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A State of Trance brings its first UK indoor festival to London's Drumsheds
23 July 2026 · Dubrate
Armin van Buuren's ASOT lands at the Meridian Water warehouse on 14 November, marking 25 years of the brand and the clearest sign yet that trance's revival has real weight in Britain.
A State of Trance is coming indoors in the UK for the first time. Announced in late May, the event takes over Drumsheds in north London on Saturday 14 November 2026, with Armin van Buuren headlining a festival-scale build inside the former IKEA warehouse at Meridian Water. It doubles as a marker for the brand's 25th year, counting back to the Friday-night radio show that started in 2001 and grew into a touring circuit with editions across Europe, Asia and the Americas.
The choice of room matters. Drumsheds is one of the largest indoor spaces on the London circuit, and ASOT is promising the full production treatment across its warehouse halls: cinematic visuals, a heavyweight rig and the kind of capacity a single-night trance event in the UK rarely gets to work with. Sign-ups are running through the official ASOT site rather than a straight on-sale, the usual demand-management move for a room this size.
The timing is not accidental. Trance has spent the past few years climbing back into the wider conversation, with 138 sets, uplifting cuts and hard-trance edges pulling younger crowds alongside the original faithful. The UK end of that has mostly played out in club rooms and multi-arena reunions; a dedicated indoor ASOT festival is a step up in ambition, and a bet that the demand now supports it.
It also lands in a busy stretch for hard and fast dance more broadly. The hardstyle calendar continues to sell out at scale across the Low Countries, and the UK's own hard-dance and trance nights have been thickening through the summer. ASOT at Drumsheds is the most visible piece, but it sits on top of a scene that has been quietly rebuilding room capacity for a while.
For DJs and independent artists, the read is straightforward: trance is once again commanding the biggest indoor spaces in the country, and a marquee brand planting a flag at Drumsheds tends to pull bookings, promoters and A&R attention along the same fault line. A rising tide for the sound is a wider set of rooms, slots and release windows for the people making it.
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Sources: We Rave You · EDMTunes · Resident Advisor · Drumsheds
