Hunter in the Woods

The state of progressive house in 2026

I’ve been a progressive house guy for as long as I’ve been a DJ. Northern Exposure was the record that did it, and twenty-something years later I still reach for a long, patient, building set before anything else. So this year, with everyone banging on about melodic techno and Afro house, I wanted to answer a question that’s been nagging me: is progressive house still the same old timers at number one, or is there finally a new generation taking the flag?

Same approach as the greatest mixes post: I set a swarm of AI agents loose on the internet with a brief, and then I argued with the results. This time the brief was narrower and harder. I wanted the now, not the history, which means Beatport charts, DJ Mag polls, label release schedules, tour dates, radio show tracklists and whatever the press has bothered to write. All of it from 2025 and 2026, nothing from memory.

Two honesty notes before we start. Beatport and 1001Tracklists block bots, so a chunk of the chart data came through mirrors and search snippets rather than the live pages, and some positions will have shifted by the time you read this. And DJ Mag’s Top 100 DJs poll, the one everyone quotes, is useless for this genre: not a single progressive house DJ is in it in 2025 or 2026. Not Sasha, not Digweed, not Cattaneo, not Guy J. Nora En Pure is the closest thing at number 73, and she’s falling. So I’ve leaned on Beatport, who actually sell the records these DJs play, and on who’s selling out which rooms.

Short answer, if you’d rather skip to the end: the number ones belong to the newcomers, the rooms and the labels still belong to the old guard, and the handover is happening from the download charts upward rather than from the top down. Long answer below, with a lot of tunes to play while you read.

The scoreboard

Beatport published their own progressive house year-in-review for 2025 and opened it with the phrase “a massive return”. Here’s their top ten best-selling artists for the year:

  1. Ezequiel Arias
  2. Guy J
  3. Gai Barone
  4. Kamilo Sanclemente
  5. Quivver
  6. Sébastien Léger
  7. Hernan Cattaneo
  8. Redspace
  9. Cary Crank
  10. Michael A

Read that again. The number one progressive house artist of 2025 is a guy from Córdoba, Argentina who most people outside the scene have never heard of. Number four is from Cali, Colombia. The top-selling label was Mango Alley, not Anjunadeep (second) or Bedrock (third). Cattaneo, the man who more or less built the South American scene, is seventh, behind two of the people he championed.

The tracks tell the same story with a twist. Number one was Arias’ “Perfect Dream”. Number two was “Dead Synthy”, which is Sasha with Marsh. Number three was Guy J. Then a Guy J remix at four, then the crossover stuff (John Summit remixing deadmau5 and Kaskade, Eric Prydz with Empire Of The Sun), then Léger twice, Yotto, and Guy J again at ten.

So half the top ten artists have been around since the late nineties or early 2000s, and half have broken through in the last five years. But the top spot, in artist, track and label, went to the new wave. That’s the first time I can remember that being true.



Mid-2026, Beatport’s “best of the year so far” chart had Gorge at one, Guy J at two, Quivver at three and Marsh with Ferry Corsten at four. And as I write this, the live chart’s top three are Simon Vuarambon, Simon Vuarambon again (his rework of Josh Wink’s “Metro”), and Emi Galvan. Both Argentine-based. Guy J, Quivver and a Guy J remix of Budakid fill out the top ten.

The old guard, and what they actually did this year

The temptation when you ask “is it still the same old timers?” is to assume the answer is yes and roll your eyes. The evidence is more interesting than that. The veterans aren’t dominating the charts. They’re doing something else.

Sasha and John Digweed

They’ve basically stopped competing on singles and gone all in on the thing nobody else can do: the long set in the big room. In March, Digweed played the Twilo reunion in New York with Danny Tenaglia, both nights sold out the moment they went on sale, and he turned his five hours into a four-CD live album. The signed CD and vinyl packs sold out in ten days. In July he and Sasha played six hours at Tofte Manor, their longest back-to-back in two decades. December’s open-to-close at the Roundhouse is sold out. And for the thirtieth anniversary of the record that started me off, Northern Exposure got a remaster with a third disc of new ambient and dub reworks, including a Darren Emerson take on “Dark & Long”.



Sasha’s own 2025 was “Dead Synthy” with Marsh, the second-biggest-selling prog track of the year, which started life as a back-to-back at Anjunadeep Miami in 2024. This year he’s been releasing on Last Night On Earth (his “Hollow Sun” EP was the label’s 200th release and the vinyl is gone). Here’s the pair of them in Mexico City two weeks ago:



Transitions, Digweed’s weekly show, hit episode 1154 last week. It’s been running since the 1990s. His year-end “Best of 2025” show is worth three hours of your time if you want the Bedrock view of the year:



Hernan Cattaneo

Still the godfather of the whole South American thing. His Sunsetstrip party in Buenos Aires sold out in under twelve hours in 2025 with around forty thousand expected, then got rained off and moved to May. Resident, his weekly radio show, passed episode 800 in September. He’s playing six hours back-to-back with Nick Warren at ADE next week, he’s got a third year of residency at Las Dalias in Ibiza, and he’s written a book. In the studio he’s been prolific, with a run of 2026 collaborations including this one with Marc Romboy that sat in the Beatport top 100 all winter:



What I find more telling than any of that is what he plays. I had the agents parse the tracklists of every Resident episode from 2025 and 2026, about ninety shows. He almost never repeats a track (only five tracks got played twice in all of 2025). The most-played artist in both years is Gai Barone, and below him it’s almost entirely newer Argentine, Latin and Balkan producers: Gorkiz, Hobin Rude, Maze 28, Juan Deminicis, Tiefstone, HAFT, Tom Pavicich, Cruz Vittor. The old guy is the A&R department for the new guys. That’s the whole dynamic of the scene in one tracklist.

Guy J

If you want one name that’s everywhere in 2025 and 2026, it’s Guy J. He closed his label Lost & Found in 2023, “ending at the peak” as he put it, and then went and had his best commercial year anyway: Beatport’s number two artist of 2025 with three tracks in the top ten, four tracks in the top 100 at once in July 2026, the most-supported producer in Sasha and Digweed’s sets, a Global Underground mix (GU48, Córdoba, which tells you where the centre of gravity is), and the remix on the current chart’s hype number one. He’s the bridge between the generations: old enough to have been on Bedrock with Digweed in the 2000s, young enough that the Argentines treat him as one of theirs.





Anjunadeep’s James Grant and Jody Wisternoff

Anjunadeep 16, mixed by Grant and Wisternoff, came out in February. Their set at the sold-out Anjunadeep Open Air at the Old Royal Naval College in August was the one the reviewers called the set of the summer. More on the Anjuna machine below, because it’s probably the single biggest thing happening to the genre.



Lane 8 and Ben Böhmer

Both live in a different ecosystem from the Beatport crowd. Lane 8 doesn’t show up in any progressive chart, but his label This Never Happened turned ten this year with a tour through London, four Colorado shows and ADE, his album Cross Pollination II came out in June, and he premiered his four-hour Fall 2026 mixtape to a cinema full of people in San Francisco with their phones locked away. His audience is tickets and streams, not downloads.



Böhmer is quieter. One single at the end of 2025, no album since Bloom in 2024, but a run of Lollapaloozas and US amphitheatres. He’s playing the festival game, not the scene game.

The rest of the elders

Nick Warren has a new album, Only I Know What You Said, out on The Soundgarden a few weeks ago, and a remix of its title track by Emi Galvan is currently number three on Beatport. Eelke Kleijn released his fifth album Connected in 2025 and openly moved towards indie dance with it. Cristoph put out his debut album Life Through A Different Lens in April 2025, eighteen tracks sequenced like an open-to-close set. Jeremy Olander finally released a debut album too, When The Rain Falls on Vivrant in March. And Dave Seaman, who was mixing Renaissance compilations when I was at school, is releasing his first ever artist album, Mirrorball Sleaze, this year. There’s something lovely about a generation that spent thirty years making other people’s records sound good deciding, all at once, to make albums.



The newcomers

Here’s who’s actually taking the flag, ranked by how strong the evidence is rather than how much I like them.

Ezequiel Arias

The clearest case, and the name that came up more than any other when the agents went looking for “the future of progressive house”. Beatport’s top-selling artist and top-selling track of 2025. Two more Beatport number ones in 2026 (“Psychodelia” and “Sin Control”). A six-track project on Anjunadeep in August, an EP with Durante in April, a sold-out debut vinyl pressing in February. A seven-hour solo set at Palacio Alsina in Buenos Aires in May. Lollapalooza Argentina. Anjunadeep Explorations. Back-to-back with Durante at the Gorge for ABGT700. And he runs his own label, Melorama, which is pushing the next tier below him (FJL, COQUEIT, Kebin van Reeken). Cattaneo has championed him for years. Here he is back-to-back with Marsh at Open Air London in August, which is as neat a picture of the two sides of modern prog, the Argentine hypnotic strand and the Anjuna melodic strand, as you’ll find:



Simon Vuarambon

Geneva-born, Argentina-raised, releasing on Sudbeat since 2014, so “newcomer” is a stretch, but 2026 is the year he peaked. Digweed hand-picked him to open every Bedrock showcase on the 2025 Australian tour and a three-hour warm-up for seven thousand people in Rosario. His “Grey Area”, half of a split twelve-inch with Josh Wink on Bedrock, released last week with the vinyl limited to 325 copies, is number one on Beatport as I type. One of the “Guy J school”, as somebody put it, which is exactly right.



Emi Galvan

Signed to Sudbeat by Cattaneo back in 2017. Two consecutive Beatport number ones, a sold-out show at The Bow in Buenos Aires, an Anjunadeep 16 appearance with Durante, a month-long European tour including Balance Festival in Croatia, and currently number three on the chart with that Nick Warren remix. This is his sold-out Buenos Aires set:



Kamilo Sanclemente

The Colombian in the top five. Beatport’s fourth-best-selling prog artist of 2025, above Quivver, Léger and Cattaneo, on the back of releases across Anjunadeep, The Soundgarden, Movement and Sudbeat. 2026 has been singles and remixes rather than a big statement, but Cattaneo and Nick Warren have both backed him for years.



Marsh

Not a newcomer, but the mid-career flag-bearer of the melodic side. His tracks with Sasha (number two of 2025) and Ferry Corsten (number four of 2026 so far) are the two biggest cross-generational handshakes of the last two years. His remix of Above & Beyond’s “Sun In Your Eyes” topped the chart in May and was still in the top 100 a year after release, which is a very long time in Beatport years.



Durante and Budakid

Both mid-career Anjunadeep alumni having their “arrival” year. Durante’s EP with Arias put three tracks in the top 100 simultaneously and he’s now ranked above Cattaneo on the twelve-month Beatport artist table. Budakid dropped his debut album Dreams Stretched Beyond on his own Flores label in July, and Guy J’s remix of “Lovin’ Sun” sat at number one on the hype chart through September.





Honourable mentions, and a caveat

Gorge took number one on Beatport’s mid-year list with “Veamos”, though he’s been around since the 2000s. Miro’s “Paradise” got a Quivver remix that everybody played. HAFT, Maze 28, Hobin Rude, Kasper Koman and Spencer Brown fill out the charts underneath. Mölly, from California, is the fastest-rising streaming act with twenty-five million Spotify plays in two years and a debut album on Colorize in August, but she and everybody else describe what she does as melodic house, and she doesn’t appear on the progressive charts. Which brings me to the caveat: a lot of the “new progressive” is really the Anjuna/Colorize melodic strand, and a lot of the “old progressive” is the deeper hypnotic strand. The Argentines are the ones keeping the second thing alive, and they’re the ones selling the most records.



The tracks of the year, the short version

If you only play ten things from this post, play these. They’re the ones that kept recurring across the Beatport year-end list, the mid-year list, Digweed’s and Cattaneo’s shows and the Sasha and Digweed set tracklists.

  1. Ezequiel Arias - Perfect Dream (Anjunadeep). Beatport’s number one of 2025. Embedded up top.
  2. Sasha x Marsh - Dead Synthy (Anjunadeep). Number two of 2025.
  3. Guy J - Stranger In A Strange World (Bedrock). Number three of 2025.
  4. Guy J - Worlds Apart (Early Morning). Number ten of 2025 and still charting a year later. The most-played track in Sasha and Digweed sets.
  5. Sébastien Léger & Lost Miracle - Mistily (Lost Miracle). Number six of 2025.
  6. Gorge - Veamos (8bit). Number one of 2026 so far.
  7. Quivver - Keep On Runnin’ (Bedrock). Number three of 2026 so far.
  8. Marsh & Ferry Corsten - Attraction (Anjunadeep). Number four of 2026 so far, debuted to eleven thousand people at Open Air London.
  9. Miro - Paradise (Quivver Remix) (UV).
  10. Simon Vuarambon - Grey Area (Bedrock). The current number one.










And the albums worth a full listen: Cristoph’s Life Through A Different Lens, Eelke Kleijn’s Connected, Nils Hoffmann’s Everlight, Tinlicker’s Dreams of the Machine, Jeremy Olander’s When The Rain Falls, Lane 8’s Cross Pollination II, Digweed’s Live at Twilo, the Northern Exposure Redux, and Mariano Mellino’s Contacto on Audioholics, which has Henry Saiz on it and is out in two days.



What’s actually moving the scene forward

Four things, in order of how much evidence there is.

The Anjunadeep machine. This is the big one. Anjunadeep is now a top-three label in two Beatport genres at once (progressive, and melodic house and techno, where it sits behind Afterlife), a festival (Explorations in Albania), a touring series (Open Air in London, the Gorge, India, South Africa, and in November and December the first Australian dates in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth), a first Ibiza residency, and, crucially, a YouTube broadcaster. They upload full 2026 sets within weeks of the show. Almost every embed in this post from a 2026 event is on their channel. Nobody from the Sudbeat or Bedrock era does that, and it means that for anyone under thirty, the discovery surface for this entire genre is basically Anjuna-owned. Boiler Room, HÖR and Cercle’s channel put out essentially zero progressive house in 2025 or 2026. Here’s Marsh at Open Air Bay Area in July:



The heritage brands found a format that pays. Long sets and limited physical editions. Twilo’s five hours as a four-CD box. Tofte Manor’s six hours. The Roundhouse open-to-close. Cattaneo and Warren’s six hours at ADE. Global Underground’s thirtieth birthday with a triple-vinyl THIRTY compilation, a ninety-five pound collector’s box, a Deep Dish GU49 and Spencer Brown on Nubreed 13. Balance Croatia’s second edition with Sasha, Cattaneo, Guy J, Digweed and Nick Warren on one bill. Explorations launched as a hand-stamped white label. Lane 8 premiering a mixtape in a cinema with phones locked up. The deep, hypnotic end of the genre has worked out that its fans will pay for time and objects, and it’s building a business on that rather than on streams.

The South American pipeline. Beatport’s number one and number four artists of 2025 came up through Sudbeat and The Soundgarden. Cattaneo’s Sunsetstrip is now a multi-city Argentine institution (Buenos Aires in April, Mendoza in December). The Mar del Plata summer booked Nick Warren, Sasha and Digweed and Guy J in consecutive weeks in January. Arias’ label is signing the tier below him. This is a functioning farm system, which is more than most genres can say.



Platform tailwinds. Beatport kept Progressive House as a first-class genre through all its taxonomy reshuffles, called 2025 a “massive return”, and in August 2026 banned fully AI-generated tracks at ingestion. Bandcamp banned AI music outright in January. For a genre whose entire product is an eight-minute human-arranged build, those are the right rules. And the Afterlife melodic techno boom seems to be leaking listeners towards progressive names rather than away: Yotto’s Afterlife collaboration “Love Parade” was the fourth most-played track by DJs on 1001Tracklists in 2025, the only prog-rooted name in that top twenty.

And what’s dragging it

The name. In 2026 the mainstream press ran a “progressive house revival” story, and it was about HALŌ (DubVision, Third Party, Matisse & Sadko) on the Ultra main stage, and Garrix and Alesso. That’s the 2012 big-room lineage, not Digweed’s. Same two words, different music, and it pollutes every search, playlist and algorithm the real thing depends on. Afro house, tech house and melodic techno own the overall sales tables; prog only tops its own chart. Lost & Found is gone, Printworks is still dark. And there isn’t a single serious critical essay on the state of the genre from Resident Advisor, Mixmag or DJ Mag in two years. The scene is thriving commercially without anybody in the critical press noticing, which is either a tragedy or the best possible place for a scene to be, depending on your mood.

Closer to home, for the Kiwis: Wellington has Solid State at Double Vision in Miramar, which bills itself as the capital’s first dedicated progressive house night and is up to its third edition. Auckland has Progressive Experience on K Road in November. Anjunadeep Open Air is in Sydney on the 28th of November. Nobody from the Sudbeat end of the scene has an NZ date that I could find, which is a hint to a promoter somewhere.

So, who’s got the flag?

Here’s where I landed.

On the charts, the newcomers have it. Beatport’s number one artist, track and label of 2025 were all new-wave. The top three of the live chart right now are Argentine-based. Durante and HAFT rank above Cattaneo on the twelve-month table. Only Guy J from the established tier is still at the very top, and he’s the bridge rather than the old guard.

On the rooms, the old guard has it. Twilo, Tofte, the Roundhouse, Sunsetstrip, Balance, ADE. The newcomers’ biggest headline shows are regional (Buenos Aires, Lollapalooza Argentina) or sub-headline on Anjuna bills. Nobody from the new tier has yet sold forty thousand tickets in twelve hours.

On the labels, the old guard still owns the infrastructure the kids release on. Bedrock, Sudbeat, The Soundgarden, Last Night On Earth, Anjunadeep, DAYS like NIGHTS, Vivrant, Selador. Vuarambon’s number one is on Digweed’s label. Arias’ biggest records are on Anjunadeep. Galvan was signed by Cattaneo. The elders have become the gatekeepers and the A&R, and they’re doing it well.

So it’s not the same old timers at number one. It genuinely isn’t. But it’s not a coup either. It’s a succession, happening the way successions should: the previous generation opened the doors, kept the standards, and then started playing the records of the people who walked through. If Cattaneo’s radio show is any guide, that’s exactly how he wants it.

Now go and buy something on Bandcamp. It’s Bandcamp Friday on the 6th of November.

A note on the data: Beatport and 1001Tracklists block automated requests, so chart positions came from Beatport’s own editorial, third-party chart mirrors and search snippets, and the “live” positions were correct in the second week of October 2026. Stream counts weren’t gathered at all, so if your argument is “Lane 8 has more Spotify listeners than the whole Sudbeat roster”, you’re probably right and this post doesn’t contradict you. Every embed was checked when I published; if one goes, search the title and there’s usually another copy.

Made with since 2015