Electric Forest remains one of the American festival scene’s most impressive event production feats.
Each June, up to 70,000 people gather in western Michigan to dance, mingle, and trip out inside the four-day camping festival’s famous maze of light, color, sound, and experiential art, masterfully constructed in and around the towering white pine trees of Rothbury’s Double JJ Resort.
For well over a decade, the co-production from Insomniac Events and Madison House Presents has carried an esteemed reputation as the gold standard for immersive event production in the U.S. festival landscape, and in today’s digitally connected scene, it’s one of the most buzzed-about, Instagrammable events on the domestic festival calendar.
As many decry online, that profile has come with plenty of changes over the last 14 years. Attendance costs have more than tripled since Electric Forest’s inaugural edition in 2011. As dance music’s popularity continues to soar, jammy lineups and local crowds have been steadily squeezed out by celebrity EDM headliners and young party chasers. And though its vibe is inherently tied to its spiritual predecessor—the heady, jam-band-focused Rothbury Festival—make no mistake, Electric Forest is a corporate-backed juggernaut.
Still, in testament to the collaborative might of its powerful producers—Electric Forest is the only major U.S. festival directly co-produced by the country’s two biggest concert promoters, Live Nation (Insomniac) and AEG (Madison House)—we’ll be damned if it isn’t one of the most technically stunning shows on Earth. While events like EDC push experiences en masse, Electric Forest pushes the boundaries of human creativity. Inspired by that effort, a strong, fan-led festival culture forged in Electric Forest’s nascent years breeds one of the most special community experiences we’ve taken part in.
This year, that culture was tested. Back from June 25-28, Electric Forest’s sold-out 2026 edition brought music lovers together for a beloved annual ritual in the face of frustrating weather impacts and unthinkable tragedy. Read EDM Maniac’s full report on Electric Forest 2026 below.
Quick Takes
Best moment: GRiZ’s headline return at Ranch Arena. Chris Lake rinsing this “Bangarang” edit.
Needs work: Long waits for entry and exit.
Hidden gem: Secret sets at Grand Artique. Exploring Wander Whirled.
Audience Match
Who this festival is for: Bassheads. Psychonauts. PLUR preachers. Trinket traders.
Maybe skip if: Techno is your thing. You’re easily overstimulated. You left your walking (dancing) shoes at home.
Vibes: A-
Returning to the Forest for our fifth consecutive year truly felt like returning home. From the moment we arrived on site, we reconnected with long-distance festival friends from across the country and made plenty of new ones. For ravers from the Midwest, it’s a special feeling to have an event of this caliber in our backyard. For those traveling in from afar, Electric Forest is an even more impactful pilgrimage.
Electric Forest’s roots in the jam band scene have long served as a unique calling card. Initially hosted and still annually featuring a headline performance by The String Cheese Incident, the festival developed as a space where heady hippies and hardcore ravers come together, two disparate festival cohorts united by core values of inclusivity and acceptance, and a bit of party hedonism.
Electric Forest’s shift toward serving younger, more electronic-minded fans has been well-documented in recent years, but this was the first time we felt its changing lineups reflected in the crowd dynamics around us. Forest first-timers and rave newbies seemed to make up a larger share of this year’s crowd, and we found ourselves missing the event’s previously more genre-diverse melting pot of partygoers.
Inflatable couches dominated the dance floor, even after organizers supposedly banned them from certain areas near the stages. On several occasions, as we moved through the crowd, we were met with dirty looks or snide comments after politely requesting to pass. Mixed vibes are expected with a sold-out event of this size. But while this may not have been the best Electric Forest crowd we’ve ever partied with, let’s be clear, the Forest Fam has set its own bar VERY high.
The overwhelming majority of attendees at Electric Forest 2026 were respectful, responsible, and ready to connect with their fellow festivalgoers—over trinket trades, kind words, hilarious totems, or lending a helping hand. Those who got up off their seats danced with more ferocity than you’ll find almost anywhere, and we were happy to feel like the exception to the rule when we pulled out our phones to document it. At peak time on Saturday, we got the same warm, fuzzy feeling we get every year: Electric Forest is home to some of the best crowds in the scene.
Still, any discussion of this year’s vibe must mention the tragic loss of life that occurred on the festival grounds. On Sunday, a newborn baby was found dead in a portable toilet in the campgrounds. The event continued as Michigan State Police investigated in the area. Organizers and police have encouraged attendees and the public to come forward with any relevant information. At the time of writing, no arrests have been made. On Monday, the day after the festival, Jerard Jackson, a 28-year-old Electric Forest attendee, was found dead by suicide in a wooded area near Rothbury.
It’s difficult to know what organizers should or shouldn’t have done in the wake of such tragedy, but we can only hope these events will serve as an important reminder that life doesn’t stop when we enter the festival gates. When tragedy strikes our scene, it’s up to each of us to reflect on the kind of space we want to create, the kind of community we want to be, and what we need to do to get there.
In that spirit, we’ll close with our most notable, and perhaps most actionable, takeaway: Electric Forest has been an all-ages event since its inception, and that needs to change. As the soundtrack gets heavier and the partying gets harder, there is no reason for children under the age of 18 to be in an adult environment such as Electric Forest. This isn’t a hard-and-fast festival rule; the right parents and the right event can make for an incredible family experience—but Electric Forest is not the place for it.
Production: A
Electric Forest is a masterclass in high-powered stage production and slick, stripped-back ambient lighting, fusing the best both worlds into a truly immersive audiovisual experience you won’t find anywhere else.
It may not have the sheer volume of stage lights and lasers found at mega raves like Excision’s Lost Lands or EDC Las Vegas, but the festival’s renowned lighting design teams build in direct complement to the venue’s natural environment, which means every sky-high pyro hit, strobe assault, and laser barrage through the trees lands with even more impact. As a result, festivalgoers are called to take in nature from an entirely new perspective.
Forest clearings open to three outsized festival stages. Ranch Arena hosted hallmark sets with artist-custom production elements, such as Levity’s rainbow flames and GRiZ’s yin yang smiley. Sherwood Court sprayed the festival’s largest laser displays over its biggest dance floor. Tripolee washed ravers in dozens of swirling spotlights.
Inside the forest, smaller, more intimate stages like the Observatory, the Grand Artique, and the festival’s 360-degree Honeycomb invited passers by into a woodland party realm between the pines. Tucked into the festival’s new Wander Whirled maze, where the Carousel Club once stood, Center Stage debuted with a reflective look that seemed to bleed into the horizon behind it, perfect for chilled-out instrumental performances during the day.
As we took in the show at scale all weekend long, we found ourselves marveling at the tens of thousands of dancing silhouettes before us, framed by the soft lighting and foliage.
Music: B+
Electric Forest’s musical signature typically sits at the crossroads of high-powered EDM, psychedelic rock, and feel-good pop and alternative. But this year, reflective of industry trends, the lineup steered into bass music as hard as ever.
Returning to the Forest, star dubsteppers such as GRiZ, Levity, Excision, Ganja White Night, ALLEYCVT, LSDREAM, and ILLENIUM (B2B Wooli, thanks to a Sunday weather delay) delivered some of the weekend’s most anticipated and well-attended performances, alongside trap sensation ISOxo and surging bass artists like AVELLO, SIPPY, HEYZ, Whethan, and Richard Finger. In the genre’s latest celebrity co-sign, DJ Diesel (Shaquille O’Neal) and T-Pain (performing as Teddy Pain) played their first-ever dubstep B2B set.
House and techno heads caught a vibe with Eli Brown, Odd Mob, D.O.D, Westend, and it’s murph (filling in for Disco Lines) on Thursday ahead of Sammy Virji’s silky UKG grooves, Claude VonStroke’s new batch of album beats, and a homecoming set from Traverse City-native Ranger Trucco on Friday. The 4/4 beats peaked on Saturday night in a scintillating headline set from genre don Chris Lake.
Other highlights throughout the weekend included California Latin house trio Close Friends Only, Berlin techno favorite MCR-T, experimental bass beatsmith Nikita, the Wicked, renowned UK garage selector Oppidan, a massive singalong with jigitz, and the debut of SIDEPIECE’s trap project, MAINPIECE.
When it comes to electronic music, bass has always been Electric Forest’s bread and butter. But while reverting to that winning formula after a house and techno-heavy 2025 edition rewarded organizers with a sold-out crowd, we felt this year’s lineup played it a bit safe, at least when it came to the headliners. This year’s Sunday programming also took a significant hit when the main festival venue was evacuated for about four hours due to thunderstorms in the area, which meant fans missed out on artists such as Kaskade, MPH, OMNOM, Bob Moses, and Frost Children.
Venue: A-
Double JJ Resort’s picturesque 2,000-acre property is the creative inspiration that has propelled Electric Forest’s growth into an experiential behemoth.
Well-sized for the event’s annual draw of 50,000 to 70,000 attendees, the main festival venue offers a large-scale festival atmosphere with enough space for three massive main stage dance floors, while the dense plot of nearly 70-year-old white pine trees at its center is the perfect blank canvas for the festival’s labyrinth of up-close musical performances, psychedelic art installations, and secret experiences. It’s also a good spot for a nap in the daytime heat.
Across the whole property, Electric Forest offers dozens of unique camping amenities and customizable experiences, such as lakeside camping at Lucky Lake, full-power RV hookups, access to an on-site waterpark, and VIP stays in the festival’s secluded Good Life campground, featuring its own private afterparties.
When it came to show logistics, aside from Sunday’s weather delay, we didn’t encounter any major operational hiccups at this year’s festival. Medical and emergency services were clearly marked and easily accessible. Security checks were consistent with what we’ve experienced at previous editions and most other legacy festivals, with metal detectors and firearm K-9 units. Bags were only searched if they set off the metal detectors.
Entering the campground at midnight on Thursday took about an hour’s wait in line from the tollbooth to the campsite. Perhaps to be expected during peak entry times, the next evening, attendees entering the main venue through GA lanes were forced to wait in line for up to 30 minutes. We didn’t run into any more long entry-exit lines until leaving the campground on Monday morning. It took almost three hours to get off the property at around 10AM, so if you’ve got a long drive home, it’s best to get on the road early.
In one of the colder editions of Electric Forest we’ve attended, cool, dewy nights (dipping to around 50 degrees Fahrenheit) kept the climate comfortable and the dust down throughout the weekend. Though we needed an extra layer of clothing once the sun went down, it was a refreshing change after last year’s intense heat.
Sidequest-ability: A+
Electric Forest is a sidequester’s paradise, and Sherwood Forest is its surreal showpiece. Getting lost in it isn’t just part of the experience—it is the experience.
The festival’s shady daytime retreat beneath the trees turns into a trippy wonderland of colorful lights and shapeshifting art installations at night. Nearly every inch of the forest is drenched in color and deliberately designed to spark curiosity. Answer its call, and you’ll be rewarded.
Stationed among the trees, the Electric Forest “Time Travel Agency” sends fans on a secret scavenger hunt across the venue, where answering riddles and puzzles unlocks hidden experiences and new areas of the map. Suddenly, the art in the forest becomes more than a cool photo-op. Everything is deliberately placed to serve a specific experiential purpose.
In another crowd-favorite Forest tradition, tiny “fairy houses” tucked away in the woods serve as “take one, leave one” trinket mailboxes, while fans pawn their most valuable festival possessions at the Grand Artique trading post, or leave their gems for passersby at the Giving Tree. Gamifying good deeds even further, the festival’s famous Prize Cart encourages attendees to pick up trash on the ground in exchange for exclusive merchandise.
This year, the biggest change to Electric Forest’s sidequest crusade saw the festival’s beloved Dream Emporium activation replaced by Wander Whirled, a massive maze hiding dreamlike experiences, from zany performance theater to a secret oyster bar, behind hidden doors in its hedge walls. The maze brought the same whimsical charm as the Dream Emporium, but took the experience outside, where there was more space to explore and enjoy the summer weather.
Beyond the main venue, Main Street in the campgrounds is another great spot for exploring by day or night, with food stalls, vendors, late-night music, and interactive programming such as line dancing, breathwork, and educational panels.
Food & Beverage: B+
Food and beverage offerings at Electric Forest were on par with other major festivals of its size and stature. Late-night bites were available 24 hours a day on Main Street in the GA campgrounds, while elevated menu items, like custom wine and cheese charcuterie or even seafood dishes, were found inside the main venue, along with festival classics like chicken tenders, corndogs, tacos, and Island Noodles. Vegan, vegetarian, and allergy-friendly options were sold but somewhat limited throughout the venue, especially in Good Life and VIP areas.
Each full-service bar sold a wide variety of mixed drinks, specialty cocktails, White Claw seltzer, and beer options such as Modelo and Bell’s Oberon. Bar lines were short all weekend long, but the wait to secure the 21+ wristband needed to buy drinks lasted almost an hour on opening night.
Food and beverage prices at Electric Forest came in at the more expensive end of the stadium food spectrum. For a sizable meal, attendees should expect to spend around $15 minimum. Sixteen-ounce beers cost between $15 and $18, while mixed drinks cost $20 minimum. Free water stations were easy to access for a quick fill-up, and bottled water was sold for $2.
We’re still thinking about the $13 plate of spaghetti and meatballs that propelled us through Thursday night, perhaps our favorite budget Forest food yet.
Overall: A-
Home to some of the loftiest production achievements and most immersive art we’ve encountered in our festival travels, Electric Forest 2026 backed up all the reasons why it’s hailed as one of the best events on the American circuit.
Unfortunately, this edition will also be remembered for the tragic events that occurred there. While we leave the Forest with mixed emotions, we hope that holding due space for both the euphoric highs and devastating lows of this year’s event can continue to propel this festival, and our scene, to a brighter future.
Find EDM Maniac’s complete Festival Report Card archive here.