Summer is finally here! This means festival season and the best time to enjoy the music in the beautiful sunny weather. One of the most iconic summer festivals is Electric Zoo in buzzing New York City, and this year is better than ever! Electric Zoo is making a return the Labor Day Weekend on August 30th to September 1st at Randall’s Island Park in New York City. 

Get ready to evolve with this year’s theme which is Electric Zoo: Evolved. This festival has seen some major changes in the past decade with some of the biggest names of EDM making appearances throughout the years. This festival keeps getting bigger and better! 

This year features some of the craziest DJ headliners and stage takeovers. 

There are so many amazing headliners this year! You definitely don’t want to miss Above & Beyond, Armin Van Buuren, Diplo, Dog Blood, Excision, Kaskade’s sunset set, NGHTMRE b2b Slander. There are so many great supports as well that you need to check out including i_o, Boogie T b2b SQUNTO, Mitis, Riot Ten, Solardo and Yotto. I’d say this year has such a wide array of different styles: you can go from heavy bass and headbanging to shuffling and dancing from stage to stage!

Electric Zoo has upped their game with the stage hosts they have this year. Every year, they bring amazing branded stages to the smaller stages at EZoo, and this year definitely does not disappoint: All My Friends (AMF), Brownies & Lemonade, Gud Vibrations by NGHTMRE and Slander, Ophelia by Seven Lions, and Pryda Arena. I can easily see myself camping at one or all of these stages for the entire weekend! Every one of these stages will feature many different DJs under that label, so it’s a great opportunity to explore similar artists of your favorite label, as well as discover new DJs that you haven’t seen before.

Another one of my favorite aspects of Electric Zoo is the stage designs and production throughout the entire festival. Some of the years the stage was created to be a giant, lit up animal. The first year I went, it was an elephant and seeing the stage light up in sync with the music and drops were some of my favorite moments of EZoo. With this year’s theme of evolution, who knows what they’ll bring to the main stage this year: it might be a completely different mainstage! 

One of my favorite aspects of EZoo is also the venue! New York City is such an amazing city with so much life and things to do. Although the highlight of that weekend is always EZoo, I usually plan a few days outside the festival to explore the city. It is super convenient to get to the venue by subway or bus and then you can shuttle across the Robert F. Kennedy bridge right to the venue. Tons of people also walk the bridge, which is my favorite mode of getting to the festival! It’s an amazing walk across the river and there’s always so much excitement and fun when walking with a bunch of other ravers.

There are also tons of decorations and art installations at the festival where you can take some Instagram-able photos! I love how the whole festival has a zoo theme to it. Tons of ravers go all out with their outfits and costumes, but it’s simple to come up with an outfit for this festival; you can never go wrong with animal print. Check out animal print outfits that iHeartRaves has to offer!

This is a festival you can’t miss! With all of the best DJs, amazing stage production, and great vibes, it is a great festival to end the summer with. Tickets are still available here. You can also check out all the info on their site to get more information about the venue, travel, lineup and more. See you in the Zoo!