Office raves, arcade raves and a McDonald’s dance floor

HBO’s version landed on January 29, when it teamed up with Boiler Room to promote season four of Industry, its drama about young London finance workers. After an invite-only screening of episode four, fans who had applied for free invites got into a Brooklyn warehouse party with The Dare, Chicken, Kassie Krut and Justin Strauss on the decks and cast members on the floor. HBO’s marketing team told the Journal it treats these nights as content machines: the crowd in the room is one audience, and everyone who sees the footage in their feeds is the bigger one.

Spotify and LinkedIn took a different route on April 1 with an office-themed party in New York for former accountant John Summit ahead of his album CTRL ESCAPE. Spotify built the guest list from his top listeners in the city, the same superfan targeting that drives its Reserved ticketing program.

It isn’t only media companies. McDonald’s let DJ Snake turn its Champs-Élysées restaurant in Paris into a late-night rave in June 2023 to launch his signature meal and a Pardon My French capsule collection, then brought in Loud Luxury to DJ Grimace’s birthday party in Chicago in June 2025. Dave & Buster’s started hosting ticketed arcade raves at its Hollywood location in early 2023, selling more than 1,000 tickets within an hour, then rolled the format out to cities from Miami to Brooklyn with the Brownies & Lemonade crew among its partners.

The vampire test

Not everyone in the scene would call these raves. London DJ and NTS Radio host Toshiki Ohta told the Journal that brands risk looking vampiric when they take from rave culture without giving anything back, and that earning a place takes years of steady support. The brand he held up as having done it was Red Bull, which he credited with “quite a significant financial and cultural contribution” to dance music.

Red Bull’s 28-year head start

Red Bull Music Academy started in Berlin in 1998 as a traveling bootcamp for up-and-coming producers and DJs, counted Flying Lotus, Nina Kraviz and Objekt among its alumni, and ran for more than 20 years before it shut down along with Red Bull Radio on October 31, 2019.

The brand never left the festival grounds. At Coachella, the Red Bull Mirage returned for its second year in April as a three-story, 20,000-square-foot hospitality space with DJ sets, a club looking out on the Quasar stage and Nobu omakase on reservation. At Ultra, Red Bull is hard to miss anywhere in Bayfront Park. Past editions have brought custom Red Bull booths wrapped in its blue, red and yellow graphics and a big blue Red Bull tent, and in March this year it was the official energy drink, running a two-story bar by the main stage with a VIP viewing deck up top plus a shipping container bar. Its tents and bars are a fixture at Canadian festivals too, from VELD in Toronto to FVDED in the Park in Surrey.

It also throws its own. Red Bull teamed up with Brightline in 2024 on NEXT STOP: ULTRA, a train takeover with DJ sets from Orlando to Miami. On June 20 this year, Red Bull Midsummer ran daytime events in New York, Tokyo, Mumbai, Vienna, Berlin, London and Los Angeles, linked by a live broadcast over 28 hours. Lineups were built with local promoters and collectives, putting FISHER, Jyoty, DJ Seinfeld and TOKiMONSTA alongside homegrown acts.

Celsius powers Breakaway

Celsius took the newer route of attaching itself to one festival brand and growing with it. It signed on as presenting sponsor of Breakaway for all 10 tour stops in 2024, then renewed for 2025 as Breakaway expanded to 12 cities, adding a Celsius Vibe House with games and sampling, hydration stations and pre-show fitness classes with festival DJs. Breakaway’s 2026 run grew again to 14 cities, presented once more by Celsius. Three straight years as presenting sponsor while the tour keeps adding markets is about as clear a sign of a partnership working as the festival business offers.

Lululemon runs it back with John Summit

Lululemon has its own dance music tradition in Vancouver. SeaWheeze, the half marathon it launched in 2012, finishes with a Sunset Festival, and after the last in-person race in 2019 and two virtual pandemic editions, it went dark for years. It returned this August with John Summit headlining the Sunset Festival at Brockton Oval in Stanley Park, and lululemon says nearly 10,000 runners from 24 countries took part while 15,000 people came out for the party.

Summit and lululemon had been building toward that for a while. In September 2025, he joined a lululemon community run at The Vessel in New York that ended with a surprise DJ set on the High Line, and a month later he soundtracked a lululemon sunrise HIIT class in Boulder hours before playing to more than 50,000 people at Folsom Field. At his Experts Only Ski Weekender in Whistler in March, lululemon ran Mat Pilates, yoga and sound bath sessions at the Audain Art Museum, and the two now sell a co-branded Experts Only // lululemon tech tee built for running, training and skiing.

BeatBox puts DJs on its art car

BeatBox started in 2012 at the University of Texas at Austin, took $1 million from Mark Cuban on Shark Tank in 2014, and built its brand at festivals, showing up at more than 300 festivals and live events in 2025. Its BoomBox Art Car rolls through Insomniac festivals, including EDC Las Vegas and HARD Summer this year, and it returns for two nights at Escape Halloween on October 30 and 31. For Dreamstate SoCal 2024, it ran a DJ casting call through Insomniac’s Discovery Project that gave selected unknowns a set on the art car, festival passes and $500 toward travel. That’s the kind of detail that separates sponsoring a rave from feeding one. Anheuser-Busch agreed in December 2025 to buy 85% of BeatBox for $490 million.

Ghost goes all in on Insomniac

Las Vegas-area energy brand Ghost made the biggest single bet of the group. In May 2023, it signed a multi-year deal to become the exclusive energy drink at every Insomniac festival and event, debuting at EDC Las Vegas with a glow-in-the-dark Wide Awake Watermelon can and bars along Rainbow Road. More EDC flavors followed, including Electric Limeade in 2024 and Kinetic Colada for the 30th anniversary in May, and Ghost now sits behind the bars at everything from EDC to Beyond Wonderland. Keurig Dr Pepper agreed in 2024 to buy a 60% stake in the company for $990 million, so the budget for this kind of presence isn’t going anywhere. By Ohta’s measure, Ghost is three years into a test Red Bull has been passing for nearly three decades.

Festivals put brand names on the stages

EDC Las Vegas shows how deep brand programming now runs at a major festival. Alongside the BeatBox art car, this year’s 30th anniversary edition had eight art cars and side stages, and three of them carried a sponsor’s name on the sign: the Takis Zone, the Electrolit Hydration House and CASA BACARDÍ at Daisy Fields.

Hip-hop festivals sell the same real estate. When Rolling Loud set up at Camping World Stadium in Orlando in May for its only US edition of the year, its main stage was the Under Armour Stage, where headliners including Don Toliver and Playboi Carti performed. Under Armour signed on as the festival’s exclusive performance apparel partner and built a Fit For The Pit hub with recovery and fitness lounges, giveaways and limited-edition Rolling Loud x Under Armour gear.

Coachella runs its brand programming on an even bigger scale. BizBash’s roundup of this year’s top Coachella activations ran to 30 entries, from Coca-Cola’s retro Pop Shop diner to Pinterest’s phone-free space. The one with the longest run is Heineken, which marked its 23rd year as Coachella’s official beer in April, and hosting Heineken House stage at Coachella every year since 2014.

The brands that skip the party

Some of the clearest passes on Ohta’s test have nothing to do with a branded stage. Jägermeister’s Save the Night campaign, launched in 2020, has run a grant fund for nightlife projects since 2022 alongside RA and London’s fabric. The 2025 pot was €156,000 for projects built around safety, inclusion and sustainability, and Jägermeister counts more than 1,200 projects supported across over 60 countries since the campaign began. Boiler Room, HBO’s partner on the Industry night, has a long-running brand relationship of its own. Ballantine’s has backed Boiler Room’s True Music series since the mid-2010s, and the pair marked 10 years together in 2024 with 10 events across cities like London and Johannesburg plus 10 grants for local music organizations and collectives.

After the campaign ends

HBO’s marketing lead was upfront with the Journal that its parties are built to make people feel a show, not to throw a rave for its own sake. That’s an honest pitch, and a free Boiler Room night with a strong local lineup is a good deal for the people inside. The brands ravers trust earned it the slow way, through academies, grants, art car slots and festivals that kept running long after any one campaign. Whether this year’s newcomers join them comes down to Ohta’s test: who is still paying into the scene once the show has wrapped and the album cycle is over.

Watch The Dare’s set from the Boiler Room x HBO’s Industry night below.

Source: The Wall Street Journal

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Tickets go on general sale Friday, October 9th at 12pm local time, with artist presale kicking off Wednesday, October 7th at 10am local. Fans can register for presale access through John Summit’s official website.

The run will hit major venues in Warsaw, Brussels, Amsterdam, Berlin, Cologne, Zürich, Paris and London — a route that tracks Summit’s climb from underground club bookings to full-blown arena headliner in just a few years. Confirmed stops include COS Torwar in Warsaw, Forest National in Brussels, Ziggo Dome in Amsterdam, UFO im Velodrom in Berlin, Palladium in Cologne, Halle 622 in Zürich, Zénith Paris and a full-capacity show at London’s O2. More European dates are expected to be added.

Built specifically for Summit’s largest headline venues to date, CTRL ESCAPE pairs a new stage production with material from his 2026 album of the same name, alongside the genre-fluid, high-energy sets that have become his calling card. The European leg follows the kickoff of his biggest North American headline run, which launched last week at State Farm Center on the University of Illinois campus — Summit’s alma mater — and continues across the U.S. and Canada through the end of 2026.

The announcement caps off a packed European chapter for Summit in 2026. Over the summer, he launched his first Ibiza residency at [UNVRS], bringing his Experts Only concept to the club across nine consecutive Mondays. He also played headline shows in Paris, Amsterdam, Stockholm and Hamburg, plus appearances on Tomorrowland’s Mainstage, Ultra Europe, Nameless Festival and an Experts Only takeover at Tofte Manor in the UK.

Closer to home, Summit also brought Experts Only Festival NYC back to Randall’s Island for a second edition this year. The debut in 2025 drew 50,000 attendees across two days, and the follow-up further cemented the festival as one of dance music’s bigger artist-run platforms, mixing established headliners with emerging names in the lineup.

John Summit | Europe 2027 Dates

February 11 — Warsaw, PL, COS Torwar
February 12 — Brussels, BE, Forest National
February 13 — Amsterdam, NL, Ziggo Dome
February 18 — Berlin, DE, UFO im Velodrom
February 19 — Cologne, DE, Palladium
February 20 — Zürich, CH, Halle 622
February 23 — Paris, FR, Zénith Paris
February 27 — London, UK, The O2

Mastercard cardholders get early access to presale tickets in Poland, Belgium, the Netherlands and France starting Wednesday, October 7th at 12pm local time, with preferred ticket access in those countries and the UK opening Friday, October 9th at 12pm local. Full details are available through Mastercard’s Priceless music program.

Summit has built a reputation over the past couple of years for turning arena bookings into regular business — a sub-two-hour sellout at Madison Square Garden, three nights at the Kia Forum, a BMO Stadium headline date and a year-ending show at Folsom Field in front of 38,000 fans. The European expansion of CTRL ESCAPE is the next step in that trajectory, taking a production built for U.S. arenas and scaling it for some of the continent’s bigger rooms.

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From restored motels to a mattress factory

Jain made her name in Miami restoring 1950s motels along Biscayne Boulevard in Miami’s MiMo district, including the Vagabond Hotel, which she and her partners bought for $1.9 million in 2012. The Hialeah site came later. Terra’s David Martin and Michael Simkins bought the factory at 4800 Northwest 37th Avenue in 2018, the city council rezoned it for transit-oriented development, and Jain initially planned to work on the project with Martin. In 2021, the pair sold it to her for $10.5 million.

Instead of taking an acquisition loan, Jain brought in investors, including the owners of Club Space. David Sinopoli, Davide Danese and Jose Coloma Cano, friends of Jain’s, had been hunting for somewhere to throw large-scale events without constant neighborhood complaints.

“They said to me, ‘We need to find a place where we can make noise,'” Jain said. “Clubs have closed on the beaches, Wynwood, next to Space, so it was a really interesting challenge.”

Keeping the bones

Jain kept and reinforced the original walls, preserved the steel structures, hauled debris away by the shipping container and brought in 100 mature trees rescued from tree farms.

“Most people would have walked onto this property and wanted to knock everything down,” she said. “I saw the value in what was there.”

The paperwork mattered as much as the building. Hialeah officials knew Jain from her motel restorations, and she secured a 24-hour liquor license plus approvals that let the site host recurring music festivals without a new public hearing for every event. She told The Real Deal those approvals became as valuable as the property itself, since festivals book talent a year out and promoters won’t commit millions to artists, staging and production without predictable permits.

Insomniac signs on

Factory Town hosted its first pop-up events at the end of 2021, and by March 2022 Get Lost was taking over the entire lot for its 15th anniversary during Miami Music Week. In 2023, Insomniac signed a 10-year lease on the property worth more than $22 million, with two 10-year extension options, according to court documents cited by The Real Deal.

That partnership went to court in 2025, when Insomniac sued Sinopoli, Danese and Coloma Cano, alleging they concealed their ownership interest in the Factory Town real estate while negotiating the lease. The operators countersued, and the two sides reached a confidential settlement on June 30, with Insomniac keeping its commitment to the venue. Jain stayed out of the crossfire.

Five stages of house and techno

Much of the venue’s calendar runs as mini festivals around Miami’s big weeks, from Formula One weekend to Hocus Pocus at Halloween. During Miami Music Week, Factory Town has run five stages a night for five straight nights every year since 2024. The European house and techno brands that fit Miami’s taste keep coming back. elrow has thrown a party at every Miami Music Week there since 2024, and CircoLoco has hosted Factory Basel nights in 2024, 2025 and again this December. Jamie Jones brought Paradise in 2024 and 2026, Marco Carola‘s Music On ran from 2023 through 2025, and Drumcode has held a Miami Music Week slot three years running.

Beyond dance music

The calendar has stretched past dance music, too. FKA twigs brought her Body High live performance there in March with Eartheater. In September, Snow Strippers played with Bleood among the guests on the 19th, and Turnstile followed the next night with Mall Grab, Cold World and Collateral. III Points presented the FKA twigs and Snow Strippers shows, and its III Joints offshoot has taken over the grounds each April for the last two years, with Helado Negro on the 2025 bill.

What’s next

This year, for the first time, Factory Town hosted events prior to Hocus Pocus, featuring Sara Landry, Eli Brown, Fisher, Armin van Buuren and more. Later this year, Factory Basel runs December 2 to 6 during Art Basel, with Chris Lake, Solomun, PAWSA and The Martinez Brothers leading nearly 20 label and artist stage programs.

Hialeah’s slogan is “La Ciudad que Progresa,” the City of Progress. The officials who wanted Jain to bring a preservation project there ended up with a factory where the line forms before sunset and the dancing goes past dawn.

Iconic Factory Town Sets

Watch popular sets recorded at Factory Town below.

Omar+ – Planet X, Miami Music Week 2026

Disco Lines – Factory Town 2026

John Summit – Live at Factory Town

BLOND:ISH – Halloween 2025

ROSSI. – Hocus Pocus 2023

Adam Ten – Link Miami Rebels DJ set

Paco Osuna B2B Nicole Moudaber – Hocus Pocus 2023

Soul Clap – Hocus Pocus 2023

Source: The Real Deal

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The relationship between John Summit and GRiZ is built on a foundation of mutual professional respect, a shared sense of humor, and a genuine love for breaking down genre walls in electronic music. While they come from slightly different corners of the scene—John Summit rooted in house and tech-house, and GRiZ as a pioneer of live instrumentation, funk-infused bass, and dubstep—they have developed a close creative bond.

This isn’t the first time GRiZ delivers a remix for Summit. In 2023 he remixed John Summit and Hayla’s massive house anthem ‘Where You Are’, which it was the start of a relationship that aligned perfectly. GRiZ noted how inspired he felt working on it, and John has routinely shouted out GRiZ during massive festival sets with his tracks.

Keeping the vocals intact, GRiZ found a way to take a tech house track and make it his own. Adding signature gritty bass textures, sax flourishes, and high-energy drops. When dropped live, the transition from soaring melodic vocals straight into a bass sweep is nothing short of cinematic; it is a moment designed to keep the dancefloor engaged.

You can stream the track here:

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Their point raises a larger question about modern music culture: has talking become too pervasive and disruptive or is it simply a part of the experience?

Bringing the Dance Floor Back to Dancing

As John Summit has continued his global touring throughout 2026, he’s certainly had plenty of experience watching large crowds respond to his music. Most recently, his Experts Only Festival returned to New York’s Randall’s Island on September 19th and 20th to a sea of eager fans. While his one-off and festival performances are certainly memorable social moments for his audience, it appears the focus outside of the music itself has become too noticeable to stay silent.

Max Styler, too, performed at Experts Only Festival alongside Summit and shares similar opinions, asking fans to “please stfu on the dance floor” in his post. While their comments aren’t necessarily linked to the New York festival, they certainly feel timely in an age of social and digital distraction where full presence feels harder to come by.

DJs are Talking Less Too

Interestingly, this subject mirrors another shift happening on the opposite side of the DJ booth. In March, Relentless Beats published an article examining why DJs have been using microphones less during their sets. The piece argues that audiences can better anticipate builds, drops, and musical cues without needing a DJ to tell them how and when to react.

The article believes that removing constant mic interaction can create a more immersive experience as an audience discovers impactful moments for themselves. And while less microphone use doesn’t insinuate they’ve disappeared altogether, it does reflect a shift towards longer climbs and atmospheric transitions designed to fully transport an audience in the moment.

Summit and Tyler’s views seem to align with the broader trend towards building more immersive experiences for fans. No matter your stance, every once in a while it can certainly be worth putting conversations on pause and letting music get the final word.

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The trains themselves are not part of the filing. According to Brightline’s announcement, Brightline Trains Florida LLC, the company that actually runs the Miami-to-Orlando service, will not file and “will continue to operate in the ordinary course” under its existing management. Brightline Florida Holdings LLC and AAF Operations Holdings LLC are also staying out of court. The company’s Instagram put it more simply the same day: business as usual.

What the deal looks like

The filing comes with a Restructuring Support Agreement already signed with Assured Guaranty and an ad hoc group of mutual fund bondholders. That agreement lines up $490 million in new long-term capital for the train operator: $350 million in new junior debt and $140 million in additional senior debt. The company’s $2.2 billion Series 2024 bond issue and its bond insurance stay in place, and three other bond series totaling roughly $2.2 billion remain outstanding with no reduction in principal. A bankruptcy judge still has to sign off.

Brightline pointed to 14% ridership growth and 17% revenue growth through August compared to the same stretch of 2025, and said it will keep pursuing a new station in Cocoa, commuter service in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties and an extension from Orlando to Tampa.

South to Miami

For dance music fans in Florida, Brightline has become part of Miami Music Week. In March 2024, it teamed up with Red Bull on the NEXT STOP: ULTRA train takeover, running DJ sets from Orlando down to downtown Miami, with late-night return trains through Ultra weekend. The takeover came back for Ultra’s 25th anniversary in 2025. This year, Brightline ran an $89 silent disco train from West Palm Beach, Boca Raton and Fort Lauderdale on Friday, March 27, landing riders at MiamiCentral in the middle of a Miami Music Week that ran March 24 to 29, and in time for Ultra’s opening day.

The line runs the other way for EDC Orlando. Back in 2023, the Orlando extension was racing to be ready by EDC Orlando, giving South Florida ravers a way to reach the festival without the drive up the turnpike.

Long live the pwemium wounge

Brightline also handed the scene one of its most quoted inside jokes. On November 10, 2024, the Sunday of that year’s EDC Orlando, John Summit posted a TikTok from a Brightline Premium lounge on his way to the festival. His delivery turned “premium lounge” into “pwemium wounge,” the clip passed 2.5 million plays, and fans have been repeating it ever since. Summit kept the bit going too. He brought a “pwemium wounge” to the first edition of his Experts Only Festival in September 2025, and this year it became an official stage: the Pwemium Lounge, an indie dance room that ran alongside the Main Stage and Mirror Field when Experts Only returned to Randall’s Island on September 19 and 20.

With service continuing as normal, the pwemium wounge stays open, and anyone planning to ride up for EDC Orlando at Tinker Field, November 6 to 8, should not see any change to their trip.

Source: Brightline

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Share cards come in pairs. Fans get the first one when they’re selected for a Reserved offer and a second after they buy. Each card shows the fan’s name, the artist, the show details and Reserved badging, made to post on social platforms or send over messaging apps.

The setlist playlists are built from setlist.fm data and unlock on the ticket holder’s event page. Ahead of the show, the playlist reflects what the artist has been playing on recent tour dates. Once the show is over, it updates with the songs performed that night. Setlists will appear for participating tours as their dates begin.

The in-app destination pulls the share cards, setlists, event details, venue information and past performances into one place.

What is Spotify Reserved?

Spotify announced Reserved at its Investor Day on May 21. The idea: Spotify identifies an artist’s most dedicated fans and holds two tour tickets for them before the general onsale. The program went live in the US on June 18 in partnership with Live Nation, with tickets sold through Ticketmaster, and expanded to Canada on August 17, starting with Jonas Brothers dates.

In its Q2 update in August, Spotify said nearly 100,000 tickets had been reserved through the program. Recent offers have covered John Summit, Young Thug, Miley Cyrus and Metallica, along with Role Model and beabadoobee.

Spotify says its live music efforts have driven more than $1.5 billion in ticket sales for artists. It also says the top 2% of an artist’s monthly listeners, a group it calls “super listeners,” account for 50% of that artist’s ticket sales.

How to get a Reserved offer

Reserved is open to Spotify Premium subscribers in the US and Canada who are 18 or older. Premium Mini, Premium Lite and free trial accounts don’t qualify, and the account has to be at least a week old. Spotify chooses fans based on streams, saves, shares and location.

Selected fans see the offer on their Spotify Home screen and also get an email, a push notification and an alert in Your Updates. The purchase window typically lasts around a day, with two tickets held for the whole window. Tickets are reserved for the tour rather than a specific night, so fans choose the date, venue and seats at checkout, subject to availability.

Checkout happens on Ticketmaster. Fans may be prompted to connect their Spotify account to Ticketmaster to verify access, and Spotify suggests linking the two ahead of time. High-demand shows can put buyers in a queue before seat selection.

Unclaimed tickets pass to the next most dedicated eligible fans. A fan who declines an offer can’t request another one, though tickets may still turn up in the public sale. Reserved only covers first-sale tickets, with no resale.

For more on how the program started, read our coverage of the Reserved announcement from May.

Source: Spotify Newsroom

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The NYSE set landed just days before Summit’s Experts Only Festival returned to Randall’s Island Park this past weekend, following a sold-out debut run in 2025. The festival carries Summit’s own label and party brand identity, and this year’s edition builds on that momentum with a full lineup and schedule now live on the event’s website.

Beyond the spectacle, the Wall Street appearance ties directly into Summit’s own backstory. Before he was headlining festivals, Summit was working as a CPA, and that corporate-to-club narrative is the backbone of his latest project, CTRL ESCAPE, a 13-track release charting his decision to walk away from the accounting world to chase a career in music. Performing inside one of the most recognizable symbols of American finance is about as literal a callback to that story as it gets.

The takeover was presented by Cash App and Visa, which is serving as the official tour partner for the CTRL ESCAPE run, with White Claw providing drinks on site. The pairing of a dance producer with financial brands isn’t exactly new territory for electronic music’s crossover ambitions, but staging it inside the NYSE trading floor pushes the concept further than most.

Summit has spent the past few years positioning himself as one of house music’s most visible names in the U.S., building Experts Only into both a label and a festival brand while racking up festival slots at Coachella, Ultra, and EDC. The NYSE appearance adds another unconventional venue to that list, alongside past stunts that have put him in spaces far removed from typical club or festival settings.

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‘Freak’ has already picked up support from a fairly heavyweight list of DJs before its release, including Zedd, Alok, and Martin Garrix. That kind of early cosign from artists across different corners of dance music says something about the track’s crossover appeal — it’s built for the club, but there’s enough pop songwriting in the vocal to travel beyond it.

Sonically, ‘Freak’ leans into a dark, seductive mood, driven by a steady pulse and futuristic synth work that keeps building rather than releasing. Its one of those tracks that you play on the dancefloor and see how it builds into the groove. Mesto lets the groove develop gradually, layering the synths and vocal chops until the energy hits a point where it feels inescapable — a build style that fits well with where tech house has been trending on festival mainstages over the past couple of years.

Mesto has built a reputation as one of the more versatile producers to come out of the Netherlands’ deep pool of dance talent, moving between big room, future bass, and now tech house without losing his identity. INK, meanwhile, has carved out a niche as a genre-defying vocalist and writer, contributing to records that span pop and electronic production alike. Their pairing here plays to both of their strengths.

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In a post on X on Wednesday, John said he loves the big events and arena tour he’s currently deep into, but is looking forward to a change of pace in 2027 in which he has the time to lock in on producing club driven tracks.

“i love working on these big events & arena tour, but it’s gonna be real fun to not play any edm festivals/shows next year so i can focus on making club records and digging deeper again,” Summit wrote.

i love working on these big events & arena tour, but it's gonna be real fun to not play any edm festivals/shows next year so i can focus on making club records and digging deeper again

— John Summit (@johnsummit) September 16, 2026

The announcement comes as Summit continues one of the busiest stretches of his career. His sophomore album CTRL ESCAPE arrived in April 2026, and he’s currently preparing to take it on the road with his first major North American arena tour, which kicks off in early October. The run includes major venues such as Madison Square Garden-adjacent stops, the United Center in his hometown of Chicago, and a closing date that has already been upgraded in scale.

Earlier this summer he also canceled a handful of European festival dates in August to rest and prepare for the tour, citing the need to “recharge” after a heavy schedule that has included an Ibiza residency at [UNVRS], a hometown Lollapalooza headline, Tomorrowland, and the second edition of his own Experts Only Festival in New York.

The decision to step back from festivals in 2027 marks a deliberate pivot for an artist who rose extremely quickly from underground tech-house sets to stadium-level production. After years of nonstop touring and festival headlining slots, Summit is signaling a return to the club-focused production and deeper creative exploration that defined his earlier work.

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