Martin Garrix

Amstelveen, a guitar, and the youngest number one on Beatport

Martijn Gerard Garritsen was born on 14 May 1996 in Amstelveen, immediately south of Amsterdam. He learned guitar at eight; the turn towards electronic music came from watching Tiësto play the 2004 Olympic opening ceremony in Athens. He signed to Spinnin' Records in 2012, while still at school.

'Animals' was released on 16 June 2013. Garrix was seventeen, and the track made him the youngest artist to reach number one on Beatport. It is a deliberately unlovely record — a bassline, a build, no vocal — and it arrived at the exact moment festival main stages wanted nothing else. He spent the years that followed proving the follow-ups were not accidents.

Walking away from the deal that made him

In August 2015 Garrix left Spinnin' Records in a dispute over ownership of his music. At nineteen, with the biggest dance single of the previous two years to his name, he chose to go without a label rather than accept the terms. He founded Stmpd Rcrds in early 2016 and signed a distribution and services arrangement with Sony Music International that July.

The decision looks straightforward now because it worked, but it reset his career at the point of maximum leverage. Stmpd is where everything since has been released, and it is the imprint that now puts out his own singles alongside other artists' records.

He has won DJ Mag's Top 100 DJs poll five times — 2016, 2017, 2018, 2022 and 2024 — level with David Guetta and Armin van Buuren for the most wins by one act. On 1 October 2025 he placed second, extending an unbroken run of top-three finishes stretching back a decade.

The records that stuck

The catalogue that actually sustains the live show is a run of collaborations rather than a run of albums. 'In the Name of Love' with Bebe Rexha arrived in July 2016 and softened his register considerably; 'Scared to Be Lonely' with Dua Lipa followed in January 2017. 'We Are the People', made with Bono and The Edge and released on 14 May 2021, was the official song of UEFA Euro 2020 — an odd, sincere stadium record that sits awkwardly in a club set and gets played anyway.

His debut album, 'Sentio', did not appear until 29 April 2022, nine years after 'Animals'. It was assembled largely from singles already in circulation, sequenced in the order they had come out. Garrix has since described it as "very aggressive", which is both fair and a useful indication of where he thinks the next one should go.

2026: his own voice, and a promise kept eleven years late

In March 2026 Garrix released 'Catharina' on Stmpd Rcrds, the first record on which he sings lead by himself. He had previously only sung on collaborations, most recently with Arijit Singh on 'Angels For Each Other'. His own framing was not triumphant — he said he had spent over a year overthinking the song and hoped people would like it. The video was shot across Madeira and Amsterdam and cuts in footage of him as a child.

Two months later came the record fans had been asking about since 2015. 'Repeat It', with Ed Sheeran, was released on 15 May 2026 — Garrix's thirtieth birthday — on Stmpd. The pair had recorded it in 2014 in Nashville and Kansas City, and Garrix first played it publicly at Ultra Music Festival in Miami on 28 March 2015. Contractual disputes between their respective labels then kept it unreleased for over a decade. The version that finally came out is rebuilt around a guitar-led verse with orchestral textures in the drop, softer than the 2015 original. It debuted at number four on Billboard's Hot Dance/Electronic Songs chart — Sheeran's first entry there, and Garrix's tenth top ten. The two performed it together for the first time at Movistar Arena in Santiago on the day of release. An acoustic version followed on 19 June 2026, and the original 2015 mix was finally made commercially available on 26 June 2026.

In June 2026 he also turned up on Madonna's 'Confessions II' with a track called 'Bizarre'.

The second album has moved. Speaking to KiSS 92.5 in Toronto in June 2026, Garrix confirmed it would now land in late 2026, having been trailed earlier in the year for the first half. He described it as "more accessible" and "fun" next to 'Sentio', and said it is about "joy, about connection, about unity", adding: "With so much crazy stuff happening in the world, I think everybody wants and needs music as an outlet." Asked about a dream collaborator, he named Daft Punk — a reunion Thomas Bangalter has recently ruled out.

The touring year, and how it was built

The Americas tour was announced on 5 December 2025: sixteen cities across North, Central and South America, which Garrix called "the biggest tour I've ever announced — 16 cities across North and South America with the full Garrix show experience". It opened on 1 May 2026 at Toyota Music Factory in Dallas and took in Washington DC, Toronto's RBC Amphitheatre on 30 May, Barclays Center in Brooklyn on 12 June, Boston, Chicago, Mexico City, Guatemala City, San José, Bogotá, Medellín, Santiago and Buenos Aires. After the Brooklyn date he described the show as a celebration of ten years of building the production with the same team.

The support was handled unusually. Rather than a touring opener, Garrix ran an open application in April 2026 restricted to DJs living within 100 miles of each stop, with one local act opening each night and a different one for each show in the multi-night cities — Chicago, Toronto and Brooklyn. The selected names included Deux Saints in Chicago, Micki in New York, Marcey in Washington DC, Cocho in Buenos Aires, Arloz in Santiago, Nihl in Bogotá and No Trial in Guatemala City.

Between the tour legs sits Ibiza. Announced on 22 January 2026, his eleventh consecutive season at Ushuaïa runs every Thursday from 2 July to 24 September 2026 — thirteen dates, played from the afternoon into sunset on the open-air terrace, under the 'X' concept introduced the previous year to mark ten seasons. The 2025 bills brought in DubVision, Julian Jordan, Oliver Heldens, Benny Benassi and Sam Divine back-to-back with Monki. "It feels surreal to announce my 11th year at Ushuaïa Ibiza," he said at the time. As of mid-September the season has two Thursdays left to run.

He closed the Tomorrowland main stage on 26 July 2026, taking the final slot of Weekend 2 from 22:50; the set is archived on the festival's channels. The rest of the year is booked heavily: Marquee Singapore on 11 October, two nights at the Palacio de los Deportes in Mexico City on 16 and 17 October, Guatemala City on 13 November, Cuenca on 14 November, Parque Viva in Costa Rica on 27 November, and a South American close through Bogotá on 4 December, Medellín on 5 December and Lima on 7 December, threaded around a regular run of Las Vegas dates at OMNIA and Marquee.