Uvita, Costa Rica | February 23 – March 2, 2026
There’s always a moment of hesitation when a festival team goes silent after initial contact and ignores press requests. It makes you wonder whether the story is worth chasing. In the case of Envision Festival’s 15th anniversary edition in 2026, held February 23 through March 2 in Uvita along Costa Rica’s Pacific coast, that hesitation meant covering the experience the old-fashioned way — event passes, parking, meals, and travel came straight out of my own pocket.
It turned out to be one of the better decisions I’ve made yet this year.
From the moment the jungle canopy begins to swallow the bumpy roads outside Uvita, you can feel that Envision operates on a different rhythm. The festival occupies the land along Costa Rica’s Costa Ballena and collaborates with it like a traveling civilization that briefly learns the language of the environment. Dense rainforest presses against the festival grounds, exotic wildlife observes just beyond the lights, and the air itself feels alive with heat, humidity, and anticipation. Within minutes of arriving, I found myself slowing down and adjusting to the tempo of the jungle. It’s the kind of environment that reminds you very quickly that nature is the host here.
Over the course of the week, Envision expanded beyond the rigidity of a schedule — a sprawling constellation of gatherings and performances. People arrived from all over the world, bringing a striking range of ages, languages, and cultural influences. The effect is delightfully international — a temporary village materializing beneath the towering palms.
The jungle itself seemed to take notice.
Staying in nearby Ojochal and later Dominical, just outside of Uvita, revealed another layer of Costa Ballena entirely. Away from the festival’s sound systems and glowing stages, the forest carried on its ancient conversations. At night the jungle grew louder — insects pulsing like distant machinery, invisible birds calling from networks of branches, unseen creatures rustling through leaves and vines. Lying awake in the humid darkness, it felt impossible not to notice how alive everything around us really was. Whether coincidence or quiet symbolism, the wildlife began to feel more like a set of silent guides — reminders that this gathering was unfolding inside a much older ecosystem.
And then there was the vast ocean.
Just a short walk from the festival grounds, the sandy beaches of Costa Ballena offered daily reprieve from the tropical heat. By midafternoon, the Pacific had become a communal sanctuary — dancers, artists, performers, and attendees wading into the surf together while the horizon stretched endlessly westward like an open invitation. More than once I found myself drifting toward the sound of the waves in the corners of the festival grounds simply to reset before heading back into the madness.
As the sun slipped lower, the shoreline transformed again.
A drum circle gathered nightly along the sand, its persistent cadence building slowly as fire performers ignited the sunset with swirling torches and burning arcs of flame. The circle itself formed inside a carefully laid mandala pattern, creating a visual and physical boundary that turned the gathering into something ceremonial. Drums echoed across the beach, sparks climbed into the dusk, and the entire scene began to feel like an ancient ceremony rediscovered by accident.
Equally noticeable this year were improvements behind the scenes. The festival’s 2026 theme, “Back to Our Roots,” appeared to manifest in these details as well. Gone were the hygiene concerns that lingered after 2024, when stomach illness spread through parts of the festival. In 2026, the changes were visible. Facilities felt organized and consistently maintained, the portos appeared cleaned regularly, and filtered water stations — often decorated as shrine-like water temples — appeared throughout the grounds. Food vendors also stepped up their standards, creating a noticeably healthier and vibier — albeit expensive — experience for attendees navigating the tropical environment.
At the center of it all were five distinct stages, each with its own personality and gravitational pull.
The Luna Stage served as Envision’s fiery centerpiece — a massive main-stage structure layered with psychedelic projection mapping, just the right amount of lasers, expert lighting, and bursts of fire that cut dramatically through the jungle night. The sound system transformed the dancefloor into a cathedral of bass, with the crowd equally sprawled across blankets or surging toward the stage like waves responding to the tide. Whether you liked every set or not was unimportant — you could always get hypnotized by the fire surrounding you in all corners.
Tucked nearby among the trees, Lapa Stage offered a completely different atmosphere. Built like a jungle treehouse, the space wrapped around its own two-story structure, complete with a faux furnace and a massive backstage loft overlooking the dancefloor. Overhead shade enclosed the crowd in a sonic womb, where rhythms pulsed through the beams and dancers moved like a single organism beneath the canopy.
Then there was Bambú, the quiet revelation of the weekend. At a festival filled with impressive production, Bambú distinguished itself through thoughtful design and inspired curation. Bamboo pillars framed a beautifully shaded dancefloor, while tiered seating wrapped around most of the support poles, allowing people to either rest or dance along the elevated edges. Every time I wandered through Bambú, something rare and exciting seemed to be happening. The result was a stage where the programming consistently delivered some of the most compelling music of the weekend, drawing both devoted fans and curious wanderers into its orbit.
Elsewhere, El Circo felt exactly like its name suggests — a wide-eyed carnival of creativity. The stage’s enormous sculptural face, complete with glowing eyes and a giant open mouth, served as a surreal portal for a rotating cast of indie performers and boundary-pushing artists who seemed to emerge directly from the jungle’s imagination.
And finally, The Village Stage appeared like an organic neon garden hidden among the trees — glowing crystal stalagmites rising from lush greenery while musicians performed inside what felt like an intimate living installation somewhere between sculpture and dreamscape.
Beyond the music, Envision’s daytime programming offered an entirely different dimension of the festival. Spaces like El Nido hosted thought-provoking panels including discussions on artificial intelligence and humanity’s future, while the Village welcomed conversations like The Alchemy of Honesty with Aubrey and Vylana Marcus. Nearby, the twin sanctuaries of Templo del Cielo and Templo de las Estrellas offered yoga, movement sessions, sound baths, ecstatic dance, and ceremony.
The Red Tent created a sacred and private environment reserved for women, while stages such as Ancient Future Collective and Star Seed explored more experimental and spiritual offerings. Finally there was the Art Gallery and Live Painters, packed to the gills with incredible art by artists from all over the world. Finally, the Art Gallery and live painters filled the grounds wall to wall with incredible work from artists around the world. Together these spaces formed a parallel ecosystem of introspection and exploration that unfolded alongside the music.
Together, these spaces formed the beating heart of Envision’s musical landscape — each one offering a different doorway into the experience.
And long after the final basslines faded and the last torches burned low, something about Envision lingers. Maybe it’s the rhythm of the jungle itself, or the strange equilibrium that forms when thousands of people move through the same atmosphere of sound & light and heat & humidity. At some point the sweat finally stops dripping, and what remains is the setting — rainforest pressing against the festival grounds, the Pacific stretching endlessly beyond the sand, and the memory that for one week each year this corner of Costa Ballena becomes one of the most surreal places on Earth.
As always, certain performances carved themselves deeper into the memory than others:
Top Sets
Snow Raven at the Village Stage
Siberian Indigenous vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Snow Raven perched on the Village Stage like the embodiment of an animal spirit, her set decorated with a constellation of instruments surrounding her singular and tribal voice. Bird calls, animal cries, haunting harmonics, and stories of her ancestors drawn from her Arctic homeland held the crowd in a deep trance. The first rows sat cross-legged near the stage while the rest of the audience packed closely behind them, forming a spontaneous mini-amphitheater beneath the trees. In an invitation to participate, the crowd echoed her calls back into the night, turning the clearing into a chorus of human and animal voices.
CloZee at Luna
French bass producer CloZee commanded the Luna Stage with surgical control of the crowd’s energy. Mind-bending projection mapping accentuated the stage’s already surreal clockwork gear design, at one point mirroring her face across the structure — perhaps reflecting her dual roles as performer and founder of the Odyzey Music label. If the production wasn’t already staggering, lasers splayed across the trees while fire bursts erupted in controlled chaos around the stage. One moment the dancefloor swayed in slow hypnotic grooves; the next she announced a changeup and the tempo surged forward, the entire clearing roaring to life. The beauty of it all was encapsulated in moments like her mouthing the words to an old classic French song, pride expressed with humility.
Honeycomb at El Circo
Known for his clever and often hilarious Instagram videos sampling unsuspecting viewers from video chats, live-looping wizard Honeycomb transformed El Circo into an improvisational laboratory. Voices or sounds from participants in the crowd became percussion, spontaneous raps stacked into rhythms, and every loop built another layer of playful chaos. The crowd fed the performance and the performance fed the crowd, creating a feedback loop of pure spontaneity.
Emancipator at Luna
Portland producer Emancipator carried the Luna Stage into a warm downtempo current that matched Costa Rica’s Pura Vida spirit perfectly. Lush strings floated across rolling basslines while melodies moved through the crowd like slow ocean swells. For a moment perfectly scheduled at sunrise, the entire dancefloor breathed together in one long collective exhale.
Bambú Stage Standouts
Nacho DJ
Venezuelan-born DJ and Los Angeles expat Nacho DJ, the creative mind behind Bambú itself, opened our festival experience with an eclectic blend of house, techno, and Latin grooves. His selections warmed the dancefloor like silky rays of sunlight filtering through the bamboo canopy. The set flowed effortlessly between styles, perfectly suited to the place and moment. For anyone wanting to chase that energy further, his gathering Bliss Burn returns March 19–23 at his nearby property, The Garden in Platanillo, about an hour north of Uvita.
Funka followed by Antaares
Saturday night at Bambú belonged to Funka and Antaares. Costa Rican producer Funka opened the portal with wobbly basslines that rolled through the bamboo pillars while spoken-word samples like Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven drifted through the humid night air. His distorted live vocals slithered through the mix like ghosts wandering through a swamp of subwoofers. Mexican producer Antaares followed with a hypnotic run of mostly original tracks, locking the dancefloor into a deep rhythmic pocket that kept the crowd swaying well past midnight.
UREM
At 3 a.m., Costa Rican DJ cunleashed a relentless collision of dark techno and g-house rhythms, perfect for the witching hour. The Bambú crowd answered with a surge of late-night energy that pushed the dancefloor deeper into the jungle hours — exactly the fuel we needed when our bodies were quietly suggesting it might be time for bed.
Fabian Krooss
Costa Rican producer Fabian Krooss carried the torch with driving beats and textured melodies drifting through the night air like electric vines. Either mistakenly billed or performing under the hilarious alias Senior Citizen, I’m not really sure, but the set delivered a perfect burst of textural propulsion to keep the stage moving well into the festival.
Aerialists, Dancers, & Fire Performers
Another highlight throughout the week came from the aerialists, dancers, and fire performers appearing both during and between sets at the Luna Stage. Silks twisted high above while fire dancers carved glowing spirals into the jungle night. Performers emerged from behind the veil and transformed transitions into their own spectacle. Massive head nod to the aerialist hanging from his hair in the lotus position while rotating and fire spinning. From The Awa Experience to Circus With Purpose, from Pyrodanza to Synapse Circus, their appearances created mesmerizing micro-performances scattered throughout the night.
