ADE launches an AI assistant with EY to steer 600,000 visitors through its 30th edition
Amsterdam Dance Event and EY launched the ADE Assistant on 30 September 2026. Available on the ADE website and app, the AI tool recommends events based on a visitor's preferred energy, favourite artists, time, location and taste for niche or mainstream nights. It is the first result of a three-year partnership and covers nearly 1,300 events at ADE from 21 to 25 October.
Amsterdam Dance Event has launched an AI-powered ADE Assistant to help visitors find their way through its 30th edition. The tool is the first concrete result of a new three-year strategic partnership between ADE and EY, which brings expertise in technology, AI and service design, and it has been live on the ADE website and app since 30 September.
The idea is simple. Instead of scrolling through the full programme, visitors tell the assistant what kind of energy or atmosphere they want, which artists they like, practical limits such as time and location, and whether they lean towards niche or more mainstream events. The assistant then recommends programme items to match, including events a visitor might not have found on their own. EY says it researched different visitor types, how they make choices and where they get stuck, and used those insights to design and test the app.
The scale explains why ADE wants help here. The jubilee edition runs from 21 to 25 October with close to 1,300 events across the city, and ADE expects around 600,000 visitors plus more than 10,000 professionals from about 150 countries. ADE itself does not book those lineups: it acts as the umbrella for events run by more than 200 clubs, venues and promoters. For a first-time visitor, the programme is close to impossible to read in full.
For the industry, this is a useful signal about where discovery is heading at large festivals. When a recommendation engine sits between the programme and the audience, the way an event is described starts to matter as much as the poster. Genre tags, mood words, venue and time slot are the inputs a tool like this can work with, and vague or copy-pasted event descriptions give it very little to go on.
If you are an artist, label or promoter with a show at ADE this year, check how your event reads on the official programme now. Make sure the lineup is complete, the sound is described in plain words a fan would actually type, and the start and end times are right. Then push your own audience to save the event on their ADE profile. An AI assistant can surface a well-described night to the right stranger, but it cannot fix a listing that never says what the night sounds like.