I spent the last weekend of March at Bayfront Park for Ultra Music Festival, which ran March 28 to 30. Ultra billed this one as its 25th anniversary edition, it sold out, and organizers put attendance at 165,000 across the three days. I wrote a preview of Ultra 2025 the week before, so here’s how it went.
From the moment I walked into the park, you could tell people had been waiting on this one.
It rained, and we stayed
And yes, it rained. On Sunday afternoon heavy rain and thunderstorms came through downtown Miami. Ultra paused the show and told everyone to seek shelter, and several stages went quiet until the worst of it had passed. Once things were running again, the festival pushed its closing time back an hour, to 11 p.m.
We kept going anyway, ponchos and soaked sneakers and all. It was humid and everybody was wet, and nobody around me seemed to mind. We weren’t leaving.
The sets that got the most attention
These are the moments from the weekend that got talked about the most. I’ve checked each one against the coverage that came out afterward.
- Friday: Afrojack brought out David Guetta and Sia for “Titanium,” the first time the two of them had performed it on stage together.
- Friday: Charlotte de Witte closed the RESISTANCE Megastructure.
- Saturday: Skrillex played his first solo Ultra set since 2015, and Hardwell closed the main stage with a lot of unreleased music.
- Saturday: Carl Cox hosted the Megastructure and debuted his Evolution live show.
- Sunday: Kaskade turned up as the main stage’s surprise guest.
- Sunday: Martin Garrix closed the festival, with Armin van Buuren, Afrojack, Zedd and Lauv joining him at different points.
You’d have found me at the Live Stage and at RESISTANCE. The Live Stage had Pendulum, Nero and Chase & Status on Friday, and Above & Beyond closed it on Sunday night. Armin van Buuren also ran an A State of Trance takeover on the Worldwide Stage on Friday, which ties into something I wrote about later: whether trance is making a comeback.
The production and the crowd
The main stage was a new design this year, built around LED panels in different shapes, with a lot of lasers cutting across the downtown skyline. There was a drone show over the main stage each night too, and it included a 25th anniversary logo and outlines of older main stage designs.
Security was tight, but the mood was relaxed. The crowd was as international as ever. Ultra says people came from more than 100 countries, and you could see it in the flags.
Would I go again
Yes. Ultra streamed the weekend and a number of sets are online if you want to catch up, but a replay isn’t the same as standing in it. I plan to be in the crowd again next year. Dates and details for future editions are on the official Ultra Music Festival site.
Updated October 2026: I rewrote this recap to correct several set and lineup details that were wrong in the original version.