Hunter in the Woods

The state of UK garage in 2026

Categories: Culture • Music

Garage was the first dance music I ever loved that felt like it belonged to a specific place. Not a club, a city. Those skippy two-step records with the pitched-up vocals and the MCs over the top were London in a way that house wasn’t, and when the first wave died around 2003 I assumed that was it. A moment, not a genre. Then around 2019 it came back, and by 2024 everybody was calling it a revival, and now in 2026 I wanted to ask the question properly: has the new wave actually taken over from the originals, or are DJ EZ and Todd Edwards and MJ Cole still the ones holding the flag?

Same method as the rest of this series. AI agents sent out to read the charts, labels, bookings and press, told to use nothing from memory, and then I argued with the results. The honesty notes for this one: Beatport, DJ Mag and Resident Advisor block automated readers, so a lot of the chart data came through Beatport’s own editorial and mirrors. Several key facts come from a single garage blog, and I’ve flagged those. And a track I was sure existed, a Sammy Virji and Skepta record called “Fast Car”, turns out not to exist anywhere. It’s “Cops & Robbers”. My memory is not a source.

Short answer: on every commercial measure, the new wave has taken over completely, and 2026 is the year it stopped being arguable. But the originals haven’t been pushed out so much as sorted into two separate economies, and the one that’s growing fastest isn’t in London at all. Long answer below.

The scoreboard

Beatport’s best-selling UK Garage and Bassline artists of 2025:

  1. Sammy Virji
  2. MPH
  3. Interplanetary Criminal
  4. Bushbaby
  5. Chris Lake
  6. Riordan
  7. Zero
  8. Luke Dean
  9. Gorgon City
  10. RoRo

Count the originals. Zero. Not DJ EZ, not MJ Cole, not Todd Edwards, not Artful Dodger, not anyone who made a record before 2010. Two of the ten, Chris Lake and Gorgon City, are house producers using garage as a vehicle. The rest are the new wave.

The tracks: MPH’s “Raw” was the best-selling garage record of 2025. “Damager” by Interplanetary Criminal and Sammy Virji was two. The top ten labels were headed by ATW, which Interplanetary Criminal co-runs, and then Capitol, which is a major, and Black Book, which is Chris Lake’s. No boutique label from the 2019 to 2023 phase, not Shall Not Fade, not Instinct, not Time Is Now, made the top ten.

DJ Mag’s Best of British awards in December 2025: Best DJ went to Interplanetary Criminal, Best Producer to Sammy Virji, Breakthrough DJ to Silva Bumpa, Breakthrough Producer to Sherelle. And in the live Beatport chart as I write this, the top ten is Silva Bumpa, Interplanetary Criminal four times, MPH twice, and a Groove Armada remix.

So that’s the number. Now the nuance.



The new wave

Sammy Virji

The scale story of the year. Same Day Cleaning on Capitol went top 25 in the UK and charted in Australia and New Zealand. “Cops & Robbers” with Skepta went silver. “Talk of the Town” with Fred again.. went top twenty and silver, and in New Zealand it went top three on the hot singles chart. “I Could Be Madonna” with Barry Can’t Swim is in the NZ top fifteen right now. Two sold-out nights at Alexandra Palace in April. Heaton Park with Calvin Harris. Cardiff Castle. Finsbury Park. Then America: Red Rocks in October as a headliner, with Oppidan and NZ-born 33 Below opening, then Petco Park, the Cow Palace, and Lollapalooza South America in March. In February he played the Sydney Opera House.

Todd Edwards, who invented half of this sound, told MusicRadar in September that “the Sammy Virgis and the Oppidans” are the next wave, and that he can hear Disclosure in their records. Virji himself told Billboard the scene is “still quite a niche thing” even in England, and that being called the face of it “could be quite daunting”. He is, whether he likes it or not.





Interplanetary Criminal

Beatport’s number three artist, Best DJ at DJ Mag’s awards, a Juno winner in Canada, and the co-owner of the number one label. In 2026 he did “Contact” with Gorgon City, headlined Warehouse Project’s Depot Mayfield, and his Memories EP on ATW in October put all three tracks in the top seven of the live chart within five days. He’s the producer’s producer of the new wave.



MPH

The best-selling garage record of 2025 with “Raw”, a bi-monthly Rinse show, a Four Tet and Nelly Furtado remix that circulated as an unnamed ID in Four Tet’s sets before it came out, and a Skrillex collaboration in the live top ten. No YouTube channel to speak of. Doesn’t need one.

Silva Bumpa

The crossover record of 2026. “On 2nite” went top ten on the UK singles chart in August, number two on the dance chart, and was TikTok’s third biggest UK song of the summer. He headlined the Roundhouse in October, his biggest show yet, and his Warehouse Project date in December sold out. TikTok’s own newsroom reported that garage posts were up 42 percent between February and July, and the number one UK song of the summer on the platform was Kyla’s “Do You Mind”, a 2008 UK funky record that re-entered the official chart eighteen years later.

KETTAMA, salute, Chris Lorenzo, Conducta

KETTAMA’s Archangel charted in the UK and went top ten in Ireland, and he was on Creamfields’ main stage. salute’s Infinite Passion mixtape came out on Atlantic with a summer that ran Hï Ibiza, UNVRS, DC10 and HARD Summer. Chris Lorenzo is on a monthly release schedule with Chris Lake, Chromeo and Jazzy, touring almost entirely in the US. And Conducta, who closed Kiwi Rekords in 2024 with the words “accomplished its mission”, is back as an artist on Nia Archives’ label and touring the US.





The next tier

Riordan, whose “909” with Danny P and “Lifting” with Silva Bumpa have been in the top thirty all year, did a Boiler Room London in September that’s past 280,000 views. Bakey’s Tribute was the first album on Warehouse Project’s own label. Main Phase put garage on Tempa, the dubstep institution. Oppidan is opening Red Rocks. Wigs, from South London, was Beatport’s emerging artist pick in August. The pipeline is deep.



The originals, and what they’re actually doing

This is where the research surprised me. I expected to find the first generation either retired or on the nostalgia circuit. I found both, and something more interesting.

DJ EZ

Still the institution. DJ Mag gave him an Outstanding Contribution award in 2025 and then, in August 2026, a “UKG Masterclass” from their HQ that’s done over 100,000 views in six weeks. He played for Skepta’s Más Tiempo in Ibiza this summer. And in November he’s doing “4BY4” at Electric Brixton, all night, with Todd Edwards, MJ Cole and Matt Jam Lamont, billed “old skool and new skool”, sold out. He doesn’t do Boiler Rooms any more. His last one was the 24-hour set in 2016, and he’s never needed to top it.



Todd Edwards

Three records of his own in 2026, on his own Bandcamp, which is the most direct answer to “are the originals still making music” you could ask for. A Homobloc set released as a mix. A Rinse live set from Gala. And that MusicRadar interview, which is the best quote in this entire post: “There needs to be a new genre called rehashed house because everyone is just taking old ideas. It’s all edits.” The godfather of the vocal chop, mildly annoyed at the kids for chopping vocals.



MJ Cole

The one original with new records that chart. “Still Sincere” with PinkPantheress, a rebuild of his 1998 classic for its 25th anniversary, was his biggest Beatport seller ever and in the 2026 best-so-far list. Then “Move Time” with John Glacier and “Talk To Us” with AK Paul. He’s on Sammy Virji’s album too. Twenty-eight years on, he’s the bridge.



The nostalgia circuit

Artful Dodger, So Solid Crew, Oxide & Neutrino, DJ Luck & MC Neat, Heartless Crew, Sunship, Sweet Female Attitude. All of them played Garage Nation’s concert at The O2 in April, a 37-act bill, and the outdoor festival at Morden Park in August. They’re already booked for 2027. Sidewinder, Garage Republic, Bournefest, Frequency: a whole summer of festivals with 1999 to 2002 lineups. It’s a big, healthy, nostalgic economy and it almost never shares a bill with the new wave. Craig David, the one original with a top-ten album this year (Commitment, number ten), is doing arena tours, but that’s a pop career, not a garage one.



The tracks, the short version

Ten to play, by how often they recurred across Beatport’s year-end, the 2026 best-so-far chart, Key Mag’s underground top 100 and the live chart.

  1. Sammy Virji & Interplanetary Criminal - Damager. Still in sets two years on.
  2. MPH - Raw. Beatport’s number one of 2025.
  3. Silva Bumpa - On 2nite. UK top ten, the crossover of 2026.
  4. Sammy Virji x Skepta - Cops & Robbers. Silver.
  5. PinkPantheress - Illegal. The pop end of the revival, Grammy-nominated, Mercury-shortlisted mixtape.
  6. MJ Cole & PinkPantheress - Still Sincere. The original and the new wave on one record.
  7. Gorgon City & Interplanetary Criminal - Contact.
  8. Riordan & Danny P - 909.
  9. Interplanetary Criminal - Memories EP. Three tracks in the live top seven.
  10. Prozak - Losing You. Key Mag’s number one of 2025, the organ-house underground counterweight to everything above.










And a note on the sound. The Producer School did a breakdown in May that matches what my ears were telling me: the originals ran at 130 to 135, the new wave runs at 135 to 138, speed garage at 138 to 142, with reese bass, tech-house kicks and festival drops. Splice reported speed garage sample use up 625 percent in 2025, the second-biggest subgenre revival on the platform behind Afro house. Garage got faster and harder, and the originals noticed.

What’s moving it forward

The touring economy moved out of London. Red Rocks, Petco Park, the Cow Palace, EDC Las Vegas and Mexico, Lollapalooza South America, the Sydney Opera House, a Juno for Interplanetary Criminal. Boiler Room’s garage strand in 2025 and 2026 was filmed in Denver, Montréal, Sheffield, Bristol, Sydney, Brisbane and Rotterdam. The growth venues are not Drumsheds or Printworks.

The TikTok-Splice-Beatport loop. A speed garage record goes viral in fifteen seconds, the samples get bought, the tracks get made, Beatport sells them. That’s why the 2025 chart is bassline-weighted and why Beatport’s own words were “another explosive year”.

Institutional legitimacy. EZ’s award and masterclass. PinkPantheress as Brit Producer of the Year, the first woman to win it. DJ Spoony’s orchestral garage at the Eventim Apollo after sold-out Royal Albert Halls. Major label money, with Capitol as Beatport’s number two garage label.

AI rules that favour humans. Bandcamp banned AI music in January. Beatport banned fully AI tracks in August and tags the assisted ones. For a genre built on chopped vocals and sampled basslines that matters more than for most.

What’s dragging it

The split. A nostalgia circuit and a festival-EDM circuit that rarely share a lineup. The scene has bifurcated rather than peaked, but bifurcated is still a kind of hollow.

The independent infrastructure thinned. Kiwi Rekords closed. No boutique label in Beatport’s top ten. Garage Nation’s Ibiza residency was cancelled and its domain lapsed. Printworks is still shut past its “returning in 2026” promise. Kiss has no garage show at all. EZ’s Nuvolve Radio ended at episode 200.

It’s being relabelled as house. Hï Ibiza describes Skepta’s Más Tiempo residency as “contemporary house”. Riordan’s Boiler Room is billed “tech-house and garage”. Shall Not Fade’s front page is house. The top end of the scene is being absorbed into the thing it was always the alternative to, and Todd Edwards’ “rehashed house” line is the originals noticing.

Aotearoa

Here’s the frustrating bit. The NZ charts prove the audience exists: “Talk of the Town” went top three here, “Cops & Robbers” top ten, “I Could Be Madonna” top fifteen, and 33 Below, a Kiwi now living in London, has a record with Virji on the hot chart and a DJ Mag HQ session in September. Virji’s own tour diary for this year is titled “AUS & NZ 2026”.

And yet I couldn’t find a single NZ date for him in 2026. The last one I can document is Club Festivus at Black Barn in December 2024. Interplanetary Criminal did Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney and skipped us. Conducta did Brisbane and Melbourne and skipped us. The summer’s garage-adjacent bookings are Hamdi at Hidden Valley on the 27th and whatever Rhythm & Vines’ Waiohika warm-up turns out to be. Northern Bass is jungle and DnB. I couldn’t find a named UKG club night anywhere in the country.

Australia got the Opera House, Riverstage, Hordern Pavilion, Boiler Rooms in two cities, Rinse FM’s Summer Dance in Sydney, and Skepta and Nia Archives at Beyond The Valley. We got the streams. Somebody book the tour.



So, who’s got the flag?

Here’s where I landed, and it’s less of a split decision than the other genres.

On the charts, Beatport, and at the big-room box office, the new wave took over somewhere around 2024 and 2025, and 2026 is the year it stopped being arguable. Zero originals in Beatport’s top ten. The UK singles chart entries belong to Virji, Silva Bumpa, Prospa and Cloonee, KETTAMA and PinkPantheress. The biggest rooms, Ally Pally, Heaton Park, Red Rocks, Roundhouse, Creamfields’ main stage, are new-wave headline shows.

But the originals have been re-sorted, not pushed out. One economy is the nostalgia circuit, where Artful Dodger and So Solid headline every bill and are booked through 2027. The other is a credibility economy where a handful of originals are genuinely active alongside the new guard: EZ’s sold-out 4BY4, Todd Edwards’ three 2026 records, MJ Cole’s PinkPantheress single. Virji is the arena act. EZ is the institution.

And the honest nuance is that the lineage skipped a generation. Todd Edwards doesn’t credit the 1999 crew as the parents of the 2026 sound. He credits Disclosure. The new wave is garage filtered through a decade of house, running faster and harder, and the people who invented it are both proud and slightly irritated.

The number one DJ in the genre is Sammy Virji. The number one producer, by Beatport, is MPH. The name every source called the future was Virji, and he’s spending that future in American amphitheatres. The old timers are still at number one on the heritage bill. Everywhere else, the kids have the flag, and they’ve taken it a long way from Ayia Napa.

A note on the data: Beatport, DJ Mag and Resident Advisor block automated readers, so chart positions came from Beatport’s own year-end editorial, the 2026 best-so-far chart via a mirror, and a live Spotify mirror of the Beatport top 100. A few release dates and venue claims rest on a single garage blog and are phrased accordingly. Chart positions were correct in the second week of October 2026. Every embed was checked when I published; if one disappears, search the title.

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