Review: Draaimolen – A Dutch Nature & Digital Arts Festival Pushing Boundaries In Light Installations & Music

The festival boasts more than a few world premieres from the electronic scene, the opening party on Thursday for example had brand-new live shows from Efdemin, GiGi FM & Vincent Rang and Legowelt and the main festival (Friday & Saturday) hosted a plethora of never-before-seen back-to-backs, including Eris Drew & Objekt, Octa Octa & Virginia, Carrista & Bitter Babe and Wheel of Fortune (CCL x Marylou x Nono Gigsta x rRoxymore). Playing Draaimolen for the second time, rRoxymore explains that the four-part collective has ‘no boundaries’… ‘but at the same time we have a very strong overlap in style and strong personality’.

The surrounding programming team is also diverse and decentralised, with many external curators taking full control of some of the stages. Eris Drew and Octa Octa have famously curated the Forest Rave stage for the past 5 years and this year The Pit saw some fresh blood in the TraTraTrax coming all the way from Colombia to bring a globally diverse program. Portuguese DJ and agent, Carin Abdulá, was a key part of their (TraTraTrax) programming, stating that ‘the festival positioned itself as a bit of an authority in that [diversity of curation] sense, managing to value difference over sameness and within that of course, taking chances on artists and sonorities that often get overlooked by events of a similar size and in similar regions.’

DJ Caring goes on to say that ‘getting artists and collectives to tell their stories through curation just feels like a much more interesting way to make the most out of the ecosystem’ — a perspective mirrored by rRoxymore: ‘I think they are managing to keep relevant whilst not totally falling in this trap of booking things because it’s popular.’

The festival runs from midday to just past midnight, so the limitations on sound are minimal, with a very, very high quality all over the site (ear protection required). The festival even brought in the mighty dub rig Sinai Soundsystem all the way from Sheffield for the Aura stage, curated by Batu. The daytime setting, as healthy as it is, does however detract from the time spent in the darkness together with the world-class lighting installations.

In recent years the festival has been undergoing a struggle for permanence of its forest site, with some apparent internal wrangling between local and regional governments smearing the organisation’s work within the nature-based environment. After the 2025 edition the festival hosted a petition to keep the site, which was successful — but in the midst of the turbulence, they decided to renew almost all of the stage designs for the 2026 edition, and the results were really, really phenomenal.

Now, as a journalist and digital arts festival curator, I’ve been to countless festivals and venues that claim to have innovative lighting design, but truly there were a few installations at Draaimolen which really took me back.

The laser show in Eris Drew & Octa Octa’s ‘forest rave’ stage is one of the best I’ve ever seen, with the lighting team shooting 16 lasers through a dense, smoky forest, the light ricocheting around tens of thousands of low-lying leaves onto a spellbound audience. The main stage also hosted a new giant reflective steel wave sculpture — the 120m² panel rotated between showing the audience backlit forest and shining moving, smoky beams into the crowd. It’s a breathtaking piece of visual art and also a remarkable piece of engineering, with tens of winches all programmed to move the colossal panel in ways that captivate the audience. The incredible backdrop hosted local legend Job Jobse as well as the secret Friday night closing headline act — Bicep.

Safe to say the festival is not only one of the densest world class electronic music programs in Europe right now, it’s also breaking ground as a digital arts & light installation festival. 

Festival Vibe, Organisation & Future Prospects 

The vibe around the place is very local, with the crew being amazingly friendly – I didn’t catch one overblown ego from any of the team or a single frown from the bar staff.. This community seems solid and in it for the long haul.

The future of the festival is certainly more optimistic than it was last year, with the site secured for another 2 years after this one, but the crew are naturally concerned about what happens next. ‘It’s very difficult to run a festival these days, not having too much [financial] loss, whilst still being relevant,’ rRoxymore tells me. Despite taking on the responsibility of maintaining the natural habitat of an otherwise dilapidated site year-round, they’re still not being granted any longevity, and it affects the capabilities of the event hugely — as she puts it: ‘I hope they either stay in the same place or find somewhere else as good for them.’