Desert Hearts books five acts a day. Most festivals book twenty
Twenty-six acts, five days, and nowhere else to run to. The least crowded lineup on our calendar between now and the end of October.
Lost Lands opens in nine days with 210 acts across three days. That works out to seventy sets a day. III Points, in October, runs 212 names across two, which is a hundred and six a day and the most crowded schedule in our whole catalog.
At festivals like those, the schedule is the hard part. Everybody who has been to one has stood in a field doing arithmetic and then walked away from a set they paid to see.
Desert Hearts Microfest books about five acts a day.
Twenty-six acts, five days
Our catalog lists 29 names on the bill. Three of those are the Toy Tonics duo counted twice over — the pair are listed together and then again under their own names — so the real bill is 26 acts across five days in the Deloro Valley, 1 to 5 October. Call it five a day.
Take the catalog's raw 29 and it is 5.8 a day. On that number it is the thinnest schedule of the 40 festivals in our catalog starting in the next seven weeks, and third-thinnest of all 79 bills we hold with 20 or more names. Only two are thinner: Wonderfruit in Thailand and Fairyland in Puerto Vallarta, 85 and 183 days out. The middle of our catalog sits at 20.5 acts a day.
Acts a day, festivals in our catalog with 20 or more names
Small is not the same thing as unhurried, and it is worth saying so before this reads as a compliment we handed out for free. Supremacy in the Netherlands, 17 days out, books 21 acts — fewer than Desert Hearts — and puts all of them on in a single day. That is 21 a day. The five days are what make the difference here, not the size of the bill.
Almost nobody on it is working the circuit
Nineteen of the 26 play no other festival anywhere in our 147-festival catalog this season. Mikey Lion, Marbs, Stacey Pullen, Doc Martin and DJ Minx each have exactly one upcoming date on their artist page, and it is this one.
The seven who do play elsewhere are not exactly grinding either. Justin Martin and Lee Reynolds have two dates each. Danny Daze, Techno Tupac and DJ Holographic have three. Between them, all 26 names touch just eight other bills in the entire catalog.
Three of the five people our records list as founding the Desert Hearts collective — Mikey Lion, Marbs and Lee Reynolds — are on the bill themselves. This is closer to a house party than a booking.
What it costs
None of the ten artists on our Most Booked board are playing. There is no name here that a casual ticket-buyer will recognise from a poster, and the bill is the 61st largest of the 79 we hold. If what you want from a festival is a headliner you have been waiting years to see, this is the wrong one, and no arrangement of our numbers makes it the right one.
We also do not hold stage counts or set times for it, so nobody can tell you yet that there are no clashes. What we can tell you is that five acts a day leaves very little room for one.
The same five days, elsewhere
Twelve other festivals in our catalog run over 1 to 5 October. Between them they put 450 acts on stage, including Wakaan with 62 names, Symmetry with 81 and Submersion with 63.
Desert Hearts shares none of them. Not one name in 450.
If you go, you can plan to see the whole lineup, which is not a plan you can make at most of the festivals on our calendar. Follow a few of the 26 in the app and you will know soon enough whether that is the trade you want.
Tickets
Ticket links below are affiliate links.
Desert Hearts sells direct from its own site, so we have no ticket link for it, and neither Wakaan, Symmetry nor Submersion is in our feed either.
- Lost Lands — tickets via Front Gate
- III Points — tickets via Front Gate
Every count here comes from the lineups in our own catalog on 9 September 2026, matched on artist name without regard to capitalisation. Fifteen of the 26 acts were checked a second way against their own artist pages, and every one of the fifteen reported the same number of upcoming dates we had counted.
Electric State is free on the App Store, on Google Play, and at electricstate.app — lineups, set times and the boards this post is computed from.
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