It was an embarrassment of riches at Portola 2025, with a head-spinning lineup that was bursting at the seams with legends, essential acts of the moment and a whole lot of rising stars. The weather more than cooperated, with sunshine and warm winds blowing off San Francisco Bay and onto the approximately 40,000 people gathered for each of the event’s two days.
This year marked the fourth edition of the event, which more or less adopted an if-it’s-not-broke-don’t-fix-it ethos by keeping most every stage in the same position as years past. The only major visible changes were an expanded ultra-VIP viewing area at the main stage and more lights and speakers in the festival’s massive warehouse space, which, despite being built almost entirely from metal, offered a pristine sound experience.
The Warehouse hosted some of the best sets of the weekend, with Chris Stussy delivering sophisticated yet unpretentious techno for the Sunday evening crowd and Japanese phenom Yousuke Yukimatsu playing an inventive set on Saturday night (and spotted taking photos with fans in the crowd later that evening).
Meanwhile, unstoppable Dutch star Mau P drew a massive crowd to the main stage on Saturday, and Dom Dolla did the same the night after, with the crowd and the producer alike seeming to take special pleasure when he dropped 2019’s “San Frandisco.” Peggy Gou closed out the weekend during a packed set in the warehouse, darkwave duo Boy Harsher cemented their star status with an electric Sunday night show, The Prodigy thrilled a mega-packed audience with their signature brand of hard-edged rave music and Hamdi lit up the Ship Tent (so named because it’s literally in front of a giant ship) during a hyphy golden-hour set that featured hits like his standout Skrillex, Taichu and Offaiah collab “Push.”
Toward the end of the weekend, Moby summed it all up when he told the crowd gathered to see him that “in my heart of hearts, I am still a little rave kid, and some of the most joyful, transcendent moments of my life have been at experiences like this, surrounded by tens of thousands of people, everyone happy, everybody celebrating this sort of collectively created utopia, so I would like to dedicate this next song to everyone here who creates utopia for everyone else.”
To wit, in a weekend of much joy and many highlights, these are five of of the standout moments from the Sept. 20-21 festival.