LAS VEGAS — It’s here, and as always, we’re there.

Electric Daisy Carnival is back, and somehow the biggest electronic dance music festival in the country just keeps getting bigger as it envelops Las Vegas Motor Speedway in a cocoon of light, sound, flesh and fireworks from dusk till dawn this weekend.

This year, EDC expands to a record 16 stages, boasting over 250 performers soundtracking a full-on sensory overload.

It’s a lot to take in — and that is the only measure of understatement associated with this megalodon of fests.

So, where to begin? Right here, with this guide to all things EDC:

EDC’s biggest new addition

He’s coming to Electric Daisy Carnival for the first time, and he’s bringing the sound of a nation with him.

Valentino Barrioseta is talking about hearing Afro house music — that vibrant, pulsating blend of African rhythms and electronic dance music that makes it physically impossible to sit still — straight from the source in the early 2000s.

Formerly a party promoter and brand manager for renowned nightclub Amnesia in Ibiza, Spain, Barrioseta had grown disillusioned with the music industry and decided to travel a bit, eventually landing in Cape Town, South Africa.

“I was blown away by the music culture, especially in the townships,” he says of the racially segregated areas usually located on the outskirts of a city. “There was an incredible talent that was kind of getting through with no tools, no resources. I was really, really inspired by that.”

Barrioseta channeled that inspiration to found Bridges for Music, a South African nonprofit with a series of music schools for underprivileged students.

This year at EDC, the organization is curating a new stage dedicated to Afro house. Named Ubuntu, the stage was created with dubstep kingpin Skrillex.

Barrioseta has known Skrillex since his Ibiza days. In the early years of his nonprofit, he recruited him and other dance music prime movers such as Richie Hawtin to South Africa not only to perform, but also hold free workshops and connect with the locals.

“We were bringing the superstars and dropping them inside of a township for an open Q&A, and we saw all these cultures coming together, people from different races coming together, in many cases, for the first time,” Barrioseta says. “That was the beginning of Bridges for Music.”

With Skrillex’s help, Barrioseta connected with Insomniac founder Pasquale Rotella to pitch him on partnering with EDC. While Barrioseta intends for future Ubuntu lineups to feature more up-and-coming talents culled from Bridges for Music’s schools, he went big with this year’s performers, tapping the likes of Da Capo, DJ Lag, Uncle Waffles, Kasango and more than a dozen others.

“We have really invested in bringing the best African talent for this year one to launch the concept,” Barrioseta says. “Most of the artists are very established. We have curated the best African talent on the continent, from Nigeria to South Africa to Zambia to Ghana.”

The idea is to inspire the next generation of African talent.

“You can’t underestimate the impact that it has for young kids back in Nigeria, back in South Africa, back in all these countries where all these artists are coming from when they see their role models playing at the biggest dance music festival in the U.S.,” Barrioseta says. “It creates ripples of hope, ripples of dreams.”

EDC first-timers not to miss

Elsewhere on the EDC lineup, here are a handful of highly anticipated artists among the more than 100 first-time festival performers:

Marlon Hoffstadt: Rejoice, DJ Daddy Trance is upon us at long last.

Gesaffelstein: “Hard Dreams” come true from time to time as evidenced by this French DJ-producer’s EDC debut.

Bicep: The Irish house/techno duo delivers a much-anticipated Chroma AV set.

HorsegiirL: Yes, this high-energy German DJ actually wears a horse mask. Her barn, her rules.

Brutalismus 3000: This Berlin couple thoroughly overwhelms with its gabber-influenced techno. Wear a helmet.

Watch for the art cars

“Where are the techno fans?” Alison Wonderland wondered aloud from a mobile stage designed to look like a horned, half-ton mammal with wheels.

They were at the Rynobus on Sunday night of last year’s EDC, where she held court after having played the Kinetic Field the previous evening.

Wonderland was carrying on a festival tradition: At most every EDC, there’s a big name who performs in the relatively small confines of an art car. Past highlights include Illenium on the tree-festooned Forest House Art Car in 2021 and Kaskade at the Kalliope Art Car in 2017.

Who might it be this year?

Five acts we recommend

Mike Posner: The former popster who’s since taken a more electronic turn makes for an interesting EDC outlier.

Alison Wonderland b2b Kaskade: A rare pairing of these two EDM superstars.

Tiesto: The EDC mainstay will perform a special “In Search of Sunrise” set to close the fest, which he’s performed at every year since it relocated to Vegas in 2011.

Skepta: The British grime great teams up with fellow scene pioneer Jammer for a Mas Tiempo DJ set.

RL Grime: This trap heavyweight plays EDC for the first time since 2019.

About that traffic …

Everything about EDC is outsized: the stages, the sky-scraping art installations, the bar tabs at the Marquee Skydeck at the KineticField (who could forget the epic $167,764 bill that made the social media rounds in 2022, racked up by some seriously hard partiers in a single night?).

This goes for the gridlock as well. Part of the EDC journey is navigating some gnarly traffic jams.

If you’re en route to the speedway past 6 or 7 on any given night, prepare to spend hours bumper-to-bumper in a sea of cars that flows like an ocean of cement.

There’s an easy way to beat the rush, though, and we say it every year: Get there early.

The venue opens between 4 and 4:30 p.m. each day, and though EDC doesn’t officially get underway until 7 p.m., when the entirety of the festival grounds opens, the Cosmic Meadow stage is up and running for early birds to flock to by the thousands.

Prepare to explore

“Go see Tony over there in the silver pants if you’re interested in getting your free love.”

So said the lady in the sparkling dress, delivering perhaps our favorite quote at EDC 2024 as an unofficial marriage officiant delivering nonbinding wedding vows to partygoers in Downtown EDC.

In addition to those looking to get pretend-hitched to a buddy, there’s a little something for everybody in this spot of the festival grounds — even cowboys.

Dig the country-centric YeEDC Saloon, where the sounds of Nashville blare and the walls are lined with portraits of horses in daisy-adorned cowboy hats and signs that command visitors to “Seize the Daisy.”

While the music is ostensibly the main draw here, there’s a whole lot more to do than dance until you wear out the soles of your fuzzy boots.

At seemingly every turn, you’re confronted with increasingly difficult decisions: Should I get an airbrushed tattoo of a large cup of iced coffee at House of Dunkin’, or stroll amid the luminescent flora of the Daisy Fields, whose entrance is topped with six plumage-adorned dancers in bird cages?

There’s a state fair’s worth of carnival rides to queue up for, although, really, the bumper cars seem anticlimactic after all the inadvertent crashing into strangers you’ll do, which is just an unavoidable part of attempting to navigate the jam-packed EDC grounds that’ll teem with over 525,000 attendees this year.

©2025 Las Vegas Review-Journal. Visit reviewjournal.com.. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.