“Adios AIRBEAT ONE!” drifted across the Mecklenburg night sky at dawn on Sunday, the last bassline fading as the sun inched over Neustadt-Glewe. For four luminous nights and three thumping days, more than 200,000 revelers—drawn from every corner of Germany and over 50 nations—turned the sleepy airfield into the third-largest “city” in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. The 22nd edition of Germany’s biggest electronic-music gathering felt less like a festival and more like a pop-up metropolis devoted to rhythm, art, and boundless imagination.
This year’s motto, “Viva España,” inspired a stage production as flamboyant as a Sevillan feria. At its heart stood a Mainstage of epic proportions: 180 meters wide, 45 meters high, marrying Gaudí’s soaring Sagrada Familia with the storied curves of Madrid’s Las Ventas bullring. Elsewhere, a hacienda-style Terminal tent pulsed with flamenco reds and ochres, while the Harder Stage wore a gigantic chrome bull’s head—horns aloft, snorting plumes of CO₂ with every kick drum.
Across six infield stages, 250 DJs and live acts stitched together more than 225 hours of sound, touching nearly every strain of electronic music. Global icons—Armin van Buuren, Alok, Afrojack, Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike, Hardwell, Oliver Heldens, Timmy Trumpet, Sebastian Ingrosso, Steve Aoki—arrived in force. Aoki was so at home he squeezed in backstage ping-pong marathons before jumping on deck for a surprise AFROKI tag-team with Afrojack. Heldens doubled up, headlining the Mainstage and then diving into the darker undertow of his HI-LO techno project inside the Arena. Techno royalty Boris Brejcha, Deborah De Luca, and a triumphant Amelie Lens pushed four-on-the-floor thunder onto the sprawling Mainstage, Lens crowning her AIRBEAT debut with a grin that rivaled the fireworks.
The Arena Stage itself was a temple to contemporary techno: 999999999, Basswell, Eli Brown, I Hate Models, and Charlie Sparks traded pummeling sets while German torch-bearers Lilly Palmer, Holy Priest, and Klangkuenstler ignited home-crowd euphoria. A stone’s throw away, the Terminal tent buzzed with local hero KXXMA, Stuttgart sensation Le Shuuk, radio dominators VIZE, Gestört aber GeiL, and a nostalgic blast from Cascada. Spain’s own B-Jones and STBAN sprinkled authentic Iberian seasoning onto the bill.
Those chasing throwback thrills flocked to the Butterfly Stage in the VIP Camping Village for late-night sing-alongs with Quicksilver, Da Hool, Special D., and Groove Coverage, their memories fueled further by a nightly “Mallorca Power Hour” starring island icons Mia Julia, Isi Glück, and Frenzy. Harder-style pilgrims were anything but neglected: Angerfist, Da Tweekaz, Dr. Peacock, Jebroer, Miss K8, Ran-D, Sickmode, Sub Zero Project, and Lil Texas rattled the barricades, while Brennan Heart made festival history as the first hardstyle artist ever trusted to close the Mainstage’s Friday chaos.
Presented by the Indian Spirit Festival, the kaleidoscopic Second Stage dove deep into Goa and PsyTrance, yet saved room for legends of classic Trance. The roof nearly lifted when hometown hero Paul van Dyk unveiled his brand-new anthem “Power” beneath a canopy of lasers.
Saturday at 1:30 a.m., the sky erupted in red and yellow—an incendiary Spanish-themed fireworks spectacle—before Armin van Buuren steered the crowd through a euphoric, story-book finale. Throughout the week, Neustadt-Glewe’s residents opened their doors and hearts: more than 2,000 locals enjoyed Wednesday’s free Opening Night, while Mecklenburg-Vorpommern’s Minister-President Manuela Schwesig dropped by on Saturday to witness the celebration firsthand. Once again, the festival wrote its own success story—peaceful, respectful, and united by sheer joy.
From a logistical standpoint, the event hummed. An early-bird camper check-in on Tuesday—plus a redesigned North Camping zone and expanded P4 parking—meant over 7,000 tents were up before the official gates even opened, with zero traffic jams reported. The Wednesday Pre-Opening Party, now stretched across four stages, proved so popular that queues became dance floors in their own right.
As dawn crept over the runways, the organizers revealed the next chapter: AIRBEAT ONE 2026 will unfurl from July 9–12, 2026, whisking its citizens to the Netherlands—the spiritual motherland of modern DJ culture. Early-bird tickets go on sale via myticket.de at 6:00 p.m. on July 14, 2025. For one final moment, exhausted dancers glanced back at the Gaudí spires and the steel bull, now silent. Then they turned toward home, hearts still drumming, already counting the days until the beat drops again.
