Glitch Melbourne 2026: Big, bold and here to stay

 

Welcome to Glitch. From humble beginnings, this European electronic festival has travelled far to make its mark in Port Melbourne's industrial estate. 

In a sea of the Nike Air Max and Solomon you'll quickly understand who this festival is for…  People who don't just enjoy electronic music, but those who live and breathe it. With underground artists from Melbourne, you definitely need to be in the know to know–you know? 

 

From humble homegrown beginnings in Malta, Glitch, the legendary electronic festival, has expanded its reach from its home and has been brought Down Under!  With past Glitch festivals swaggering the likes of Mall Grab, Carl Craig and Honey Dijon, the expectations for Melbourne's 2026 line-up were justifiably high. 

 

This year's line-up struck a sweet spot between hosting Melbourne’s homegrown underground talent and internationally known giants. It was a perfect split of three local and three international artists, with DJ AYA, Mikalah Watego and Upper90 representing Melbourne's underground talent, as well as Funk Tribu, LAMMER and MIJA being the big international heavy hitters coming on stage.

 

For the second consecutive year, Glitch called PICA home—a venue known for its large capacity warehouse in the middle of Port Melbourne's industrial estate. This was my first time visiting this venue, and I was excited to visit as PICA is one of those Melbourne venues you just have to go to at least once. 

 

With PICA being situated in Port Melbourne's industrial estate, it can be quite a mission to get there by public transport, or even drive in, as there is little-to-no parking and with the closest tram being a ‘25 minute’ walk or an ‘8 minute’ walk if you take the 235 bus. When you first come through the entrance, you are greeted with a large outdoor, industrial plaza with seating, gas heaters and food trucks, a great area to chill out with friends and take a break from the high-intensity crowd inside. If you walk into the warehouse, the first thing you will notice is the size of this space. With a max capacity of 5,000 people, crowds can get pretty large and dense at peak moments. The raw vibe of partying with an energetic and passionate crowd in a warehouse gives you this indescribable feeling of euphoria.

 

One thing I forgot to bring with me to Glitch was my earplugs. Luckily, they had some earplugs you could buy and that's something that I really appreciated being available for purchase, as without them my ears would definitely have been ringing for the next few days.

 

 Walking into Glitch, I caught the final hour of DJ AYA’s set. At that time, it was early in the night and the crowd was looking light but slowly filling up. Where the night peaked for me was LAMMER and MIJA’s back-to-back set that had the crowd going crazy for the bass. Unfortunately, I had an early morning commitment, which meant I left before I got to see Mikalah Watego and Funk Tribu closing out the night, but from what I had experienced, I was extremely satisfied with what was delivered.  

 

For most of the night I spent my time enjoying the music and meeting people in the area behind the decks. This was my favourite spot. I had an amazing view of the passionate crowd in front of me with the light show shining down on them, as well as a close and intimate view of the artists performing. 

This was my first festival that I attended alone, and I was honestly quite excited to see what would happen. I'm someone who can make friends with basically everyone. At every chance I get, I’ll try to sneak a conversation with someone new. Going in, I thought that it would be quite hard to find a group of people that would let me tag along with, but this was far from the truth. The amount of people I hung out and chatted with was far more than I would have ever expected. Most people at Glitch were very welcoming and honestly made the experience very grounding. 

 

In closing, Untitled has chosen the perfect venue to hold Glitch PICA itself gives a 90s warehouse feel that works perfectly with Glitch’s electronic and gritty nature. What I do think needs some work is the idea of Glitch not wanting attendees to take photos or videos. I think this is a great concept in theory but, as we weren't told in advance that no photos or videos were allowed, if you were caught taking photos by security, you were given a warning. It felt like they were unsure how they wanted the experience to be. 

Ultimately, Glitch has all the best parts about the electronic music scene and brings it to you in a nicely wrapped, warehouse-sized package ready for you to enjoy. Glitch really has earned a place here in Melbourne as a must-attend festival.