ADE Turns 30 With More Than 1,500 Artists Already Confirmed — Eric Prydz, Ben Klock, Maceo Plex and a Ballet Company Open Amsterdam's Biggest Week

Amsterdam Dance Event turns 30 this October. The 2026 edition — billed as 30 YEARS ADE — runs Wednesday 21 October through Sunday 25 October, and for five days the working half of the electronic music industry relocates to one Dutch city. The second wave changed the shape of it. ADE's September announcement pushed the number of confirmed artists past 1,500, inside a full programme the organisation says will exceed 3,300 artists across more than 300 venues. Among the names added: Eric Prydz, Ben Klock, Maceo Plex, Todd Terry, Paul Kalkbrenner, Scooter, Max Cooper, Âme, Miss Monique, DJ Stingray 313, HAAi, Hunee, CARISTA, Kittin & The Hacker, Angel D'lite, BASHKKA, Narciss, Bad Boombox, Boris Acket, Colin Benders and Het Nationale Ballet. They join a first wave led by Armin van Buuren, Amelie Lens, Adam Beyer, Jeff Mills, Nico Moreno and DJ Heartstring. The anniversary programming is the interesting part. For its 30th, ADE has leaned into things a normal club week cannot do. Het Nationale Ballet and ISH open the event with Swan Lake Remixed — a national ballet company opening a dance-music festival, which is either a very good joke or a very good idea, and probably both. Boris Acket presents a monumental installation called EINDER. Dome Concerts returns to the ARTIS Planetarium and expands into Fabrique des Lumières, with Max Cooper and Colin Benders among the performers. Paul Kalkbrenner brings his live concert show to Theater Amsterdam with Loveland. And Scooter — yes, that Scooter — takes the Ziggo Dome for a night billed as SCOOTER CRUSHES ADE. Two events sharing a name. This is the thing first-timers get wrong about ADE. It is not a festival with a conference bolted on. It is a conference and a festival running in the same city at the same time, deliberately. ADE Pro — the industry programme of panels, keynotes, label meetings and networking sessions — runs in the daytime from 21 to 24 October. The festival programme of club nights, parties and live shows runs across all five nights. Most of the people who fly in for one end up at the other. Why the 30th matters more than a round number. ADE started in 1996 as a conference — a small industry gathering, not a party. The festival grew around it. Thirty editions later the conference half is still the reason the week exists: it is where European booking, licensing and label business for the following year actually gets done. An artist's ADE is often less about the set they play at 3am than the four meetings they take before it. How to do it, if it is your first. Do not try to plan the whole week. With a programme this size there is no version of ADE where you see everything, and the people who enjoy it least are the ones who built a schedule. Pick two or three anchor events — and with the anniversary programming, the one-off shows are the ones that will not come back — buy those individually, and leave the rest of the nights open. An ADE Pro pass and festival tickets are separate purchases covering separate things. More names are still to come. ADE's own wording on the second wave was "1,500+ artists and counting." Rockstarr Media will track the remaining waves and the ADE Pro programme as they are announced.