XRDS 26: Last 400 Combi Tickets for Viaduct’s Queer‑Friendly Concrete Fantasy

XRDS is about to lock in its fifth edition, and the numbers are getting real: only 400 combi tickets remain for this year’s festival. When they’re gone, they’re gone. For Brussels’ queer and allied ravers who love long‑form sets, deep sound and open‑air club energy under an overpass, this is your summer playground waiting to happen.

XRDS 26: a day built, not rushed

XRDS has always been built on a simple idea: take time. Instead of stacking short sets and quick rushes, the festival lets the day unfold over hours, giving artists room to build narratives rather than just drop bangers. That philosophy sits right at the heart of Viaduct, one of XRDS’s most beloved spaces.

Since 2022, Viaduct has brought the club experience into open terrain, using red curtains, metal structures and circular design to carve a dancefloor right under a concrete curve. Over the years, with Stan Vrebos as its main architect, that space has grown more complex, welcoming bigger crowds while keeping attention on the now iconic overpass that arcs above the dancers. Last year, a last‑minute call turned Viaduct into a 360° stage; this year, XRDS builds on that with extra subs and speakers for a fuller sound, and Dreamplant adding an extra layer of lights for a more dynamic lightshow.

For queer and allied communities who know Brussels’ club history, Viaduct feels like a bridge between warehouse culture and open‑air tenderness: heavy systems, sharp programming, mixed crowds, under a piece of infrastructure that’s usually just passed through, not danced beneath.

Viaduct’s story: club energy under the bridge

Viaduct isn’t just a stage; it’s an ongoing story of how you can re‑imagine urban space. Born out of red drapes, steel and a circular layout, it set out to translate the intimacy of the club to an outdoor setting where you still feel held by the architecture around you. Over time, its design has been tweaked to keep that feeling even as the audience grew: more angles, more sightlines, more ways to feel inside the set rather than stuck at the edge.

The 360° pivot last year was more than a technical decision; it changed how dancers and DJs relate to each other, putting the booth at the centre and inviting the crowd to wrap around it. In 2026, pushing the sound and lights further means Viaduct will feel even more like a live organism: bass and colour moving along the curve of the overpass, bodies weaving in and out of visibility. For queer dancers used to navigating when and where it feels safe to take up space, that circular design matters. It signals an intention: this is a floor where being seen from different angles is part of the experience, not a risk to avoid.

Familiar faces, new stories

One of the threads running through XRDS 26 is simple: artists you know, heard differently. Seven names who have already played XRDS come back to Viaduct this year, each in another form – solo where it used to be back‑to‑back, new pairings where it used to be solo.

From back‑to‑back, to back alone

Ben Klock closes Viaduct alone this year. Last time, he was on that same stage b2b with MARRØN. His own story runs over two decades at Berghain in Berlin, where he still holds his residency, shaped by an early encounter with minimalism through Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians – patterns that barely change on the surface but shift slowly the longer you stay with them. He has pushed back against words like cold or relentless for his sound, insisting on warmth, on bass that lands with a warm belly rather than a hard edge. At XRDS, where days are built slowly, that approach is exactly on home ground.

Also playing solo this year is MARRØN. He made his debut on Viaduct at XRDS’s first edition, came back for a Fuse afterparty, and returned b2b with Ben Klock. Now he’s back alone on the floor that started it all. Viaduct has always been the festival’s most layered stage; MARRØN brings that same layering in sound: deep rhythms shaped by his African heritage, turned into fast, minimal, percussive techno. As co‑founder of Amsterdam’s Eerste Communie, he’s spent years refining that language, releasing it further through projects like Curated by MARRØN on Float Records.

Last year in pairs, this year alone

Donato Dozzy also takes Viaduct solo for the closing. Last year, he stood there as half of Voices From The Lake alongside Neel. He’s spoken about his tracks as music built to hold attention rather than demand it, avoiding sharp edges that snap listeners out of focus. It’s the same instinct that shaped his marathon closings in Berlin: sets that only work if the room trusts you enough to let you take your time, with gradual builds and deep polyrhythmic structures. That’s the position he’ll step into again here – a slow, focused descent where the floor can stay with him instead of being dragged.

Chlär returns to Viaduct not b2b, but on his own. At XRDS24, he shared the stage with Dax J, a booking that carried a personal story: about a decade earlier, as a teenager running illegal raves in Switzerland, he’d booked Dax J without imagining that he would later remix his work. Two years ago they stood together as equals; this year, Chlär gets his own arc. Years spent as a mastering engineer before fully shifting into production and DJing feed into his sound: hardgroove built around sound‑system‑driven weight, and co‑founding Primal Instinct with Alarico, with whom he also forms the duo Funk Assault.

Familiar faces, new combinations

Beyond these solo shifts, XRDS 26 also brings new pairings to Viaduct – b2b sets where you might have previously seen the artists on their own. One announced duo is Philippa Pacho b2b D.Dan, a meeting of two distinct approaches to tension and release that should suit Viaduct’s circular, 360‑ish layout. For a queer audience that loves reading chemistry between DJs as much as between dancers, these re‑compositions matter: they tell new stories with familiar bodies and sounds.

What XRDS’s Viaduct offers queer and allied dancers

Even if XRDS isn’t branded as a “queer festival”, Viaduct’s concept speaks directly to LGBTQIA+ ravers and friends:

• Time and trust: long slots that let people ease into the floor instead of having to prove themselves in 30 minutes.
• Circular design: a layout that breaks the old front‑vs‑back hierarchy, making it easier to move, hide, show up, kiss, and find your people.
• Layered programming: artists who understand subtlety, repetition, warmth and tension – all the states queer bodies know well from navigating nights between joy and vigilance.

In a city where club closures, licensing stress and noise complaints shape a lot of nightlife decisions, XRDS and Viaduct propose another way: take the infrastructure that usually just carries cars, and turn it into a stage where diverse crowds can gather, sweat and breathe together. For Brussels’ queer communities, that kind of re‑imagined public space feels like both a party and a statement.

Practical info

• Festival: XRDS 26
• Stage: Viaduct
• Tickets: ~400 combi tickets left; once sold out, no more full‑festival passes
• Line‑up highlights (Viaduct): Ben Klock (solo), MARRØN (solo), Donato Dozzy (solo), Chlär (solo), Philippa Pacho b2b D.Dan, plus more returning and new names
• Location: XRDS festival site under/around an overpass (exact details via the festival’s channels)
• Tickets link: via official XRDS website (combi passes + day options)
• Access: outdoor setting, large open floor; check XRDS communications for detailed accessibility info (transport, surfaces, facilities)

If your idea of a perfect summer day is stepping under a bridge, letting the bass wrap around you and trusting a DJ to carry you for hours alongside a mixed, open crowd, Viaduct at XRDS 26 is the place to be while those last combi tickets still exist.

KET Magazine is a community‑driven, non‑profit magazine run by volunteers and based in Brussels. You can find our other music and nightlife stories on ket.brussels, and you can always write to us to share your projects or pitch a story: info@ket.brussels