other elder statesmen, each with their own sub-scene and label.

The current generation is led by Vini Vici and their psy-trance crossover sound, alongside artists like Giuseppe Ottaviani, Bryan Kearney, John O'Callaghan and Craig Connelly, who keep the 138 BPM uplifting lineage alive. Above and Beyond's Anjunabeats roster — including Andrew Bayer, Jason Ross and ilan Bluestone — dominates the progressive trance and melodic house crossover space.

Subgenres are well defined. Uplifting trance at 138 BPM is the classic form. Progressive trance sits around 128 to 132 BPM with longer builds and housier grooves. Psytrance gets its own entry. Tech trance combines techno kicks with trance leads. Vocal trance builds around full song structures with topline singers. And the 138 scene treats the genre's classic tempo as a creed.