Tension Electronic Music Festival

Get ready to let it go wild this July at the Tension Electronic Music Festival. It's been a must-do for techno and house fans all over Switzerland since 2006 and this year it's even bigger than before!

Tension Festival

The leading electronic music festival in Switzerland is expanding this year, adding a whole extra day to the lineup, as well as a camping option! 

Taking place over three days, Tension Festival is unique in that takes place in three different locations. The daytime is all about the open-air, and happens at the St Jakob garden pool (St. Jakob Gartenbad). This great venue means that not only do you get a world-class festival that is easily reached from the city centre, but you also get access to one of the swimming pools and slides! Not many festivals can offer you that.

In the evening, the night sessions take over. These take place in two of the city's top nightclubs, Nordstern and Das Viertel, from 11pm.

Video credit: Youtube / Tension Festival

The Lineup for 2024

With two stages during the day and two nightclubs continuing through the night, there is a huge number of acts playing at the Tension Festival! Here's a taster of who you can expect to see in 2024:

• Shlømo
• Lily Palmer
• Basswell
• Teho
• Arodes
• Rivo
• Pelin Vedis
• Trym
• Diplo

Camping at Tension Festival

For the first time, you can camp at the Tension Festival this year. You can arrive from 1pm on Friday, July 26 and have to leave by the cruelly early time of 9am on Monday, July 29.

You need to buy camping tickets separately to the festival tickets, and you can choose to either just pitch your own tent for just 49,90 or pay more and stay in one of their pre-pitched tents or camper vans. The camper vans are priced for four people and include use of the van kitchen, an outdoor shower and a daily breakfast!

Getting tickets for Tension Festival

Due to the multiple locations of the events, tickets are a bit more complicated than your average festival. You can buy a weekend ticket for 149,80 Swiss francs, which will get you into all three days at the St Jakob garden pool, but not the night sessions.

You must buy separate tickets for the night sessions, and as both clubs have acts at the same time, you need to take a look and decide who you want to see before you buy. Night session tickets can be bought completely separately from day tickets if festivals aren't your thing, and cost 29 Swiss francs per night. You get a discount code for the night sessions if you have already booked a day ticket.

You can also just book a day ticket for a single day, if you need to keep time for yourself in order to do boring things like go to work or sleep.

If you want to hit the festival hard and know you want to see as much as possible, you can buy a backstage weekend pass. This gets you entrance to all three days plus all of the night sessions. To sweeten the deal, you get stage access to dance behind the DJs, an exclusive VIP bar, fast-track entrance to the night sessions and access to a separate chill-out lounge with a whirlpool.

Attending Tension Festival

As it takes place across Basel city centre, it is recommended to use public transport to arrive, rather than driving, as parking is very limited. The bus stop St Jakob is just five minutes from the festival site and the train station Dreispitz is a 15-minute walk.

If you are heading from the day festival to one of the night sessions, Das Viertel is a 20-minute walk away, or a 10-minute bus ride. Buses 36, 37 and 47 connect the two places and they run until gone midnight. Nordstern is on the other side of the city, but can be reached by bus 36 in about 30 minutes from St Jakobs garden pool. Of course, there will also be plenty of taxis around for the weekend!

You can get your tickets and find out who is playing which night session on the Tension Festival website.