This weekend! Auckland Domain! Open-air party for 35,000 people! The strongest electronic music on earth!

Comprehensive report from New Zealand Chinese Herald In the Auckland Domain on the edge of downtown Auckland, a small music city is rising in preparation for the largest single-day music festival in Oceania.

More than 35,000 fans are expected to flock to the park’s lawns this Saturday for the fourth annual Manuka Phuel Synthony Festival. Event promoters promise that this will be the largest production to date. David Higgins, founder of Duco Events, said he is a bit like a real estate developer. Once he builds a gorgeous building, he wants to build a bigger, flashier building the next year.

He revealed that in 2026 people will see Synthony’s largest ever production investment. This includes a stunning giant LED screen, laser beams, top-of-the-line sound equipment, four delay towers and the largest stage they have ever built. Starting at around 3pm, the main stage and second stage DJ stage will welcome a series of top musicians and big-name guests, including local musicians Kaylee Bell, The Exponents, Nice ‘n’ Urlich, Shapeshifter and The Black Seeds.

Peking Duk, an electronic music group from Australia, will take the main stage at 6:40 p.m., while the much-anticipated finale performance of Synthony will start at 7:40 p.m. Higgins promises there will be surprises.

He said that they have doubled the content creation budget and will have a world-class performance accompanied by music, which is a special program that no one has ever seen. The cost of this alone is in the millions of dollars. This content will then be used globally.

Synthony is a global music event originated in Auckland. Its core concept is to perfectly integrate energetic electronic dance music (EDM) with a profound symphony orchestra. The event breaks the boundaries of traditional music genres, rearranging and performing live the most iconic club anthems of the past three decades with a full symphony orchestra, complemented by top DJs, live singers and musicians.

After successfully launching into 12 European locations in 2025, Synthony will be present in approximately 40 to 50 locations around the world this year. These include 26 to 30 European cities such as Frankfurt, Berlin, Munich, Zurich, Geneva, Vienna, Paris, Amsterdam, Prague, Warsaw, Barcelona, Madrid, Rome and Milan, among others.

As the birthplace of Synthony, Auckland will have a new track list, new arrangements and a new visual laser light show this year, and then the new program will be used in subsequent global tours. Therefore, this weekend’s Synthony Music Festival is an audio-visual feast that combines the rigor of symphony with the carnival feel of electronic music.