Five DJs to Watch at Barcelona’s MOSTRA Festival 2026

Barcelona’s independent avant-garde festival returns for its fifth edition this March. These are the artists worth planning your schedule around.

If you have not been to Mostra before, the short version is this: it is a small festival that takes electronic music seriously, does not try to be everything to everyone, and is better for it. Now in its fifth year, it started as a response to the direction Barcelona’s larger events had been heading, and it has quietly built a reputation as one of the more thoughtful festivals on the European calendar for anyone interested in the experimental end of the spectrum.

The 2026 edition runs from 12 to 15 March across two venues. Casa Montjuïc sits in the Poble-sec neighbourhood behind Avenida Paral·lel and includes LAUT, one of the city’s better clubs for this kind of music. The Vall d’Hebron Olympic Pavilion up in Horta-Guinardó is a bigger space, originally built for the 1992 Games, which gives the weekend a bit of range in terms of atmosphere and scale. Both are worth your time.

The line-up this year is solid across the board. Surgeon is playing, as is Steve Bicknell, upsammy, and Substance and Vainqueur. There is a strong local and regional presence too, which has always been part of what Mostra is trying to do. Tickets are still available via Resident Advisor. If you are making the trip, check out our Barcelona with Mostra Festival guide for everything you need to know about getting around, where to eat, and what to do outside the festival itself.

Below are five artists picked by our team

Angel Molina

Molina has been DJing in Barcelona since 1991 and remains one of the most consistent figures in Spanish electronic music. He is the resident DJ at Sónar Festival and runs 30D Records, where he also manages the sub-label Eyes Have It, which focuses on darker industrial techno.

His sets move across styles rather than staying fixed to one tempo or sound. The appeal is in the unpredictability and the craft behind it. Seeing him play in his home city, at a festival that has grown out of the scene he has long been part of, gives this particular booking a bit more context than a standard headline slot.

Marylou

Marylou is a French DJ and sound artist based in Berlin. Her sets draw from dub, noise, footwork, breakcore and improvised jazz, and she has a background in visual arts and cinema that shapes how she builds a set narratively.

She has appeared at Atonal, Terraforma, CTM, Freerotation and Berghain, and was selected for the SHAPE+ platform’s 2024-2025 roster. She is part of the Wheel of Fortune collective with rRoxymore, CCL and Nono Gigsta, and has hosted shows on Rinse FM, NTS and Refuge Worldwide. Her programming is considered and she takes her time. Worth arriving early for.

Timnah

Swiss DJ Timnah Sommerfeldt grew up in her parents’ jazz clubs in Basel and started DJing around 2000, initially exploring drum and bass, trip hop and jungle before settling into her current approach: slower, more immersive selections that sit somewhere between ambient techno and half-time rhythms.

She is a member of Amenthia Recordings and the A Walking Contradiction collective, both based in Basel, and co-hosts the monthly radio show Home with Amenthia’s Garcon. Her sets tend to pull inward rather than push outward, which makes her an interesting fit within a festival programme that has space for both.

Al Blayney

Dublin-based Al Blayney founded Appian Sounds in 2012 and Space Shepherd Vinyl, and has spent the years since building both labels around a straightforward principle: releasing music he believes in without much noise around it.

His DJ sets reflect the same approach. He works across dub techno, ambient, minimal and electronica, and hosts the monthly Space Shepherd show on Dublin Digital Radio. He is not a DJ who courts attention, which is probably why the attention he has earned over the years feels well-placed. His Appian catalogue, featuring releases from artists including Eduardo De La Calle, has a consistent quality that speaks for itself.

Patrick Russell

Patrick Russell is from Detroit and now lives in New York, where he is a resident DJ at The Bunker. He was closely involved in the No Way Back parties associated with Detroit’s Interdimensional Transmissions, and has played at Berghain, Japan’s Labyrinth festival and Unsound, among others.

His sets are long-form and structured around acid, IDM and jack music, built slowly and with a clear sense of where they are heading. He has a production and remix catalogue to back up his reputation behind the decks. He is an artist who benefits from a room and a crowd willing to give him the time he needs, and Mostra is the kind of festival likely to offer exactly that.

Mostra Festival runs 12-15 March 2026 at Casa Montjuïc and Vall d’Hebron Olympic Pavilion, Barcelona. Tickets via Resident Advisor at ra.co. See our Barcelona with Mostra Festival guide for travel and venue information.

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