Horst 2026, Lost Inside Strato : Navigating Horst Through Its Techno Programming

Over the years, Horst has established itself as one of Europe’s most distinctive intersections between electronic music, architecture and art. Rather than separating club culture from artistic practice, the Belgian festival continues to blur the boundaries between dancefloor, installation and public space, building an experience where the environment itself becomes part of the programming.

For its 2026 edition, the festival once again presented a dense and carefully articulated lineup spanning multiple scenes and approaches to contemporary electronic music. While Horst’s identity extends far beyond techno alone, InDepth’s presence on site deliberately focused on a selection of artists navigating the more techno, hypnotic and mental edges of the lineup.

Across the weekend, particular attention was given to performances from artists such as Polar Inertia, Tsuniman, Andy Garvey, Function & Akua, Altinbas, Nelly and Marius Bø, […], artists whose sets unfolded through slow progression, hypnotic layering and carefully controlled intensity, allowing atmosphere and texture to shape the experience as much as rhythm itself. In a festival scene increasingly saturated by overstimulation and fame, many of Horst’s strongest moments emerged precisely through restraint and finesse, reflecting a deep understanding of music from artists who respect sound with the same level of care and intention that Horst continuously extends toward its audience.

For InDepth, returning to Horst each year has never been solely about documenting a festival programme. The connection comes from a shared attention to artistic integrity and the deeper cultural dimensions of contemporary electronic music. Horst continues to cultivate an environment where sound, architecture and collective experience are approached with intention and long-term vision. This ongoing commitment naturally resonates with InDepth’s editorial direction, which seeks to highlight artists, spaces and initiatives contributing to a better techno scene and club culture. 

Come hear what’s here: Locals lead Horst 2026

“Come hear what’s here” positions Horst 2026 as a deliberate celebration of the Belgian electronic scene, with nearly half of the lineup coming from local artists. Rather than treating local acts as secondary additions or opening slots, Horst places them at the centre of the festival experience. Through this approach, Horst presents itself less as a trend-following festival than as a platform closely listening to its surrounding cultural ecosystem and amplifying the artists actively shaping it from within. 

Rather than treating local acts as secondary additions or opening slots, Horst places them at the centre of the festival experience.

In many ways, Horst’s “Come hear what’s here” philosophy mirrors an approach that InDepth has defended for years: placing local scenes, emerging identities and evolving artistic directions before trends or algorithmic relevance. It is also why being present from the very beginning of a festival has always mattered. Opening slots carry a particular responsibility. More than warm-up sets, they establish the first connection within a space, defining how a stage will breathe, evolve and be inhabited throughout the day.

Thursday, 14th

On Thursday 14th, Keyser opened Strato with a set that immediately gave direction to the room. As the largest space within the Horst Club structures, Strato was already familiar to many visitors who attended Horst Club throughout the year. Known for its powerful sound system, intense atmosphere and near-total darkness, the room remains completely disconnected from the daylight outside, even in the middle of the afternoon.

Keyser responded to that setting with a mental and textured selection built around gradual progression and trippy atmospheres. What made the performance especially interesting was also the evolution behind it. Over the years, Keyser has progressively moved away from more accessible  frameworks toward a sound that feels deeper, more niche and more introspective. Rather than chasing immediate reactions, the set focused on a subtle development over time, an approach that felt perfectly aligned with Strato’s identity. The closing track, a remix of It’s A Fine Day by Opus III, also felt like an interesting nod to Keyser’s journey through the scene over the years. A reminder that an artist can evolve toward something more mental and immersive without necessarily rejecting the more emotional or accessible influences that once shaped parts of their musical identity.

Continuing Horst’s strong focus on local artists, Clara D also delivered what felt like a significant moment in her career with a standout 8pm to 11pm set on Strato. By that point, the room had fully transformed. Following the high-intensity buildup driven by Jesse G earlier in the evening, Strato was now completely filled, operating at a far higher level of pressure and physical intensity than during the opening hours.

Rather than breaking that momentum, Clara D pushed it even further with a form of techno that felt both mental and deeply percussive. Moving between tracks from international emerging producers like Red Rooms or Bidoben and more established names, the set carried clear influences reminiscent of Planetary Assault Systems and Oscar Mulero : linear structures, hypnotic repetition and a constant sense of tension. Yet there was also something unusually raw about the performance. Not aggressive in a simplistic sense, but uncompromising in the way it maintained pressure over time. While several techno sets across the weekend leaned toward more atmospheric or introspective forms of immersion, Clara D’s approach stood apart through its intensity. 

The night eventually came to a close with a back-to-back between Function and Akua, a collaboration bringing together two different generations and sensibilities within techno. On one side, Function remains one of the most respected and influential figures in contemporary techno, known for his hypnotic approach and deep understanding of long-form storytelling through sound. On the other, Akua represents a younger generation of artists while already holding a strong position within today’s scene through a powerful and refined artistic direction.

What made the set especially compelling was the way both influences naturally merged throughout the night. Rather than creating a contrast between old and new approaches to techno, the performance allowed them to complement each other, resulting in something fluid and highly coherent from beginning to end. The dialogue between Function’s experience and Akua’s more contemporary energy gave the set a distinctive character, showing how techno continues to evolve through exchange and transmission between generations.

Friday, 15th

One of Horst’s greatest strengths remains its ability to avoid narrowing itself around one dominant sound or a limited vision of electronic music. The festival continuously embraces difference, not only musically but also through the atmospheres, artistic identities and environments spread across the site. Moving through Horst often feels less like following a timetable and more like drifting between parallel worlds, with new spaces, unexpected sounds and unfamiliar artists constantly emerging along the way.

What followed was undoubtedly one of the defining moments of Horst 2026, and arguably one of the strongest live performances the festival has hosted in recent years. Polar Inertia’s live was not simply a techno live act or performance. It was a fully immersive experience constructed around sound, darkness, fog and sensory disorientation.

For the occasion, a continuous low fog system had been installed throughout the room, gradually transforming Strato into an almost unreal environment. As the live progressed, visibility disappeared almost entirely. The crowd dissolved into the smoke. Faces, bodies and distances became impossible to distinguish, leaving only dense fog pierced by violent stroboscopic flashes manually controlled from the stage by Voiski, member of Polar Inertia. Outside, the festival continued normally. Inside Strato, however, the room felt completely detached from reality.

The performance demanded full involvement from the audience. It was not designed for passive listening or quick gratification, but for complete immersion. The kind of experience that requires people to let go of external distractions and fully commit to the environment unfolding around them.

Across ninety minutes, Polar Inertia slowly increased the intensity without ever breaking the hypnotic flow of the live. The performance demanded full involvement from the audience. It was not designed for passive listening or quick gratification, but for complete immersion. The kind of experience that requires people to let go of external distractions and fully commit to the environment unfolding around them.

What made the live especially remarkable was how naturally it matched Horst itself. Few festivals could probably sustain a performance of this nature with the same level of coherence. In Strato, everything aligned perfectly: the darkness, the scale of the room, the sound pressure, the fog and Horst’s willingness to fully embrace such a radical artistic proposition.

Part of what makes Polar Inertia so singular within contemporary techno is that the project has never been limited to music alone. Over more than a decade, the French duo progressively constructed an entire universe extending through visual design, fragmented narratives, photography and abstract fiction, developing a body of work that feels closer to a long-form audiovisual mythology than a traditional electronic music project. Their releases continuously hinted at isolated worlds, anonymous figures and cold post-human landscapes without ever fully revealing their meaning, maintaining a deliberate sense of mystery around both the project itself and the people behind it.

That same ambiguity was fully present during the live at Horst. Nothing felt designed to explain or reassure the audience. Instead, the performance functioned as a total environment where sound, visual absence, smoke and spatial disorientation all became part of the same narrative experience. More than simply watching a live act, the audience seemed temporarily absorbed into Polar Inertia’s universe itself, a place suspended somewhere between dystopian fiction, sensory overload and deep introspection.

Following a live experience like Polar Inertia is a particularly difficult position for any artist. After such a dense and immersive performance, the risk of breaking the atmosphere too abruptly is high. Yet Altinbas approached the transition with remarkable intelligence, choosing neither to imitate what came before nor to completely oppose it.

Also known as resident dj at Fuse, as the founder of the Observer Station label, and as curator of Fuse Imprint, Altinbas has steadily established himself as one of the strongest profiles within today’s international techno scene. At Horst, he gradually imposed his own environment within Strato, allowing the room to evolve naturally into a different emotional space while maintaining the energy established earlier in the night. Across two and a half hours, the set unfolded with intensity and control, driven by Altinbas sound signature while reconnecting with a more classic understanding of techno.

Last artist of the night, DJ Maria once again demonstrated her exceptional understanding of closing sets by bringing Friday night in Strato to an end in the best possible way. She managed to guide the room toward a final moment of release without breaking the atmosphere built throughout the day and the night. As the last tracks played, warm white lights slowly illuminated the entire space, revealing exhausted faces, smoke-filled air and a crowd completely won over by the journey. Applause and screams echoed across the room as the music faded out. The second day of Horst had come to an end.

At the same moment inside Strato, Andy Garvey delivered another notable moment of the night. The Australian artist and founder of Pure Space remains relatively rare to see in Belgium despite becoming increasingly present across Europe’s more underground techno circuit in recent years. Her inclusion on the lineup therefore felt particularly relevant within Horst’s broader curatorial direction. More importantly, it reinforced one of the festival’s strongest qualities throughout the weekend : giving visibility to artists with distinctive identities and strong artistic worlds, even when they remain less represented within larger European festival programming.

Horst 2026 once again proved that strong curation still matters. Throughout the weekend, the festival continuously balanced different visions of techno and electronic music without losing its coherence.

More importantly, Horst continues to give meaningful space to emerging, local and less overexposed artists instead of relying purely on predictable festival headliners. That balance between established names, niche profiles and evolving artistic directions remains one of the festival’s greatest strengths, and one of the main reasons why it continues to stand apart within today’s European electronic music landscape.

For InDepth, Horst remains a festival where artistic risk, storytelling and immersion still take priority over immediacy. And in the current state of electronic music culture, that alone already makes it something worth protecting.