Taking place over four days at The Garden Resort in Tisno, Balance Croatia returned for its second year, and if year one set the bar, year two came in and raised it. I made the trip with my wife and a small crew of friends this time, and walking onto site on Thursday, the energy was already a level up from last year: more people, more anticipation, and a lineup that reads like a love letter to progressive’s most trusted names.
The Garden has clearly been listening. A few of the beach areas have had a proper upgrade this year, with extra seating and, crucially, more shade. That mattered more than usual, because Europe is in the grip of a heatwave that has been as relentless as it has been long, and it showed no signs of easing across the whole weekend of events. For the early doors crowd making the pilgrimage down to the beach stages before the sun had any mercy, those shaded corners were less a nice-to-have and more a lifeline.
For this coverage, I will only be commenting on the sets I managed to attend. There were many clashes on my selected artist schedule. I had to make some very difficult choices and still clocked up tens of miles in steps every day trying to see them all!
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Thursday: the pier, the beach, and a masterclass at Barbarella’s
Day one belonged to the early birds. The Pier was heaving from midday, with Hungarian heroes Matthew Sona and Peter Makto kicking things off before Nick Varon and Hicky & Kalo carried the afternoon through. As the evening set in, the Beach took over with sets from Simply City and the legend Danny Tenaglia, whose name alone tells you what kind of night was in store, while over on the Olive Grove, Marko Felinger, DJ Ruby and Lemon kept a deeper thread running until later into the evening.
By midnight, the crowd had shuffled its way over to Barbarella’s for the Bedrock afterparty, and what followed was a clinic in the art of the warm-up and the peak-time journey. Danny Howells opened with a set that did exactly what a warm-up should: patient, deep, and building without ever rushing. He handed over to John Digweed, who took the room on a proper journey through progressive sounds, the kind of set that reminds you why Digweed’s name still carries the weight it does after all these years. It was the perfect way to close out day one, and it left no doubt that this year’s edition was going to be something special again.
Friday: let the full experience commence
Friday brought its own kind of buzz before a single record had dropped. Balance dropped a surprise on the group chat: at 5pm, Hernán Cattáneo and Graziano Raffa would be holding a meet and greet at the on-site restaurant, giving fans a rare chance to say hello, grab a photo, and pick up a signed souvenir with the Sudbeat crew. In a scene where the artists are usually up on a stage and out of reach, that kind of access is what separates a festival that genuinely cares about its patrons from one just ticking boxes. This sense of community could be found throughout the festival with artists melding with the punters into the crowd for a lot of their fellow compatriots’ sets.
With four stages running well into the night, plus the boat parties out on the water, Friday was less a single event and more several nights happening at once. My night was spent mostly at the Soundgarden takeover at the Beach, where Maze 28 opened the must-hear run at 5pm before Jody Wisternoff took over at 7, then Nick Warren steered the 9pm slot into the kind of rolling, melodic groove he has built a career on, before Sasha absolutely smashed it from midnight to 3am. Over on the Olive Grove, Ezequiel Arias and Marsh kept a deeper, later thread running, while over in The Yard, Guy Mantzur and Guy J took the baton from 1am through to sunrise.
Sasha’s Beach set turned into one of the standout moments of the whole weekend. Closing it with an unreleased remix of William Orbit’s “Water From a Vine Leaf”, a moment that landed with extra weight given the news that same day of Orbit’s passing, a foundational influence on progressive house and on Sasha in particular. It was a beautiful, poignant moment, tinged with grief, and easily one of the ones still being talked about days later. Guy J’s sunrise slot on The Yard carried the crowd home, an early morning set that felt like a rocket into Saturday.
Saturday: the takeovers
If Thursday was the intro and Friday was a warmup, Saturday was the main event. The Yard and the Boats were both handed over to Sudbeat for the day, and the label made good on Friday’s meet and greet in style. Hyunji-A opened The Yard through the early evening before Graziano Raffa took over from 8, and Jamie Stevens closed out a sublime run from 10 before Hernán Cattáneo took the stage at midnight and showed everyone exactly what time it was, a set fans on site nicknamed Argentina O’Clock. Patrice Bäumel closed The Yard out from 3am with what was a lesson in patience and curation built around a near half-hour disco interlude in the final hour, before closing with Holden and Thompson’s classic track Nothing. It was intimacy delivered at scale, and hard to argue with.
The rest of the site matched that energy stage for stage. Over on the Beach, Henry Saiz recreated another must-hear set at 9pm, handing over to Jeremy Olander at 11, before Petar Dundov took it home from 3 to 5am. On the Olive Grove, Breakbeat royalty Adam Freeland built the room from midnight before James Zabiela took the 2am slot and brought the groove exactly where it needed to go, a set that on paper alone was worth the whole weekend. It is hard to overstate how stacked that run of names is for anyone who has followed progressive over the last two decades, and here it was spread across four stages running at once, all on a single night.
Sunday: the long goodbye
By Sunday, four days of heat and very little sleep had caught up with most of the crowd, but nobody was leaving early with a lineup like this still to come. The Yard turned into Skyline for the day and the Boat trips split between Selador and Mango Alley, while GMJ & Matter opened proceedings on The Yard, a set that deserves its own mention as one of the highlights dropping a cheeky Depeche Mode remix that I’m still hunting for, before Alex O’Rion and Mariano Mellino kept the stage building through the evening ahead of the closing run.
The Beach carried the night’s must-see stretch: Tim Green from 9 to 11pm, then Lost Miracle, the Sébastien Léger and Roy Rosenfeld project, taking an extended four-hour slot through to 3am, before Lee Burridge closed the stage out until 6am. Over on the Olive Grove, Kasey Taylor and Gai Barone delivered a genuinely exceptional back-to-back from 10pm, another standout set of the whole weekend, before D-Nox and John 00 Fleming carried the Grove through to sunrise. Over on The Yard, Anthony Pappa and Dave Seaman went back to back from midnight, two names who between them have been shaping this sound since long before some of the crowd were born, before Joris Voorn took the stage home from 3 to 5am with a wild journey through multiple BPM drops and rises and various house and trance classics. It brought four days on site to a close the way they deserved to be closed: with a run of sets built for the sunrise and for a crowd that had given everything to get there.
Monday: one more for the road
Balance added something new to the calendar this year: a closing afterparty on the Monday at the off site Balance Hotel. After four days on the main site, decamping to the hotel for one final session felt like exactly the right way to let the weekend down gently rather than all at once. Meanwhile and Vapour Recordings took care of the music, and the lineup did not treat it as an afterthought: Eichenbaum, Forty Cats, EMPHI, Kasey Taylor, GMJ & Matter, Jamie Stevens and Alex O’Rion all played, several of them squeezing in a second appearance of the weekend. It was the perfect coda, low-key by Balance standards but no less special for it, and if this year is anything to go by, it will not be a one-off.
Making space for new talent
It’s also worth pausing on the Terrace, the stage that ran quietly through Friday, Saturday and Sunday while the headline names filled the Beach and the Yard. Lloyd Barwood, Carina Lawrence and Kabi opened Friday’s run, Andrologic, Elliot Moriarty, Matthew Sona and Aubrey Fry b2b Nick Stoynoff carried Saturday, and Karl Pilbrow, Eichenbaum and Tonaco closed things out on Sunday. None of them are the names that sell you a ticket, not yet anyway, and that is rather the point. Balance has always understood that a scene only stays healthy if festivals are willing to hand a real stage, a real crowd and a real time slot to the next generation, rather than tucking new talent away somewhere nobody bothers to visit. Plenty of the producers now filling headline slots elsewhere got an early stepping stone on stages just like this one, and watching the Terrace pull a proper crowd most evenings, it is easy to imagine a few of this year’s names doing exactly the same before too long.
Closing thoughts
Two years in, Balance Croatia already belongs on the shortlist of essential dates for anyone serious about progressive. The heat this year was brutal, but between the shaded beach upgrades, a lineup that never dipped across four full days, and a level of artist access most festivals would never dream of offering, it barely mattered. Thursday’s Barbarellas closer alone would have justified the trip. Add a stacked Friday, one of the deepest single-day lineups of the summer on Saturday, a Sunday closing run of absolute legends of the scene, and now a Monday send-off at the hotel, and it is clear this is a festival building something that lasts.
But the music was only ever half of it. One of the biggest highlights of the whole trip was the people: catching up with faces from the community I had only ever spoken to online, and meeting plenty more for the first time. From sunset to sunrise, boat parties under the Croatian sun, dancing until the early hours, there were more laughs and new friendships made than I can properly do justice to here. My wife and friends felt it too, and we are already counting down to next year.
While the dust settles on year two, credit has to go to Tom Pandzic and the rest of the team. For the second year running they pulled together something magnificent that a lot of bigger festivals could learn from.
Balance Croatia, you were something special. We will be back.
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