Ultra Music Festival to Host Its Debut Middle Eastern Event in 2023

For the first time in its 23-year history, Ultra Music Festival is heading to the Middle East.

The globally known electronic music fest announced on Tuesday (Dec. 20) that it will be touching down in the United Arab Emirates capital of Abu Dhabi on March 4-5, 2023. The event will host two stages — a big room focused main stage and a house-centric Resistance stage — with a lineup to be released in the coming months.

The event marks Ultra’s debut in the U.A.E. after the 2020 version of Ultra Abu Dhabi was cancelled due to the pandemic. The event will happen on Abu Dhabi’s Yas Island, a leisure and tourist destination that also annually hosts the Formula One Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. Tickets are on sale now.

Ultra Abu Dhabi will mark the first time that the Miami-based company — or any other U.S.-based dance festival brand — has hosted a show in the Middle East. After launching in Miami in 1999, Ultra has become a global leader in delivering electronic music to markets the world, with iterations of the show happening in Peru, Colombia, South Africa, Singapore, China, Australia, Spain, Croatia and beyond over the years.

Meanwhile, Ultra’s flagship festival returns to Miami’s Bayfront Park on March 24-26, 2023 with a lineup that includes Swedish House Mafia, Armin van Buuren, Carl Cox, Claude VonStroke, CloZee, Eric Prydz, Grimes, Gryffin, Hardwell, Martin Garrix, Zedd, REZZ,a double appearance by deadmau5 — who’ll be performing as part of his Kaskade collab Kx5 and alongside Oliver Heldens’s alias Hi-Lo during a b2b as his own techno alter-ego Testpilot — and other genre stars.