Amsterdam Dance Event is the world's largest club and electronic-music gathering, and its 2026 edition runs Wednesday 21 to Sunday 25 October across venues, warehouses and concert halls throughout the city. ADE is really two festivals stacked on top of each other - a daytime conference for the industry, and a five-night calendar of parties that turns the whole city into one connected dancefloor. This guide covers the party side, day by day, using the events already listed on Mood.
The scale is the first thing to understand. In Mood's data, more than 200 ADE events are already listed across the five days, and that number climbs every week as promoters confirm rooms and line-ups through September and October. The calendar builds from a lighter Wednesday into a Saturday peak, so the deeper you get into the week, the more the choice becomes about which room rather than whether there is one.
What ADE actually is
ADE started in 1996 as a small industry conference and grew into the anchor event of the global electronic calendar - the week every label, agency and promoter schedules its showcases around. The daytime programme runs panels, label days and networking at venues like De Brakke Grond and the Felix Meritis. The night programme is the part most visitors come for: club nights, warehouse raves and one-off showcases spread from the canal-ring clubs out to the industrial spaces in Noord and the Westergasfabriek grounds.
The spread of styles is wider than ADE's techno reputation suggests. In Mood's data, house and techno split the week almost evenly - 94 house events to 89 techno across the five days - with melodic house and melodic techno the clear third pillar. Trance, minimal, electro and progressive all have their own showcases, so the week is less a single sound than a map of the whole electronic spectrum.
Wednesday 21 - the soft open
Wednesday is the quietest night, and it works as a warm-up rather than a peak - a night for the early-arriving crowd and the smaller showcases before the week goes vertical. Clubs like Melkweg run label nights and touring shows, and the canal-ring rooms open at a manageable pace. It is the one evening where walking in without a ticket is still realistic at most doors.
Thursday 22 - the melodic showcases
Thursday is where the week shifts up. The melodic house and techno programming clusters here, with nights like Adam Ten b2b Mita Gami at Het Sieraad - the Tel Aviv-rooted melodic sound that has become one of ADE's signature threads. The harder end runs in parallel: warehouse spaces like H7 open their all-day raves, and the techno rooms start their long programmes. Thursday is also when the bigger club brands launch their multi-day takeovers.
Friday 23 - the week goes wide
Friday is the first of the two heavy nights, and the choice becomes genuinely difficult. The tech-house and house end runs marquee showcases like Paradise x Loveland at Mediahaven, Jamie Jones's long-running party brand in one of the larger industrial rooms. The techno side answers with nights like the AURA ADE special at RADION, a hypnotic-techno showcase in a former dental clinic turned 24-hour club. This is the night the city's warehouse spaces fill first.
Saturday 24 - the peak
Saturday is the busiest day of the five, and it runs from arena-scale to underground. At the top end, AMF at the Johan Cruyff Arena is the stadium event of the week, with David Guetta, Afrojack and Armin van Buuren on a bill built for 40,000 people. At the other end, the long-form club sessions run all day - six-hour b2b sets and warehouse marathons across Het Sieraad, Thuishaven and the Westergasfabriek grounds. Saturday is where the calendar is at its densest, and where the ticketed showcases sell out earliest.
Sunday 25 - the closer
Sunday is the long goodbye - day parties, closing sessions and the classic-house end of the programme. Nights like Todd Terry & Friends at Het Sieraad lean into the house heritage that ADE is built on, and the mood shifts from the week's intensity to something looser and more celebratory. Many of the best Sunday events are daytime, so the week ends in daylight rather than another 6am finish.
How to plan your ADE
The difficulty at ADE is not finding a party - it is choosing between the fifty happening on the same night. Line-ups overlap, tickets for the marquee showcases sell out weeks ahead, and the good warehouse nights are often the ones not on the front page of the listings. Following a venue or a promoter is the way to catch the announcements as they land rather than after they sell out.
Mood pulls the full ADE calendar into one place - every night, every room, with venue, date and a link out - so the planning becomes which sound and which night rather than which ten pages to refresh. The techno programme and the house programme each have their own browse, and the full week sits on the city page.
Frequently Asked Questions
When is ADE 2026?
Amsterdam Dance Event 2026 runs from Wednesday 21 to Sunday 25 October. The daytime conference and the night programme both span all five days, with the party calendar building from a quieter Wednesday to its peak on Saturday 24 October. Mood lists the parties as promoters confirm them through September and October.
How many ADE parties are there?
More than a thousand events happen across ADE week when the daytime and night programmes are combined. On the party side, Mood already lists over 200 club nights, warehouse raves and showcases across the five days, a number that keeps rising as line-ups are confirmed closer to October. The full list updates daily on Mood.
Do you need tickets for ADE parties?
Most night events are ticketed, and the marquee showcases - the big club-brand takeovers and the arena shows - sell out weeks in advance. Smaller weeknight showcases and some daytime events are easier to walk into. The daytime conference requires a separate pass. Each listing on Mood links out to the organiser for tickets and entry details.
What kind of music is played at ADE?
ADE covers the full electronic spectrum. In Mood's data, house and techno are the two largest categories across the week, split almost evenly, with melodic house and techno close behind and trance, minimal, electro and progressive all running their own showcases. It is a techno-forward week, but far from techno-only.
Amsterdam Dance Event turns the city into a single connected dancefloor for five days each October. The full run of parties, showcases and warehouse nights - every day, every venue - lives on Mood's Amsterdam events page.
