After witnessing the cancellation of several festivals organised by the Dutch brand and after much speculation on social media, Wouter Tavecchio, founder of Q-dance, has participated in a podcast explaining some of the reasons. We are going to shed some light on the matter to help understand what is happening with Q-dance.
Although Defqon.1 is a tremendously successful festival, which expands its borders every year and welcomes more and more visitors each summer, the reality is that Q-dance’s 2024 is truly worrying. While The Qontinent (a festival co-organized with Bass Events) and Qlimax will celebrate their last edition this year, the famous Q-dance takeover at Mysteryland has stopped taking place. This joins many other events that the brand has suspended or let pass in recent times (for more information, see This article from The Harder Generation).
As I said in the introduction, every time one of these news stories happened, speculation increased. Comments on Instagram posts (for example, the announcement of the latest Qlimax or that of The latest edition of The Qontinent) and the subreddit r/hardstyle Reddit was filled with doubts, assumptions and even regrets, as fans of this scene did not understand why their favorite festival was no longer celebrated.
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Luckily, a few days ago we received the first answers from an authoritative voice. Wouter Tavecchiofounder of Q-dance, appeared on the podcast From Machine and explained some of the reasons for these cancellations. The podcast is in Dutch, but thanks to several users on this Reddit post already an article from HardNews Let’s try to summarize Wouter’s explanations.
Firstly, speculation surrounding Superstruct, Q-dance’s parent company, has been debunked. Tavecchio has indicated that this year “many reasons have come together”. He says that one of the main ones is the lack of creativityMore specifically about Qlimax, he says that “If we feel that next year is not going to be better than the previous one, we prefer to stop”.
Added to this is a tax increase in the Netherlands which will take effect at the beginning of 2026, and which will increase VAT from 9% to 21%, which increases all costs by 12%. Wouter points out that “Since the coronavirus, all costs have increased”and with that extra 12% it becomes even more difficult to make a profit. The Q-dance founder also quoted Duncan Stutterheim of ID&T: “He always says that ‘tickets should cost more or less the same as a day’s work’. But everything is getting more expensive all the time”.
On the Q-dance takeover at Mysteryland, Wouter says that “Q-dance was becoming very dominant at the festival”And it is true that, looking at the full line-up of an event of this size (being one of the oldest festivals in all of Europe), the most striking and attractive thing for visitors has been the Q-dance takeover for years.
Knowing the main reasons… and now what? Wouter Tavecchio says that 2024 has also been a great year for Q-dance, thanks to Defqon.1 becoming a very profitable festival financially. He indicates that the brand will focus on new projects and conceptsseeking greater creativity: “We still have ambitions to organize other events”. He also said that will celebrate the 25th anniversary of Q-dance and hardstyle at Defqon.1 next year, so we will be keeping an eye on all the news from you.
