Back to the Forest: Day 1 evolution
Electric Forest, Double JJ Resort, Rothbury, Michigan • June 25, 2026
The road back home
For us, Electric Forest has never been a regular stop on the summer calendar. This year marked Devin’s fourth, and Hopes third in the forest.
Four years ago, this place became part of our marriage story. Not in the cute, throwaway “we love festivals” kind of way, either. We got married here. The Forest became chapel, witness, backdrop and weird little cosmic notary all at once. It meant enough that my dad found a job flipping burgers 14 hours a day just so he could make it to our wedding. That is the kind of thing that changes how a place lives in your memory.
Electric Forest became more than a festival wristband or a wild weekend. It became a place people worked, traveled, sacrificed and showed up for us. So when Intellectual Dissatisfaction sent my wife and me back this year to cover the festival together, it felt less like a media assignment and more like being asked to walk back into a memory while it was still alive and throwing lasers.
Day 1 started about as smooth as anyone can reasonably hope for when the plan involves driving overnight, navigating arrival, finding will call, grabbing wristbands, making camp and hoping nothing important was forgotten in a gas station parking lot three states back.
The 24-hour will call setup made the first step easy. We grabbed our media bands, eased through the car search and made our way toward the campgrounds with that first-day mix of exhaustion and disbelief sitting in the chest. Everyone we dealt with was in a genuinely good mood, which at a festival entrance is not a small thing. A pleasant gate crew can change the whole opening chapter.
Electric Forest deserves credit here. Media check-in was handled with care and clarity. Credentials were easy to grab, directions were clear and once we found the media hub inside the festival, it felt like there was always someone available when we needed a contact. Nobody acted like we were bothering them by asking questions. Nobody had that burned-out clipboard stare. The media team was polite, steady and easy to work with, which helps when you are trying to build coverage in the middle of a giant temporary city made of tents, bass, dust, hammocks, hydration packs and human beings moving in every possible direction.
By the time we landed at home base, the trip had already shifted from travel mode into Forest mode. The road noise was still buzzing in our ears, but the grounds had that familiar pull. It was the first breath after arrival, that little pause where you realize you are no longer trying to get somewhere. You have arrived.
Our inTENTion
Some people arrive with architectural confidence and build a shaded compound before breakfast. Some people throw a canopy into the wind and pray. We landed somewhere in the practical chaos zone, working as the dynamic duo we are and setting up what Devin has now dubbed our “inTENTion,” a play on “Inception,” because we had our tent inside a tent. It was ridiculous, useful and entirely us. A tent within a tent. A dream inside a dream. A marriage inside a media assignment inside a festival that already feels like it was designed by someone who read a fairy tale, lost the plot and made it better.
The setup looked a little bare at first, the way every festival camp does before it starts collecting personality. Chairs landed first. Bags found temporary corners. The canopy became walls, shade and a small claim of territory. Then the actual tent went inside it, and suddenly the joke became architecture. It was part weather protection, part privacy plan, part proof that tired people can still innovate when the alternative is sleeping in a field with no system.
That small camp joke became a good first metaphor for the weekend. Electric Forest is layered. There is always another room behind the room, another path behind the path, another reason the place has become personal to people who return year after year. You come in thinking you are here for the lineup, then the land starts handing you clues.
Once the tapestry went up, camp stopped feeling like a pile of gear and started feeling like home base. That is one of the small rituals of any festival: the moment a temporary shelter becomes yours. A blanket on a wall, a chair in the corner, a bag tucked under a table, a little shade carved out of a giant field. It does not need to be fancy. It just needs to become recognizable after a long walk back in the dark.
Hope’s favorite part of that first walk was not the stages. Not yet. It was noticing the flora and fauna around us. Electric Forest is obviously known for lights, art installations and the beautiful nonsense of Sherwood after dark, but during the day the land speaks in a quieter register. Near where we camped, we found carrots growing in the field. Actual carrots.
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The Forest starts feeding clues
The first day came with technical issues, because of course it did. Any festival coverage day without at least one equipment or logistics snag feels suspicious. The issue was a down shuttle which pushed us into making the journey on foot to the venue, which could have been frustrating. Instead, it became another accidental discovery route.
That walk is where we started noticing more of the edible landscape hiding around the edges: asparagus, rhubarb and those earlier carrots. For a festival so often described through spectacle, it was funny to have Day 1 begin with something so grounded. Before the big drops, before the lasers, before Excision turned Ranch Arena into a bass-powered pressure system, we were walking through plants and asking quiet questions about the soil.
This is where being married at Electric Forest changes the way you cover it. A first-time attendee might see those things as curiosities. We saw them as part of a place that already had a strange claim on us. Coming back four years later as press did not erase the personal history. It sharpened it. We were working, yes. We had material to gather and sets to catch. But we were also moving through a place that had already held one of the biggest days of our life.
The festival itself was waking up around us. Day 1 always has a special kind of charge. People are still clean enough to recognize themselves. Camp setups are still standing with optimism. Outfits are still intact. The weekend has not yet taken its tax. Everyone is moving with the bright confusion of arrival, trying to find stages, friends, water stations, bathrooms, shortcuts, landmarks and the version of themselves they packed for the weekend.
What made Thursday feel especially kind was the weather. The rare Forest day where the heat was not immediately trying to turn everybody into a cautionary tale changes the whole mood. People still looked ready for a long weekend, but not like they were already negotiating with the sun for custody of their soul. That gave the opening hours more room to breathe. The crowd had that first-night glow, moving through the grounds with compliments, totems, outfits, jokes and the occasional “Where’s Carl?” call floating through the air like part of the official soundtrack.
Local Spins another media team also had a team on the ground for opening day and did a great job capturing a wider view of Thursday, from the crowd movement and stage-hopping to the weather, Honeycomb, Tripolee and the first-night atmosphere. You can see their Day 1 coverage here.
Outside our own path, Thursday also carried a small thread worth noting. Another media team Bass n Babes published a preview spotlighting SHIMA, Oppidan, HerShe, Inji, Steller, Iniko and Sippy as artists to watch at Electric Forest 2026, with the outlet framing the list around queer, femme and underrepresented artists in the bass and electronic scene. SHIMA and HerShe landed on the Thursday schedule, both at The Observatory. SHIMA’s 8:00-8:45 p.m. set and HerShe’s 8:45-9:30 p.m. set gave that stage its own early-night draw, a reminder that Electric Forest’s best discoveries are not always waiting at the biggest fields or latest slots.
The 2026 lineup gave Thursday plenty to chase, and no two paths through opening night were going to look the same. Ranch Arena opened with EFFIN, rolled into Midnight Generation and then carried the late-night pull toward Excision’s 12:30 a.m. takeover. Sherwood Court had Eggy, Night Tapes, ALLEYCVT and Ganja White Night. Tripolee ran deep into the night with H&RRY, Close Friends Only, Jackie Hollander, Daniel Allan, Devault, Westend, D.O.D, Odd Mob and Eli Brown. The Observatory had its own odd little current with Dixon’s Violin, SHIMA, HerShe, JKYL & HYDE, ProbCause and the later all:Lo Collective block.
Time Travel Agency/Secret Room
Still, the best part of Electric Forest is that the schedule never tells the whole story.
While we were waiting on our scavenger passes at the Time Travel Agency, we were lucky enough to catch Levity playing an unscheduled set in the Forest. It was one of those moments that reminds you why people wander instead of marching from stage to stage with a rigid plan. Levity sounded great bouncing between the tree rows, loose and alive in a way that felt made for that exact pocket of the festival. Sometimes hearing music inside the Forest hits even better than hearing it at one of the big stages. The trees hold sound differently. They make it feel less like a performance being aimed at you and more like something you stumbled into at the right second.
This year things were made different by the hanger/dream emporium being completely gone and replaced by a maze. At the start of the festival i heard attendees talking about their worries of losing the dream emporium building. However by day 2 I didn’t hear anything else about those worries as the maze seemed to be a great change and hit to the crowd.
The first room we found felt like a mechanic shop for whatever part of your spirit gets worn down by arrival day. Instead of oil changes and tire rotations, the attendant was handing out moxie repairs with a massage gun, dressed like some futuristic pit-crew doctor who had been assigned to Sherwood Forest by mistake and decided to commit fully. Hope climbed onto the table for a quick tune up, and after an overnight drive, camp setup, gear hauling and the first real walk into the festival, it was exactly the kind of ridiculous relief that only Electric Forest could make feel completely normal. One minute you are chasing scavenger clues. The next, someone in orange is restoring your festival operating system one knot at a time.
The maze kept getting stranger in the best possible way. After the mechanic-style moxie repair, we found our way into Pearly’s Dentistry, where the whole bit was played perfectly, which only made it funnier.
There was a dentist chair, a full little set, attendants in character and the kind of commitment to nonsense that separates Electric Forest from festivals that only decorate their weirdness instead of performing it.
They cleaned your teeth, handed you a toothbrush to keep and sent you back into the Forest a little fresher than you arrived. It was absurd, oddly practical and somehow very on-brand. Only here can a scavenger hunt turn into light dental maintenance and still feel like part of the story.
The Luminaria story
Not every hidden corner of Electric Forest is built for a laugh. Some are there to make you stop moving for a minute.
One of the most quietly powerful spaces we came across told the story behind the Luminaria project. According to the sign inside the installation, the roots go back to Rothbury 2008, when a group of friends first found themselves changed by Sherwood Forest: the hammocks, the clustered trees, the visual art, the feeling that every turn opened into another piece of wonder. They left knowing they would come back.
One of them, Steve Fanning, never got that chance.
The story says Steve died after going back into a burning off-campus apartment to get the rest of his friends out. He was the last person out of the house, and he later succumbed to smoke inhalation. His friends remembered him as a hero, the “ultimate friend,” and someone whose spirit fit the Forest’s sense of community, connection and kindness.
When Rothbury 2009 came around, Steve’s mother, Margaret Fanning, reached out to the group. Steve had loved the Forest and talked about its magic, and she asked if some of his ashes could be spread there. His friends found a perfect place, gathered for one last goodbye and turned grief into something that could keep moving.
That is where the Luminaria project began.
The installation explains that the Luminarias became a way for people to keep souls alive in the Forest. Attendees are invited to create a Luminaria for someone who cannot make it to the Forest, someone they carry with them, someone they miss or someone they want remembered. Later, those bags light up Sherwood at night, turning private grief into a shared glow.
It hit differently standing there on Day 1. We had spent the afternoon chasing scavenger clues, laughing about our inTENTion and letting the Forest pull us toward its stranger corners. Then suddenly there was this reminder that the same place built for absurdity, bass and wonder also makes room for mourning. Electric Forest does not ask people to leave their real lives at the gate. It gives them a place to carry those lives differently.
Ranch Arena opens the night
Once the side quests had done their work, the night pointed us toward Ranch Arena.
There is a particular feeling when you approach that stage knowing a heavy hitter is coming later. The field holds anticipation differently. People move in and out during earlier sets, testing the night, calibrating their bodies, finding their people. Some are locked in from the jump. Some are conserving fuel. Some are already glowing in ways that have little to do with LEDs. Thursday at Ranch Arena felt like the festival stretching its limbs.
EFFIN started the evening’s Ranch run, and even if Day 1 logistics kept us from treating every set like a full critical sit-down, his placement helped open the night with weight. Midnight Generation brought a different pocket after that, with Local Spins describing the Mexico act’s Thursday appearance through its disco, funk and electronic blend. The schedule had Disco Lines listed for 9:45 p.m., but Local Spins reported that Disco Lines was under the weather and It’s Murph stepped in on short notice. That kind of swap could have left a hole in the night. Instead, it became another quiet example of the festival’s opening-day momentum, where the plan bends and the crowd keeps moving.
We were also lucky enough to catch part of EFFIN’s Ranch Arena set, which was high on our list from the jump. We have always enjoyed EFFIN, and our Editor-in-Chief does too, so we wanted to make sure we gave him some time. There was also a bigger reason to be there: EFFIN was not only making his Electric Forest debut, he was opening the festival’s main stage at Ranch Arena on Thursday. That is a serious slot to walk into, and he did not treat it like a warm-up.
Based in Nashville, EFFIN has built a following through inventive sampling, technical sound design, vintage-inspired aesthetics and the kind of internet-native creativity that gives his music personality without turning it into a gimmick. His Forest appearance landed in the middle of what has become the biggest year of his career, following standout performances at Bonnaroo, Okeechobee and GRIZTRONICS at The Gorge, plus a collaboration with GRiZ and support dates with Subtronics and Tape B. That context made sense once he was onstage. Electric Forest tends to bring out higher-end production from artists, the kind of polish that makes even an early slot feel like it has teeth, and EFFIN did not disappoint. He sounded as good as I have ever heard him this week, giving Ranch Arena a proper ignition point before the heavier late-night machinery rolled in.
Thursday’s Ranch schedule still had a smart shape to it, building from earlier motion into the kind of late-night pressure Excision requires.
We have been large Excision fans for years, with several Lost Lands trips in our past, so there was no treating this as a casual stop. Excision is not background music. His sets are built for impact, and at Electric Forest that impact lands in an especially interesting way. Forest has all this softness and mystery built into its identity, then Excision arrives and turns the air into machinery. The contrast works. The trees can hold tenderness and violence. The night can be beautiful and punishing in the same breath.
At Ranch Arena, the crowd tightened into that familiar pre-drop posture. Bodies angled forward. Phones rose. Conversations thinned. The stage became the center of the map.
The schedule had Disco Lines listed for 9:45 p.m. at Ranch Arena, but Local Spins reported that Disco Lines was under the weather and Nashville’s It’s Murph stepped in on short notice. Even when the plan bends, Electric Forest usually finds a way to keep the current moving.
You do not really “see everything” at this festival. You build a path, then accept the ghosts of the paths you did not take.
Then Excision took over.
Level passed
An Excision set is a physical event first and a musical one second, though the two are tangled too tightly to separate. The bass does not simply play. It arrives, occupies space and makes demands. You feel it in the ribs before your brain has time to name it.
For us, seeing Excision’s lasers cut across Electric Forest was a different kind of thrill than seeing that same force on the grounds of Lost Lands. We have spent years in that world too, where bass music feels like the whole kingdom. Forest is different. It has always pulled from more directions, more textures, more little pockets of sound and story. For a long time, it felt like people in this orbit were quietly choosing sides: Lost Lands or Electric Forest, full-send bass pilgrimage or genre-blending woodland myth. Watching Excision land early in the weekend at Ranch Arena felt like those borders softening a little.
It set a good tone for where these events seem to be heading. The Forest crowd wanted bass, and they made that clear fast. The lasers went up, the field answered and suddenly Excision did not feel like an outside force crashing the party. He felt like one more piece of the weekend’s evolution, proof that Electric Forest can still stretch without losing the strange, living pulse that makes it Electric Forest in the first place.
The people who helped us get back
Coverage like this does not happen by magic, even at a festival that seems built out of it. The drive, the gear, the camp setup, the long days, the late nights and the miles between South Dakota and Rothbury all take real support behind the scenes. This trip was possible because people and businesses believed in what we were trying to document: not only the stages, but the stories moving through the Forest.
A huge thank you goes out to our Electric Forest coverage sponsors: Herb N’ Legend, The Dakota Scout, Iron Trakks Media, RaveRunner, Total Drag and Common Sense. Each one helped make it possible for Intellectual Dissatisfaction to return to Electric Forest with enough stubborn curiosity to chase the weekend properly. Their support let us come back to a place that already meant something deeply personal to us and cover it with the care it deserved.
That support means more than a logo on a graphic. It means being able to tell the story from the ground, from the camp roads, from the hidden rooms, from the late-night crowds and from the little dirt-level details most people walk past on their way to the next stage.
Afterglow
Day 1 had already taken us through several versions of the festival. The practical Forest, with will call, credentials, car searches and camp setup. The domestic Forest, where two married people build a tent inside a tent and call it inTENTion. The agricultural Forest, where carrots and asparagus start whispering about the land’s past. The playful Forest, where time travelers send you into strange rooms and someone fixes your moxie with a massage gun. Then, finally, the full-volume Forest, where Excision flattens the remaining travel fog and reminds everyone why the big stages still have gravity.
Four years ago, this place held the beginning of a marriage. On Thursday, it handed us a new assignment: look closer, walk slower, follow the clues and write down what the Forest gives you before it changes shape again.
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