VELD 2025 Cements Toronto as Premier Canadian Summer Destination for Dance Music

Toronto’s Downsview Park stood among tall amongst the giants of North America’s dance music circuit last weekend as VELD returned with a festival engineered for peak summer intensity.

Over three cloudless days, the festival welcomed tens of thousands to a city-sized celebration of electronic dance music, where towering LED stages, a glowing Ferris wheel,and nightly drone shows transformed the Toronto skyline into a gleaming extension of the sound.

For its 2025 edition, VELD leaned further into production scale. The Main Stage served as the festival’s visual anchor, drawing fans for marquee performances from Alesso, deadmau5 and more. The Bass Stage, in contrast, delivered chest-rattling sonics to a devoted headbanger crowd. And Sirkus, draped in a mix of circus whimsy and techno grit, offered a sanctuary for those drawn to the sounds of the underground.

Opening day set the tone early. Canadian duo Loud Luxury took the Main Stage with the confidence of a homecoming, leaning into euphoria before pulling off one of the weekend’s first standout moments by bringing out Natalie Jane for a surprise debut of new collaborative material. Earlier in the afternoon, the surging TWINSICK duo delivered a similarly buoyant, genre-spanning set that primed the early crowd with carefree charm.

The Bass Stage belonged to heavyweights like Sullivan King, who again proved himself as one of the few artists capable of blending metal and dubstep with guitar work that supercharged his set. It was one of several performances over the weekend to remind audiences that electronic music, at its best, can offer rhythm and spectacle in equal measure.

Saturday brought with it a different kind of weight as Dom Dolla, still in the afterglow of a record-breaking Perry’s Stage performance at Lollapalooza two days before, brought an equally commanding presence to VELD.

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A post shared by Layton Giordani (@laytongiordani)

Over at Sirkus, Layton Giordani, a member of the EDM.com Class of 2025, performed a b2b set with techno legend Green Velvet. Together, they threaded dark, atmospheric builds with percussive fury. Giordani’s smash electronic hit “Act of God” became one of the weekend’s sleeper anthems, resurfacing later in John Summit’s Sunday night set and proving its resonance across stages.

That level of interconnectedness was emblematic of VELD’s 2025’s curation, each stage telling its own story, but with a shared pulse. On Sunday night, the weekend reached its inevitable high-stakes closing set with Summit and Excision appearing in opposing time slots. 

As the final acts took their respective stages, VELD offered a layer of theatricality as a fleet of drones lit the sky above Downsview Park and The Ferris wheel glowed on the festival’s edge, giving fans a panoramic view of what the weekend had become. With eye-popping production and a vision that feels increasingly immersive, the festival continues to grow as a destination on the global summer calendar.

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X: x.com/VELDFest
Instagram: instagram.com/veldmusicfestival
TikTok: tiktok.com/@veldmusicfestival
Facebook: facebook.com/VELDMusicFestival

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