Nature One

The first edition, billed simply as Open Air Rave, took place on 26 August 1995 at Frankfurt-Hahn Airport with an estimated 13,000 people. Since 1996 it has run at Pydna, a decommissioned US missile base in the Hunsrück hills near Kastellaun, where the old bunkers and hardened shelters make natural club floors. The festival calls itself Germany's first major open-air rave. It peaked at 72,000 in 2014 and drew about 65,000 in 2025, the year it marked three decades with 350 acts across 22 floors. Tens of thousands camp nearby, the camping is half the point for many, and there is a firework display on the Saturday evening. Since 2002 the drug information group eve&rave Münster has had desks on site, which is more forward-thinking than the festival gets credit for. Deep house is not why you come. Trance, techno and hardcore carry it, and it belongs in any account of German rave as the event that took the 1990s out of the cities and never really gave them back.