Could New York’s Next Flagship Dance Festival Be Artist-Driven?

From August 14–15, the scene at Randall’s Island was a familiar one: a massive mainstage facing a crowd of thousands, totems speckling the horizon.

Zedd in the Park’s East Coast debut and fifth overall edition drew nearly 56,000 fans to the park over two days – on par with the 50,000 who attended John Summit’s inaugural Experts Only Festival, also held on Randall's Island last September. With each event welcoming roughly half as many fans over two days as Electric Zoo did across three days in 2022 (more than 100,000), Zedd in the Park and Experts Only Festival are the largest dance/electronic festivals to take place at the East River venue since EZoo ceased operation after its infamous 2023 installment.

The now-defunct Labor Day Weekend event, once recognized as New York’s longest-running and premier dance/electronic festival, shut down following reports of severe overcrowding and the September 3, 2023, crowd rush that made national headlines. According to Gothamist, an estimated 1,500 valid passholders stormed the gates after organizers announced the festival had reached capacity and denied them entry. Sunday’s 42,500-person capacity was later confirmed to have been oversold by 7,000 tickets, according to the New York Police Department. 

Members of the New York scene remember this story's messy conclusion well. Several class-action lawsuits were brought against EZoo's organizer, Avant Gardner, which – along with its parent company AGDP Holding Inc. – acquired New York promoter Made Event and EZoo in 2022. Partial refunds began rolling out about nine months after the 2023 festival, though not all eligible attendees received them. When Avant Gardner filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2025, the outstanding refund claims became part of the proceedings. The bankruptcy also encompassed the promoter's indoor-outdoor East Williamsburg event complex, home to the Brooklyn Mirage, The Great Hall, and Kings Hall.

The filing paved the way for Pacha's parent company, FIVE Holdings, to formalize a long-term agreement with Avant Gardner's primary lender, Axar Capital, providing "full operational management of the Brooklyn Mirage and The Great Hall complex." FIVE Holdings confirmed the deal early this February. Four months later, Brooklyn Mirage reopened as Pacha New York.

The whirlwind has wound down, and beats are back at 140 Stewart Ave. Yet EZoo's disappearance continues to be felt in the city's dance/electronic festival circuit, where it reigned as the genre's largely uncontested flagship festival for more than a decade following its launch in 2009. Zedd in the Park and Experts Only Festival could change that. 

Summit’s July 2025 announcement that his first-ever branded music festival would come to Randall’s Island later that fall gave New York's dance/electronic festival landscape its most significant shakeup since EZoo went dark. Experts Only became the first large-scale, multi-day dance festival at the park since EZoo’s demise, complete with 22 artists across three stages. The cross-generational who’s who of underground talent included the label head himself, Green Velvet, Pete Tong, Cassian, and LP Giobbi, among others. 

Positive reviews of Experts Only's sold-out debut – New York’s largest dance/electronic music festival of 2025 – flooded social media timelines. Two months later, Summit confirmed that Randall's Island's most notable dance event in two years would be no one-hit wonder, sharing dates for its 2026 sequel.

The event, again produced in partnership with Medium Rare, Relentless Beats, and EMW, is expected to welcome another 50,000 fans from September 19–20. Like last year, its bill spans an international coterie of house, techno, and tech house tastemakers: Partiboi69 and Prospa, Korolova and Max Styler, and the playful tech house-meets-bass pairing, SubJohnics (Summit and Subtronics). 

Experts Only Festival's consecutive installments will continue to bring new life to Randall's Island and New York's dance/electronic festival calendar – a revitalization that deepened with Zedd in the Park's East Coast inauguration, produced and promoted by Live Nation. The hitmaker has not yet confirmed whether his own event – which promptly sold out upon its announcement and featured sets from Porter Robinson, Madeon, and more – will return to Randall’s Island in 2027. In August, Zedd and the event’s Instagram account alluded to a follow-up.

“THANK YOU NYC!!! SEE YOU NEXT YEAR🗽♥️,” Zedd wrote on August 18. 

“Once again, thank you all so much for making ZITP NYC so special!!! Can’t wait to see you all again in the park!!!,” @zeddinthepark said three days later. 

To date, Zedd in the Park has hosted four installments in Los Angeles since it debuted at LA State Historic Park in 2018 with backing from Insomniac Events, which has presented and produced every LA edition since. The festival returned in 2019, 2022, and 2024, following a two-year, pandemic-related hiatus in 2020 and 2021.

Zedd in the Park's New York debut added heft to a shift that began taking shape with Experts Only Festival in 2025. The return of either or both in 2027 will carry weight for New York’s dance/electronic festival landscape – and introduce another question in the process: Can the artist-driven festival model yield the city its next flagship festival? And, is it better positioned to do so than its traditional, brand-led counterpart?

It could, and it just might be, particularly when this artist-led approach is bolstered by partnerships with established promoters. Zedd's and Summit's established audiences, identities, and cultural capital are also boons, especially amid dance/electronic's surge in popularity nationwide. In June, Luminate released its 2026 midyear report, showing that dance/electronic was the genre that grew the most in the first half of the year, up 18.9% year-over-year in US on-demand audio streams. Summit, who released his sophomore studio album, CTRL ESCAPE, in April, is among the DJ/producers driving the growing enthusiasm for the genre and its expanded reach.

Though reserved for marquee artists – at least at the scale that Zedd in the Park New York and Experts Only Festival are operating – the artist-driven model can come with vulnerabilities of its own, in addition to serious advantages: marketing is more direct and efficient; expansion can be achieved at a more sustainable pace; and risk is reduced to some extent, though never nonexistent. That last point is especially relevant in the American dance/electronic landscape, where fans have more event options than ever before, from headline concerts at arenas like Madison Square Garden to destination festivals and parties galore, both across New York and beyond its boroughs. It's also critical in the city's own uber-competitive landscape, where even EDC New York historically had difficulty maintaining a foothold. 

EDC New York emerged as key competition to EZoo in the early- to mid-2010s after launching at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey. Three of the festival's five May installments (2012, 2014, and 2015) were held at the New York Jets' and Giants' home stadium. In 2016, EDC returned to Citi Field in Queens (the site of its 2013 edition), drawing nearly 80,000 attendees across two days. 

Insomniac ultimately retired the series after 2016, with founder Pasquale Rotella announcing that EDC New York would be "taking a break" the following year. Though neither Insomniac nor Rotella publicly specified the factors that led to its cancellation, industry speculation has centered on low ticket sales, high production costs, and difficulties involving venues and local authorities.

Mysteryland USA, which ran each spring from 2014 through 2016 at the site of the original Woodstock festival, more closely approximated the scale of Zedd in the Park and Experts Only. The event attracted more than 50,000 fans after expanding in 2015, but its location in Bethel Woods, roughly two hours outside New York City, positioned it as a destination festival rather than a direct competitor to EZoo. It still vied with EDC New York for the region's festivalgoers: their 2014 and 2015 iterations both took place over Memorial Day weekend. 

The absence of a single dominant, recurring multi-day dance/electronic festival of EZoo's scale reflects New York's struggle to fill the void left by its collapse – though not for lack of effort. 

Several new dance festivals have entered the fold since 2023, most of which have operated at a boutique level. This May, WHY NOT NOW? Festival was introduced as a boutique offering in Brooklyn's Industry City, with sets from Gorgon City, Chase & Status, GENESI, Flava D, and six other artists. 

A step up from boutique scale, Breakaway Festival’s inaugural New York edition followed in July. The midsize installment of the national touring series brought headliners Tiësto, D.O.D., and Lilly Palmer, along with a slew of other acts, to two stages at another Brooklyn dance/electronic hotbed, Under the K Bridge Park. 

It is not yet clear whether either festival will return in 2027.

Among the city’s recurring dance/electronic festivals – some established before EZoo’s demise and others afterward – is the steadily rising traveling series We Belong Here. The house and techno brand, built on minimalist production, community focus, and intimacy, first landed in New York in 2024. 

“We have committed to not overgrow the festival, and keep it at a size significantly smaller than most major festivals,” organizers state on their website. “Our growth instead will come in the form of going full force bringing this festival experience to more unique locations across various cities in the US, and maybe one day abroad. Bringing the festival back home to New York – in the heart of Central Park – was a surreal way to kick off this path.”

We Belong Here New York has been held at three different locations across the city: Wollman Rink in Central Park (from 2024-2026), Greenpoint Waterfront (in 2025), and Brooklyn Army Terminal (2026). Its next iteration will unfold at Wollman Rink from October 2-4, with performances from MEDUZA, Ben Böhmer, Steve Angello, Bob Moses, and more.

Several festivals established before EZoo's exit also remain active. Despite hiatuses and venue changes, Time Warp has returned to New York for regular editions following its US debut at Brooklyn's 39th Street Pier in 2014, operating on a smaller, warehouse-focused scale than its flagship Mannheim event. Last year, it was held at the roughly 5,000-capacity Brooklyn Storehouse. From November 20–21, 2026, it'll take over the Brooklyn Navy Yard’s Duggal Greenhouse and Agger Building just one week before its Los Angeles debut (November 27–28).

Meanwhile, venues like Queens’ Knockdown Center bring festival-sized ambition to a smaller setting. The site hosts major dance/electronic acts like Jeff Mills, Fred again.., and Solomun year-round in its roughly 3,200-capacity main room.

The newcomers to the city's post-EZoo festival landscape have collectively added value and depth to one of the country’s preeminent hubs for dance/electronic music. Still, none has emerged as EZoo's definitive successor. 

Of course, that would be an unreasonable expectation for a boutique festival operating at a vastly different scale, but could it be asked of Zedd in the Park or Experts Only Festival? 

Neither currently rivals – and might never rival – EZoo's size, and they might not need to. As the closest approximations to emerge since EZoo's collapse three years ago, both have signaled that the absence left by the juggernaut may not be permanent. 

The answer won't come immediately. Along the way, Experts Only Festival and Zedd in the Park could entirely redefine what New York's next flagship dance/electronic festival looks and sounds like.