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Francis Mercier
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The profile · researched 28 September 2026
Solèy Mondays: how a Haitian maths graduate turned Afro house into an island institution
Francis Mercier spent more than a decade grinding through New York's club circuit before "Sete" broke in 2022. In 2026 he holds a Monday residency at Hï Ibiza, released a 20-track debut album in the middle of it, and closes the season on 5 October.
Port-au-Prince, Providence, and a very slow start
Mercier grew up in Port-au-Prince on African and African-diasporic records, and traces the start of the DJ habit to watching big-room trance acts play in 2006 — he has named Tiësto and Paul van Dyk as the performances that flipped the switch. He went to Brown University to read mathematics, saved up for a controller and began playing college parties, promoting them himself on Facebook because nobody else was going to.
What followed was not a breakthrough. He has put the gap between starting out and landing at somewhere near twelve years, and he built it the unglamorous way: booking restaurant slots, throwing his own nights, and working his way into a New York dance-music scene that had no obvious room for him. His relationship with the city remains double-edged — he has said what he loves about New York is also what he hates about it, while crediting it with a kind of energy he has not found anywhere else.
In 2014 he co-founded Deep Root Records with Ajamu Kambon. It began as event planning and grew into a main label with sublabels — Deep Root Underground and Deep Root Tribe among them — plus artist management and music licensing. The label became the vehicle for the Afro house material he was moving towards, including early work in 2021 under his Emvafaya alias, which included reworkings of Magic System and Bibi Den compositions.
The records that changed the trajectory
"Sete", released on 25 March 2022 and built around an Amadou & Mariam sample, was the turn. It reached No. 2 on Beatport, entered Spotify's Viral Top 50 and Shazam's Top 50 Global Discovery, and gave him a calling card that travelled without a marketing budget behind it. "Ayibobo", a collaboration with Nitefreak, followed on Deep Root Tribe in June 2022.
In 2023 came "Kamili" with Nitefreak and Idd Aziz, released through Diplo's Higher Ground and peaking at No. 2 on Beatport's Afro House chart. The same year he made his Coachella debut in the Yuma tent, and he returned to the festival in 2025. Tomorrowland Brazil and a set at the Giza pyramids sit on the same run of bookings. Rolling Stone Africa puts his catalogue past 500 million streams.
His approach to production is stubbornly unromantic. Everything is kept digital — he has described it as the only way he can survive the schedule as a producer — and the same pragmatism shows up in how he talks about performing, where the line is that a DJ learns to play with what is in front of them.
Lakay (Home): twenty tracks, fifteen countries
Mercier's debut album, Lakay (Home), arrived on 14 July 2026 on Solèy, his own imprint, named after the Haitian Creole word for sun. It runs to twenty tracks and Rolling Stone Africa counts twenty-five collaborators drawn from fifteen countries, among them Haiti, Nigeria, South Africa, Mali and Lebanon. He announced it on 22 June 2026 with the single "Champagne", made with the North African producer MASSALA and the London vocalist LexBlaze.
The guest list reaches across generations rather than genres: Wyclef Jean and Kah-Lo on "Take Me Home", Robin S revisiting her own 1993 house standard on "Show Me Love (Devotion)", plus Amadou & Mariam, Emmanuel Jal, Jesse Boykins III, Mahmut Orhan, AWEN, Joezi and Ninae. "Sadete", the Orhan collaboration, reached No. 6 on Shazam's Global Viral chart and charted in thirty-three countries.
Mercier has framed the record as a tribute to every corner of the world that has taken him in, and his working definition of the title is deliberately loose — home as a location that makes a person feel something, rather than a fixed address. Reviews picked up on the curation as much as the music: reviewers noted the pairings read as chosen rather than transactional, with established names set against newer voices, and the album moving between Afro house, melodic electronica and rhythms borrowed from South Africa, Punjab and Turkey. He released it mid-residency, with the Ibiza season already half-run.
Where he stands in late September 2026
The centre of his year is Hï Ibiza. Solèy took over the club's Theatre every Monday from 1 June to 5 October 2026 — nineteen dates, doors at 23:30 — with the Club Room running Andrea Oliva's All I Need as the supporting half of the bill. Announced on 26 January 2026, it is his first residency at Hï, and Ibiza Spotlight framed it as the Solèy brand's second island season with the number of dates roughly doubled. Mercier has admitted he hesitated over the night itself, on the grounds that Monday is not when most people go out, before deciding that is precisely the audience he wants.
The guest bookings have been broad: Diplo, Uncle Waffles, Anané and Louie Vega, Lee Burridge, Kölsch, THEMBA, Aya Nakamura and Major League DJz across the season. Tonight, 28 September 2026, he plays back-to-back with Mahmut Orhan in the Theatre, with Ashibah, ThatGirl Sherry K, Jade and Rolbac alongside and Andrea Oliva, Major League DJz, Bontan and Stofella in the Club Room. The closing party on 5 October pairs him with Shimza, with Satori, Apache, Vanjee and Gudfella also billed.
Away from the booth he has set up Solèy FC in Ibiza, a football-and-community offshoot of the brand. The touring load is heavy enough that in a mid-2026 interview he noted the day he was speaking was his first off in twenty-five, after three weeks of consecutive shows.
Autumn and winter: Paris to Goa
The diary after Ibiza is dense. Gate Club in Paris on 2 October, Electric Daisy Carnival in Medellín on 10–11 October, Pacha NYC on 11 October, Futur Festival in Monterrey on 13–14 November, two nights at KOKO in London on 21–22 November, Little River Studios in Miami on 3 December and A.I. Warehouse in Washington, DC on 11 December. A Bali New Year's Eve booking closes the year.
Before that comes his second run through India: a five-city tour on 23–27 December 2026, opening in Bengaluru, then Mumbai on the 24th, Delhi NCR on the 25th, Hyderabad on the 26th and Goa on the 27th. Sunburn produces and promotes it, and the Mumbai and Delhi NCR nights carry the full Solèy branding rather than a straight DJ booking. General tickets went on sale through BookMyShow on 24 September 2026. Mercier's own line on the return was about the crowds there having a genuine connection to what he makes; Sunburn's chief executive Karan Singh described his Afro-melodic sound as redefining dancefloors.
Other Solèy showcases have been staged through 2026 in Mykonos, Egypt, Lebanon, Montreal and Los Angeles, alongside an Amsterdam date in a 6,000-capacity room.
The show, now
The fullest version of a Mercier show in 2026 is Solèy at Hï Ibiza's Theatre, running Mondays from 1 June to 5 October across nineteen dates, with the room opening at 23:30 and Andrea Oliva's All I Need holding the Club Room next door. Set lengths are not published, and Mercier frequently splits the peak slot as a back-to-back — Mahmut Orhan on 28 September, Shimza at the 5 October closing — with two or three further pairs filling the night around him. The billing is not a DJ set alone: the club and Ibiza Spotlight both describe live guitar and djembe players and choreographed dancers worked into each week alongside the visuals, and the stated intent is a gradual build that favours flow and collective movement over instant peaks, moving between Caribbean and African rhythms, Levantine melody and Arabic, Latin and European material. Guests across the season have included Diplo, Uncle Waffles, Anané and Louie Vega, Lee Burridge, Kölsch, THEMBA and Major League DJz. Outside Ibiza the presentation scales up or down: full Solèy showcases carry the live players and dancers — the Mumbai and Delhi NCR dates in December are billed that way, as were runs in Mykonos, Egypt, Lebanon, Montreal, Los Angeles and a 6,000-capacity Amsterdam room — while straight club bookings such as Pacha NYC, Gate Club Paris, two nights at KOKO in London on 21–22 November and Little River Studios in Miami are closer to a conventional headline set. Documented 2026 club and festival appearances include Prince Bandroom in Melbourne (31 January), The Greenwood Hotel in Sydney (1 February), Savaya in Bali (8 February), Melkweg's Max room in Amsterdam (20 March), Radius in Chicago (16 May), LIV in Miami Beach (17 May) and The Port Lands in Toronto (6 September).
Researched from beatportal.com · headlinerhub.com · rollingstoneafrica.com · mixmagcaribbean.com · bongminesentertainment.com · electronicgroove.com · hiibiza.com · hiibiza.com