Psytrance on DJ Radar: Vini Vici Leads a Field of 1,014

Psytrance has always been the outsider genre that refuses to stay underground. Built on relentless, driving basslines and dense psychedelic sound design, it thrives on long sets, festival sunrises and a fanbase that treats the music less like entertainment and more like a calling. On DJ Radar, that devotion translates into serious numbers: 1,014 DJs currently compete on the psytrance board, making it one of the deepest talent pools in electronic music.

The summit belongs to Israel

At the top sits Vini Vici, with a credit score of 874 backed by 10,470 votes — the largest vote haul among the leaders by a wide margin. The streaming profile matches the ranking: 3,132,968 monthly Spotify listeners, 616,882 Spotify followers and 726,282 Instagram followers. On DJ Radar's psytrance board right now, nobody else combines that level of voter enthusiasm with that kind of reach.

Second place goes to Infected Mushroom, the long-serving standard-bearers of the genre's experimental wing, with a credit score of 842. Their footprint skews toward the dedicated listener: 1,042,022 Last.fm listeners and 822,267 Spotify followers point to an audience that has been with the project for the long haul.

Astrix completes the podium at 836, and the gap to second place is slim — just six points. With 7,893 votes, Astrix actually out-polls Infected Mushroom, and a balanced profile (701,879 monthly Spotify listeners, 595,654 Instagram followers, 481,389 on SoundCloud) suggests the race for second could tighten further.

The pattern is hard to miss: Israel claims the entire top three, and with Bliss at number six, four of the top eight. No other country places more than one artist in the leading pack — a reminder of how central the Israeli scene remains to psytrance's global identity.

A tightly packed chasing group

Beyond the podium, the board compresses dramatically. Switzerland's Liquid Soul holds fourth at 823, South Africa's Protoculture fifth at 818, Bliss sixth at 810, the UK's Simon Patterson seventh at 808 and Germany's Neelix eighth at 806. That means ranks six through eight are separated by just four points — small swings in voting could reshuffle half the leaderboard.

The chasing group also shows how varied a psytrance career can look. Neelix pairs his 806 score with 771,814 monthly Spotify listeners and 366,484 SoundCloud followers — streaming numbers that rival the podium. Simon Patterson, arriving from the UK trance tradition, draws strength from the mix-show circuit with 19,205 Mixcloud followers, more than any other leader. Protoculture holds fifth on the strength of 7,192 votes despite a more modest streaming footprint, proof that DJ Radar's voters reward reputation earned on dancefloors, not just playlists.

What it says about the sound

Psytrance in 2026 is not a monolith. The leaderboard spans festival-scale anthem makers, studio experimentalists and crossover artists pulling the genre toward progressive and mainstream trance audiences. What unites them is the core contract of the music: hypnotic momentum, maximal sound design and sets built for total immersion. With 1,014 DJs on the board and only points separating half the top eight, the scene's leadership is anything but settled — and that competitiveness is exactly what keeps psytrance vital.