Rafael

A late start, then a remix that travelled

Rafael's own account of his beginnings is unfussy: he started in music in 2010 and only launched the project that carries his name in 2019. That makes him a relatively late starter by the standards of the Israeli house scene he came out of, and it also means almost everything that matters in his career has happened inside the last five years.

The turn came in 2022 with a remix of Jimi Jules' 'My City's On Fire'. It was a bootleg-shaped piece of work that behaved like a record — it passed half a million streams and picked up play from Michael Bibi, Jamie Jones and CamelPhat, which in that corner of the scene functions as a hiring notice rather than a compliment. Apple Music carries the mixed version of the remix, and it remains the track most often named first in his biographies four years later.

A second early calling card, 'HBFS', followed the same route: played by peers before it was ever a chart entry. Diplo and Carlita are both credited with supporting his material in this period. The pattern set then has held since — the records open doors to bookings rather than the other way round.

The catalogue, label by label

Rafael's discography is spread deliberately thin across good addresses rather than concentrated on one. He has released through Maccabi House, Defected, Three Six Zero Recordings, Hot Creations, Higher Ground and Realm. 'Naaa', made with Mishell, sits in the Hot Creations catalogue; Three Six Zero and Hot Creations are closely linked imprints, and appearing on both places him squarely inside the Jamie Jones orbit that his remix work had already been circling.

The remix side of the ledger is the more telling half. Across 2025 he delivered official remixes for RÜFÜS DU SOL, Jamie Jones and Mita Gami. Those three commissions span three different audiences — arena-scale melodic house, Ibiza tech house and the Israeli underground — and he took all of them in the same year, which says something about how legible his sound is to different bookers.

June 2026 brought his debut on Crosstown Rebels, 'Gotta Be Cool' (CRM354), followed by a remix edition from Luch (CRM354R). Damian Lazarus' label is a different kind of signing from Hot Creations: it reads as a move towards the longer, stranger end of the market rather than the peak-time one, and it is the clearest signal yet of where he intends to go next.

Maccabi House and the Adam Ten partnership

The through-line in the recent work is Adam Ten, and with him the Maccabi House label he runs with Mita Gami. Rafael put out two collaborations with Adam Ten across 2025. The first, 'Sweet Boy', landed on Maccabi House in September 2025 and was covered in Dancing Astronaut's new-release column on 12 September that year.

The follow-up, 'Beat Goes On', came out on Maccabi House on 16 July 2026. By the pair's own telling the track began when Adam Ten played Rafael a rough loop in the studio and it grew from there — and then took over two years to clear the sample inside it, which is why a record built in an afternoon arrived a long way behind the session that produced it.

The music itself is a useful guide to how Rafael thinks about a dancefloor. 'Beat Goes On' leans on acid house, puts the bassline and the percussion in charge, and refuses the oversized drop: the stated aim is a groove that keeps turning rather than a sequence of peaks. That preference for momentum over spectacle is consistent with what he plays out.

Where he stands in November 2026

2025 is described, in his own label and agency biographies, as the breakthrough: Coachella, Lightning in a Bottle and Splash House in a single American festival season, which took him out of club rooms and into daylight-stage slots.

2026 was the year that ran on from it. The summer took in Circular Music's open air in Berlin on 14 August and Pulso in the same city on 20 August, then Planet X at California Plaza in Los Angeles on 12 September, Jamie Jones' Paradise in Ibiza on 16 September and a Deep House Bible night in Lisbon on 18 September. He is listed as a resident presence at Space Terrace in Ibiza, and he carries an artist profile at UNVRS, the island's newest large room — both of which matter more for a tech-house career than any single booking.

The autumn was almost entirely festivals. He played CRSSD Festival Fall at Waterfront Park in San Diego over 26 and 27 September, III Points in Miami on 16 and 17 October — where the lineup also had him down for a back-to-back with Brunello — Festival Vaiven in Morelos, Mexico on 17 October, a club date at Tipitina's in New Orleans on 29 October, and Ritvales in Medellín across 31 October and 1 November. Burning Man and a run of South American venues sit in the same recent history.

He is booked by Framework, which runs its roster out of Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Austin and Bali. That agency footprint explains the shape of the touring: heavy on the United States and Latin America, with Ibiza and Berlin as the European anchors rather than a conventional club tour of Britain and the continent.

What the show actually is

There is no band and no live rig. Rafael plays DJ sets, and the material is drawn from his own catalogue — the Jimi Jules remix, 'Naaa', 'Gotta Be Cool', the Maccabi House tracks with Adam Ten — threaded through other people's records, with the pacing built around sustained grooves rather than a run of breakdowns. The back-to-back is a recurring format: the III Points billing paired him with Brunello, and the Adam Ten relationship has produced shared bookings as well as shared records.

It is worth being plain about what is not documented. For all the festival slots, there is no substantial body of published set reviews for Rafael in the dance press; the coverage he has attracted is release coverage. The verifiable evidence of how the sets land is indirect — repeat bookings at Space Terrace, the Paradise date, two consecutive American festival seasons, and the list of DJs who play his records.

On sale now

The near-term diary is short, which is normal after a run of that density. The confirmed date on the books is a Deep House Bible show at Factory in Miami on 2 December 2026, listed as an 18-and-over event, placed in the week when the city fills up for Art Basel.

Anyone tracking him should expect the pattern of the last two years to repeat rather than change: releases announced a few weeks out, festival billings confirmed in blocks, and Ibiza dates appearing once the island's summer programmes are published.