Who Is NOVAH? The Rising Hard Techno Star Behind Tomorrowland 2026’s Avicii Tribute
NOVAH, the Belgian hard techno DJ, turned her Tomorrowland 2026 Mainstage debut into an Avicii tribute. Inside the rise of one of the hottest female DJs in the genre.
When NOVAH stepped onto the Tomorrowland Mainstage in Boom on Friday 17 July 2026, she ended a set of relentless hard techno with a CIRCO edit of Avicii’s ‘Levels’, a moment the Belgian producer had chased since she first fell for dance music as a teenager. Four years on from her debut SoundCloud mix, the Antwerp DJ has become one of the hottest female DJs in hard techno, and her first Tomorrowland Mainstage appearance felt less like an arrival than a coronation.
From an Antwerp bedroom to the biggest stage in dance
NOVAH’s story starts in February 2022, when she posted a first techno mix online and played her live debut at a warehouse weekender in Berlin. A defining night at Belgium’s Voltage Festival, where she felt the intensity and unity of hard techno for the first time, convinced her to commit fully. Inspired by compatriots Charlotte de Witte and Amelie Lens, the 24-year-old built a sound that fuses acid, trance and hard techno into something engineered for festival peaks.
The turning point was ‘Papi’, her collaboration with CERES on Tomorrowland Music. The single detonated into a global anthem, gathering millions of streams and pushing her onto ever bigger stages. She played 168 shows across 2025, from The Gathering at Tomorrowland to Boiler Room x Teletech in London, then closed the year with ‘ACID’, another Tomorrowland Music release that confirmed her place among hard techno’s fastest-rising names.
‘Papi’ remains the record that defines her climb, and it was the emotional heart of the Mainstage set:
A tribute years in the making
Her Mainstage set stitched together rave history and her own catalogue: an unreleased flip of Benny Benassi’s ‘Satisfaction’, a CIRCO edit of Rihanna’s ‘Where Have You Been’, and her Tomorrowland Music single ‘Rave Never Ends’. The close came with Avicii’s ‘Levels’, which NOVAH called a long-held dream, arriving fifteen years after Avicii’s own legendary Mainstage debut and in the very edition Tomorrowland honoured him with a dedicated tribute experience.
Closing a Mainstage set with Avicii’s music had been a personal goal since NOVAH was young, a nod to the artist who first drew her towards dance music.
Techno Airlines view: NOVAH’s ascent shows how fast the hard techno wave is reshaping festival main stages. A four-year climb from a bedroom mix to a Mainstage Avicii tribute is rare, and it points to a generation of women driving the genre’s loudest, fastest edge.
Related on Techno Airlines: NOVAH unleashes ‘ACID’ on Tomorrowland Music | More hard techno coverage | Techno festivals guide
Sources: We Rave You, DJane Mag, Resident Advisor.
