Amsterdam Dance Event is turning 30 this year, and the celebration is stretching far beyond the city’s clubs.
ADE has revealed the first wave of its 2026 Arts & Culture program, bringing electronic music into museums, theaters, record stores, immersive art spaces and even the depths of an aquarium. The initial lineup includes audiovisual work from Olafur Eliasson and 4DSOUND, a live performance from modular synth master Colin Benders, an exploration of Amsterdam’s disco history, a climate-focused installation featuring Orbital’s Paul Hartnoll and Paranoid London, and an intimate Sunday listening session hosted by techno icon Dave Clarke.
It’s an ambitious opening glimpse at what ADE has planned for its milestone 30th edition. Rather than simply adding more parties to an already packed week, ADE Arts & Culture is looking at the wider world surrounding electronic music—its history, visual language, experimental edges and relationship with art, technology and the cities and communities that have helped shape it.
Since last year, ADE Arts & Culture has been working with a team of curators whose backgrounds stretch across club culture, visual art, performance and independent creative communities. The result is a program that feels deliberately broad, moving electronic music into places where you might not normally expect to encounter it.
One of the most intriguing examples arrives at ARTIS Aquarium. The recently reopened Amsterdam landmark will host “Deep Seeing Currents,” an immersive audiovisual work by artist Olafur Eliasson in collaboration with spatial audio platform 4DSOUND.
Located in the aquarium’s deep-sea section, the installation surrounds visitors with darkness, shifting light, physical vibrations and layers of underwater sound. Whale songs, hydrothermal vents and human-made noises become part of the environment, while vibrations recreate the sensation of pressure in the deep ocean. Lights slowly descend through the space to evoke marine snow, the particles that drift toward the ocean floor and sustain life in some of its darkest regions.
“The reopening of the aquarium and its collaboration with Olafur Eliasson and 4DSOUND created a natural opportunity to work together,” ADE Arts & Culture’s team explained. “It is a deep-sea listening experience, but also a true deep-listening experience.”
Elsewhere in Amsterdam, the program turns its attention toward one of electronic music’s most important ancestors: disco.
Wereldmuseum Amsterdam returns to ADE following last year’s exploration of Chinese club culture with “DISCO: I’m Coming Out,” a program tracing how records arriving from New York helped transform Amsterdam nightlife and ultimately contributed to the evolution of the city’s dance music culture.
The story moves from early disco clubs through house music and into contemporary dancefloors, exploring not only the music but the people, communities and ideas behind it. Jean Paul Paula, Amber Vineyard, Eddy de Clercq, Sunny Jansen, Suze Ijó, Thijs Weijland, Manique Hendricks, Juno Dijkshoorn, Shirley Hart and Anydee Anytime are among those taking part. Paula and Weijland will serve as guest curators, while Vineyard will host.
One of the program’s biggest audiovisual experiences, meanwhile, will unfold inside Fabrique des Lumières, where Colin Benders and OTHERNODE are teaming up for a performance designed to be created in real time.
Benders will use his sprawling modular synthesizer setup to build and reshape rhythms, textures and sequences on the fly, while OTHERNODE responds through live visuals, projection, light and the architecture of Fabrique des Lumières itself. There is a framework behind the production, but no completely fixed show. What the audience sees and hears will emerge in the moment, making the performance unique to the people inside the room.
The collaboration is part of Dome Concerts’ ADE programming, which will include another seven events spread across Fabrique des Lumières and ARTIS Planetarium.
That sense of unpredictability runs throughout much of this year’s Arts & Culture program. ADE’s curators say they are particularly interested in performances that lose something when they are simply filmed and uploaded later.
“We’re interested in experiences that you need to be there to experience,” the curators said. “If they are filmed or reproduced, they’re not the same.”
That philosophy is at the center of “CHIMP Live,” an intimate performance from violinist, vocalist and composer Diamanda La Berge Dramm at Plein Theater. Originally released as an album in 2022, “CHIMP” will be reimagined as a minimal stage production built around two violins, a small table, a lamp and a handful of pedals.
Dramm moves between acoustic and electric violin, voice, classical music, avant-garde composition and alternative pop, creating something that sits somewhere between a concert and a performance piece. It’s also representative of ADE Arts & Culture’s effort to give independent artists room to experiment during a week when Amsterdam already has one of the most musically curious audiences in the world.
“Because there’s so much happening during ADE, it’s the right place to actually just try things out,” the curators explained. “The audience is already there, so it’s the perfect place to take risks.”
Muziekgebouw aan ’t IJ will push further into experimental territory with the live premiere of “Crawler: Your Death Is a Lullaby,” presented by Nothing Here Now and The Rest Is Noise.
Founded by Rachella Groen, also known as Zohar, and Harry Castle in collaboration with writer Gervaise Alexis Savvias, Crawler examines identity, instability, fragility and refusal through a queer political lens. Cellist Malou van der Veld and guitarist Rob Toal-Lennon join the core group, while an installation by Studio Basse Stitgen and visuals from Clint Soren expand the project beyond the stage.
The night will open with “Everything Always Changes, For We’re Truly Here,” a new collaboration between 2K88, Rainy Miller and Bianca Scout, before electronic musician and composer Nkisi closes the evening.
Electronic music will also become a vehicle for exploring climate change at NXT Museum, where Earth Sonic and the museum will premiere “Two Seas and Sumuku.”
Featuring artists including Orbital’s Paul Hartnoll and Paranoid London, the project combines electronic music, large-scale visual art and immersive installations to confront environmental change through sound and space. NXT Museum’s enormous audiovisual environments give the project room to turn its climate-focused narrative into something audiences can physically step inside rather than simply observe.
The curators say projects like this reflect their interest in collectives and artists who are actively stretching the boundaries of electronic music.
“We also look for new collectives and initiatives that reflect the current cultural moment and stretch the definition of electronic music,” they explained. “They can be local and highly specific or international in scale. Together, they show the diversity and flexibility of electronic music.”
And after several days of sensory overload, ADE Sunday will offer something considerably more intimate.
Dave Clarke will host “Sunday Selectors” at Amsterdam’s iconic Concerto Record Store, but instead of getting behind the decks for another techno set, Clarke and his invited guests will go digging through the records that shaped their lives.
Each artist will bring five records with a personal connection, discussing why they matter, how they influenced their careers and the stories attached to them. The audience will also be invited into the conversation, turning the afternoon into a relaxed listening session and celebration of the culture surrounding record collecting.
Muziekgebouw aan ’t IJ will also look back at a major piece of Dutch musical history with “Hoketus 50!,” celebrating five decades of Louis Andriessen’s groundbreaking composition.
Written 50 years ago, “Hoketus” became a cornerstone of the Dutch Haagse School and helped reshape contemporary composition through its relentless rhythm and uncompromising structure. For the anniversary, composer Michael Gordon is creating a new mirror work designed to confront Andriessen’s composition rather than simply pay tribute to it—a continuation of its rebellious spirit instead of a recreation of the past.
The first wave makes one thing clear: ADE’s 30th anniversary isn’t only going to be about looking back.
For three decades, Amsterdam Dance Event has grown alongside electronic music itself, evolving from an industry gathering into a week that takes over virtually every corner of Amsterdam. ADE Arts & Culture feels like a natural extension of that growth, acknowledging that the culture now extends well beyond DJs, clubs and festivals.
This October, electronic music will be heard beneath an aquarium, surrounded by immersive projections, dissected inside museums, performed on violins and modular synthesizers, discussed between the shelves of a record store and used to tell stories about everything from queer identity to climate change.
And with ADE confirming that more Arts & Culture programming is still to come, this is only the first look at how Amsterdam plans to celebrate 30 years of ADE.
