The Dutch artist said he wants it “to be a home for the trance fans”.
Armin van Buuren has revealed his plans for a debut US edition of his A State of Trance Festival speaking to DJ Mag backstage at Ultra Music Festival 2026.
“It’s my dream to do the festival of A State of Trance in the US,” he told DJ Mag. “I’m actively working on that. To not only do a one stager, but really to bring the festival itself and the vision that we have, just to be a home for the trance fans.”
Armin delivered an A State of Trance stage takeover on the Worldwide stage at Ultra this year — featuring Marlon Hoffstadt and Lily Palmer — but has never hosted a multi-stage festival like the event he runs annually in Rotterdam.
He said that he wants the North America edition to be “a home for the vision that we have with A State of Trance, which kind of crosses boundaries… we’ll always pay homage to the classic uplifting trance and the classics that made this genre big. But, in Rotterdam, we have five areas. So you can have a psytrance room; you can have classics room; you can have all kinds of genres.
“What I really love is the fact that trance has now spread like oil through all the genres of music. So whether it’s melodic techno or hard techno, or more [like] the Hannah Laing sound, and Marlon Hoffstadt, the Eli Brown stuff, or on the other side, the Anyma sound. Whatever fits in the A State of Trance brand, which is really melodic. It’s emotional. It’s uplifting. And that’s where we want to take it.”
Armin previously teased plans for a debut US edition of the festival during an episode of his A State Of Trance radio show in 2024 when the Dutch trance veteran interviewed US-based Insomniac Events CEO Pasquale Rotella.
