Best Techno Sets of All Time

Last updated: 25 September 2026

The sets that decided what techno sounds like, chosen for what they changed rather than for what they streamed. Nearly every entry earned its place on a floor before it earned it online; the lockdown broadcasts are here because that is when the floor moved to a screen.

Carl Cox at Boiler Room's Ibiza Villa Takeovers on 15 August 2013, the third and final villa show of that summer, on a bill with Nicole Moudaber, Nic Fanciulli and Bushwacka. Forty-four minutes in the afternoon from the DJ who had held a residency at Space Ibiza since 2001, playing a private villa as if it were his own club.
Tracklist (13)
Carl Cox's last night at Space Ibiza, 20 September 2016, closing the Music is Revolution residency he had held there since 2001. He mixed vinyl and digital, old records beside new ones, and BE-AT.TV streamed the night; this is their nine-hour recording. Space itself closed for good on 2 October. The final word of a fifteen-year residency, kept whole.
Tracklist (122)
Sama' Abdulhadi's Boiler Room set in Ramallah, June 2018: a Palestinian DJ playing techno at home for a worldwide stream. By June 2025 it had passed 14 million views on YouTube. Two years after it, she was arrested after a permitted party at Nabi Musa. An hour of a Palestinian scene, heard far beyond it.
Tracklist (11)
Anetha and Randomer back to back at Soenda Festival in Utrecht, May 2019, recorded with Artaphine and published by the festival. Two hours of the pairing the festival billed as two hours of craziness, kept in full on its own channel.
Tracklist (25)
Ellen Allien live from HÖR's bathroom-like Berlin studio on 4 April 2020, for the TTT x HÖR stream in the first weeks of the pandemic. The founder of BPitch Control, the label she started in 1999, plays eighty minutes to a camera. HÖR grew through exactly these sets, and this one is the Berlin scene keeping itself going without a room.
Tracklist (18)
Amelie Lens at the Gashouder for the Awakenings Online Weekender, June 2020, recorded for the year the festival could not gather its crowd. The Belgian DJ and founder of the Lenske label plays ninety minutes in the room Awakenings calls its own. The canon keeps it as the record of a year techno carried on without its floor.
Tracklist (28)
Ben Sims and Oscar Mulero at the first Stone Techno Festival, July 2022, at Zeche Zollverein in Essen. ARTE Concert filmed nearly four hours: a Mulero set, a Sims set, then the two back to back. ARTE credits Sims with 25 years behind the decks and Mulero with shaping Spanish techno from the early 90s. Two veterans, one booth, and a festival's first edition.
Tracklist (4)
Charlotte de Witte closing the Tomorrowland main stage on 19 July 2025, hours after opening it with a daybreak set, the first artist to headline the festival twice in one day, as DJ Mag reported. A fire had destroyed the original main stage three days earlier. The Belgian founder of KNTXT published the closing set on her own channel.
Tracklist (14)
Laurent Garnier at 909 Festival in the Amsterdamse Bos on 27 May 2017, close to four hours that the festival published in 2020 with remastered audio. The French DJ found house music at the Haçienda in Manchester in 1987, went on to make Crispy Bacon and The Man with the Red Face, and co-founded F Communications. A veteran's long set, played outdoors and kept whole.
Len Faki for Boiler Room in Berlin on 7 May 2014, ninety-three minutes that Boiler Room also issued as a DJ mix under that date. The Stuttgart-born Berghain resident moved to Berlin in 2002 and founded two labels, Figure in 2003 and Podium in 2006. A Berghain resident's techno, recorded in his adopted city.