A Frequency Beyond Time: Sónar Istanbul 2025

Not every festival is designed to pulse through a city’s memory. But as Sónar Istanbul prepares to mark its ninth year, it does so not with a look back—but with a forward gaze sharpened by sound. From 9 to 10 May, the festival returns to Zorlu PSM, reaffirming its place as one of the most sophisticated gatherings of electronic music and digital culture in the region.

This year’s program is ambitious. The kind of ambitious that pairs Jamie xx with The Chemical Brothers on the same night. The kind that brings Richie Hawtin’s modular techno experimentations to a crowd ready to be reconfigured by rhythm. The kind that doesn’t just stack a lineup, but curates a cultural moment.

Born in Barcelona, Sónar has always been about more than just music. In Istanbul, it’s become a hybrid platform where live performance, visual storytelling, and critical discourse exist in tandem. Across its nine editions at Zorlu PSM, Sónar Istanbul has welcomed nearly 200 artists, reaching over 50,000 attendees—not with spectacle, but with vision.

The 2025 program continues this path. Jamie xx will perform in Turkey for the first time, bringing his signature blend of minimal melancholy and global pulse. The Chemical Brothers—who practically wrote the book on arena-scale dance euphoria—return with a DJ set that promises both nostalgia and disruption. Richie Hawtin arrives with DEX EFX X0X, a live act that feels more like algorithmic architecture than traditional performance.

While the international names are magnetic, Sónar Istanbul thrives on equilibrium. Local acts like BASHKKA, Venus Exotica, Serenay Alkan, and Evrim de Evrim b2b Ece Özel don’t just fill the schedule—they define its edge. These are the artists building Turkey’s contemporary sound culture in real time, shaping its future one BPM at a time.

Global innovators like ¥ØU$UK€ ¥UK1MAT$U, Marie Davidson, and Modeselektor’s DJ set inject even more velocity into the weekend. Meanwhile, the ambient counterpoints—Grand River & Abul Mogard’s transcendental live set, Jersey’s textural performances—offer meditative reprieve.

Sónar is as much about digital imagination as it is about basslines. Under the +D banner, this year’s festival includes a 24-meter SonarScreen that transforms into a living canvas for digital art. Installations by Marshmallow Laser Feast and open call works create tactile experiences where code meets emotion. Panels, labs, and workshops activate another register: thinking as performance.

In Istanbul, electronic music has evolved from a subcultural impulse into a language of cultural critique. Audiences are listening not just for the drop—but for the decisions behind it. Sónar Istanbul has become a mirror to this shift, reflecting a scene that is less interested in genre and more attuned to intentionality.

As Levent Dokuzer, Deputy General Manager of Zorlu PSM, puts it: “Sónar Istanbul takes club culture and refines it. It turns music into a space for feeling—and thinking.”

There are festivals that follow a formula. Then there’s Sónar Istanbul—where audio becomes architecture, and where every set is a signal.