Sónar 2026,
Barcelona.

Friday, June 18

Fira Gran Via is built for exactly this kind of event. A vast complex of converted hangars that swallows five simultaneous stages without ever losing coherence. We land in Barcelona with the press wristband on. We can hardly believe it. First accreditation. First festival under the PnP banner. We're not going to pretend that's nothing.

First stop: SonarVillage by Estrella Damm, where Maz, a Brazilian DJ, plays from 6:35pm to 8:05pm. We didn't know the name going in, but that's exactly the kind of discovery Sónar is built for. Groovy, danceable afrohouse, tuned for a dancefloor that's filling up slowly as the afternoon winds down. A great way to start.

Daito Manabe opens hostilities on the SonarComplex side with an audiovisual performance that immediately sets the tone for what Sónar does best, and what few festivals even attempt. The Japanese artist makes data physical: pulsing systems, performers' bodies run through with electrical current down to the millisecond, technology in service of a total sensory experience. Cerebral, unsettling, impossible to look away from.

Kelis on the SonarStage confirms her icon status without visible effort. More than twenty years after Milkshake and still here, with the same authority, the same way of owning a stage as if it had always belonged to her. Seeing her at an electronic music festival in 2026 isn't a paradox at all: she's always been above the boxes people try to put her in.

RIRIA at SonarLab x Rinse

And then comes the moment that changed everything. RIRIA at SonarLab x Rinse. We knew the mixes, the London sets, the connections to the Rinse FM orbit. But live, in this context, on this open-air stage, it's a different thing entirely.

Surgical selection. Stage energy that spills over without ever forcing it. And that rare ability to read a dancefloor and answer it before it's even asked the question. The crowd was hers within the first few minutes. A performance that will stay in the memory of everyone who was there. Remember that name.

A quick note on Goldie's absence: an arm injury meant the drum'n'bass pioneer couldn't make his B2B with Doc Scott at SonarLab x Rinse. A great lineup that never happened. We wish him a speedy recovery.

Skepta holds the main stage with the quiet self-evidence of someone who has nothing left to prove but keeps going anyway, because that's how you stay relevant two decades in. Nia Archives confirms a trajectory that's anything but accidental: magnetic presence, sharp selection, a musical identity that cuts across formats.

Sammy Virji as the climax

Then it's Sammy Virji's turn, from 1:45 to 3:15 AM. Flawless. The way he builds a ninety-minute set without the tension dropping once, alternating his own productions with edits nobody had heard anywhere before. The climax of the night, with a dozen more artists still to go until 7 AM.

Anecdote: my "It's Virji Isn't it?" cap turned out to be useful after all. The next day, during Nimino's set, someone stops us. He'd spotted the merch. He's wearing a Sammy Virji t-shirt. Two people who love the same artists, in the same place, at the same moment. That's the Sónar festival too, in the end!

Saturday, June 19

Nimino opens the day. This was the set we'd been waiting on for a long time. This house music that carries memory, textures that tell you something, a way of building a set like a conversation rather than an assault. The SonarVillage filled up gradually and every transition answered exactly what the crowd was looking for without being able to put it into words. It was exactly what we hoped for. And a bit more.

A word for Sónar's press accreditation team: we're beyond grateful for the trust placed in Phat & Phurious by the international press team. It means the world to us and represents a huge milestone for the project. And seeing all these artists we care so much about, in this context, only exists because of that trust.

Carlita takes over next with a steady rise in temperature, that melancholic, organic house sound that's hers alone. She shares a label with Nimino: Ninjatune, an imprint we're particularly fond of at PnP and a historic name in independent electronic music. We'd catch her again later on that same stage, on bass this time, alongside WhoMadeWho (live) at 11:15 PM.

The Prodigy

There are artists who belong to your teenage years. Not the ones your parents or older siblings introduced you to: the ones you found yourself, in your bedroom, on a mate's cassette or a burned compilation. The Prodigy are one of those bands for a lot of us. Seeing them headline Sónar 2026 is a privilege.

They opened on Omen, our favorite track of theirs: the best possible way in. The Prodigy without Keith Flint was an open question. The live answer is definitive: the band is still a war machine. The stage production crushes everything, the bass hits the body physically, and the room doesn't let up for the entire set. Encores ran through to Out of Space to close the loop. A historic moment. An unplanned trip back to your teenage years that everyone was secretly waiting for.

Dom Dolla, Joy Orbison & Amélie Lens presents AURA

Dom Dolla, whose stage energy is in a class of its own, turns his slot into a full-blown event. San Frandisco, over 100 million streams and still just as effective, drops and settles the argument in a few seconds flat: that round, fleshy tech house we're particularly fond of at PnP, the kind that claims the body before the mind gets a say. Standing still isn't an option. Joy Orbison then takes over. Introduced to the London scene by his uncle, jungle pioneer Ray Keith, no less. That lineage shows directly in his set: garage, techno, house and breakbeat hardcore colliding without ever stepping on each other's toes. A dense, well-referenced, never predictable reading. And to close out the night, Amélie Lens presents AURA. Not just a tour name: an entire stage concept, where light and shadow matter as much as the sound. A darker, more industrial format, worlds away from a typical Amélie Lens set, and a first glimpse of an upcoming album of the same name, out this fall. Which is exactly why it's interesting.

Takeaways

What stays with us after two days, beyond the sets: the logistics. Fast, well-managed entries, competent and friendly staff from the first security badge to the last stagehand. Infrastructure built to hold up over the long haul: a well-placed chill-out corner, bumper cars between sets because why not, free drinking water points scattered all over the site, food trucks tucked between the stages with a culinary range that never disappoints, drink prices that stay reasonable for a festival of this scale, sound calibrated carefully on every stage, down to the smallest ones. The lighting design elevates every set without overpowering it. Everything is built so we can get the most out of the festival.

Sónar 2026 confirms what the festival has been building for thirty years: a setting where the music can actually matter. We'll be back next year, no question.