NEOPOP Becomes ANTIPOP for 2026: The 20th-Anniversary Line-Up
For its 20th anniversary NEOPOP reverts to its original name, ANTIPOP, with Ben Klock b2b Rodhad, Helena Hauff and a surprise Laurent Garnier closing set, 6-8 August 2026 in Viana do Castelo.
For its twentieth birthday, Portugal’s most uncompromising techno festival is refusing to act its age. NEOPOP will spend the anniversary weekend answering to its original name, ANTIPOP, the title it carried at its very first edition before two decades of growth in Viana do Castelo. The rebrand is not a gimmick. It is a statement of intent from a festival that has always positioned itself, in founder Gustavo Pereira’s words, as “the counterculture of counterculture”.
The 2026 line-up reads like a survey of everything that has kept the festival relevant. The headline moment belongs to a pairing techno heads have wanted for years, Ben Klock b2b Rødhåd, two pillars of the Berlin sound sharing a single booth. Helena Hauff b2b IMOGEN promises a rawer, wire-in-the-blood counterweight, while Jeff Mills, Nina Kraviz, Richie Hawtin, Indira Paganotto, Joseph Capriati b2b Luke Slater and Octave One fill out a bill that spans techno’s founders and its present tense.
The surprise sits at the very end. Laurent Garnier has been announced as the guest of honour and will deliver the closing set, a fitting hand to lower the curtain on twenty years. The festival is also redrawing its own architecture: a transformed main stage and a new “Back Stage” area that lists artists alphabetically and rejects the usual VIP hierarchy, plus a historical exhibition tracing the ANTIPOP to NEOPOP arc.
It all unfolds across three nights, from 6 to 8 August 2026, inside the Forte de Santiago da Barra, a sixteenth-century sea fort on the Atlantic edge of Viana do Castelo. Festival passes start at 110 euros through the festival’s own channels.
Reverting to ANTIPOP for a single edition is a clever bit of memory work. It reminds a scene that now fills stadiums where this music actually came from, and it lets a mature festival behave, for one weekend, like the outsider it once was.
Read more in our NEOPOP festival guide, browse the full techno festivals calendar, or follow Laurent Garnier and Ben Klock across our coverage.
Sources: DJ Mag, Mixmag, Electronic Groove.
