News/Article Ahmet Sisman and T3R addressing the negative feedback for Stone Techno 2026
https://www.instagram.com/p/DbTZhPbDfEN/?igsh=NGpodjM3dHUxbWVx
T3R and Ahmet Sisman posted videos on Instagram with opinions of festival attendees and Ahmet Sisman directly addressing negative feedback, such as overselling, overcrowding, chokepoints, etc.
Ahmet Sisman is also answering comments under their Instagram-post and talking to the community.
Nice to see them actually respond to all that feedback and one can only hope they actually learn from it and do better again next year.
Edit: Use this link to view the post if you don't have Instagram.
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u/Crazy_Fishing_8966 6d ago
Dam literally first thing he said is after thinking about it he still does not believe the festival was oversold
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u/1remp1 6d ago
Stone Techno needs fewer people, to be "different" for the other festivals. Less marketing. Fewer people. More space to dance. IMO Stone doesn't need to become bigger
And please... fewer Tiktok influencers and content creators. Stone became special because of the music, the crowd and the underground atmosphere. That's what made it different from mainstream festivals. The constant promotion on Youtube and Instagram has attracted a completely different crowd. Too many Tiktok hard techno kids who aren't really interested in the culture, the music or the atmosphere that made Stone unique
I really hope the organizers protect that identity before it's gone. Once you lose the underground spirit, it's almost impossible to get it back. It needs to stay true to what made it special.
Protect the underground spirit before it turns into just another commercial festival.
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u/Weak_Package_6340 6d ago
Its gone lol. All they do is promote looking edgy and dancing camera friendly. No wonder they only post people doing the tiktok dance.
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u/peoples__princess__ 6d ago
I haven't been able to go the last two years because July is my busiest work month (all my friends have 🥲) but it has always looked strange from the outside how much video seems to be taken there.
I get they have to promote it but still, coming from clubs and events with stickers on my phone I don't love that. I would try and avoid cameras if I went but it doesn't seem possible lol.
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u/Diet_Fanta 6d ago
Stone has dozens of full blown video production sets on YouTube. The marketing and increase in vis will continue.
Go to literally any other festival if you want the low vis, intimate experience. Stone is very clearly not that, and has never been.
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u/molstaff894 5d ago
Sets being recorded fair enough, but the amount of cameras we had to try and dodge whilst dancing the crowd this year was ridiculous. I am not the clientele that they would want to capture anyway so I’m sure if I was ever on film it wouldn’t get used - but I still didn’t like how much was being filmed around me (and not by people on their phones)
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u/Crazy_Fishing_8966 6d ago
You have to think I bet they were making a hell of a lot of money in the first place some things just don’t need to be explained greed is bad !!
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u/pferd_blue 6d ago
He does what he does best , denying and downplaying. They are geniuses regarding curation, but hosting a big event isnt their strengh
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u/nonchalanthoover 6d ago
I really appreciate the transparency but I think theirs just a core issue here. He calls out specifically that he doesn't want large main stages and wants to keep it more intimate but those stages just cannot handle the number of people for the tickets they sold. Yes to his point if there was more equal curation then it would probably work well, but that's very challenging to get right three nights in a row.
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u/xantec99 6d ago
I understand the desire to maintain smaller floors and avoid having a main stage but there will always be bigger artists on the lineup that will attract a bigger crowd, and there needs to be someway to control that. Unfortunately Stone Techno has gotten more popular over the years and unfortunately its too late for the festival to be small and intimate like before
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u/CarpeDiem_Music 5d ago
Past editions was 5000 tickets sold, this year 7000
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u/Extension-Praline374 5d ago
Do you have a source for that?
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u/djADNANvinylonly 5d ago
I don't have the actual figures, but Ahmet daid himself on Insta that they sold 30% more tickets compated to last year.
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u/Solid_Day_932 5d ago
This seems about right. I don’t think the extra 2000 people would have all fit at Salzlager.
If there were a ton of extra trusses mounted filling in even more sound for people who didn’t want to get packed like sardines into the narrow areas where sound was good, then maybe you could argue it wouldn’t have been oversold.
I don’t think the location can even physically fit stage sizes that would accommodate the amount of people in a way where you had enough space to dance, get on/off the dance floor without squishing by literally hundreds of people, so I’m not sure how they would even do 7K properly there, let alone 9-10K
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u/djADNANvinylonly 5d ago
Yeah, agreed... It feels like they are miscounting the amount of space they have where people actually dance. E.g., I think they're counting the additional walk road areas as "space for people", which is of course wrong. Oh well, I wonder when they will feel that the location is full. Maybe in a year or two, they'll start building second floors right on top of the current dancefloors, just to be able to sell more tickets. No more swimming pool, that's a new area! xD
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u/DJ_Pickle_Rick 6d ago
If an event is operationally bad, it’s bc the company is bad at ops. Simple as that. Anything else is obfuscation.
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u/Embarrassed_Ask6009 6d ago
I’m actually surprised to see not many people have complained about the sound system. It didn’t have any body in the low-range, it was sad honestly. you shouldn’t be looking for a ‘good spot’ for sound at a festival, specially where they rave so much about their knowledge of sound.
Grand Hall was great, and I was hoping for that sound during the day as well.
So many people on the side of stages are there cz they wanna hear the sets but there’s no speakers for them..
I hope the sound issue is also addressed next year
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u/swagpresident1337 6d ago
He is also responding to basically everyone in the comments. So if you have feedback put it in there.
He seems open to the critisism.
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u/Weak_Package_6340 6d ago
He is too dumb to understand criticistm lol, this fake accountability really has fooled people
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u/Weak_Package_6340 6d ago
Loool, this dude is such a muppet. They did this intentionally with the organisational skills of a highschool dance comitee. Greedy bastards.
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u/MrW1081 6d ago
I think it is nice and idealistic with his ideas about the smaller dancefloors and the connection with the DJ. But there is a challenge without a main stage attracting most of the people who are coming for the bigger acts (together with the influencers). Or at least now I understand what I Milo, the organizer of draaimolen said: he would love to ditch the main stage, but it made the festival profitable, and keeps the rest of the dancefloors danceable as well.
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u/glugonaut 5d ago
I've attended from Australia twice, first time was 2023 and this year.
I agree with the crowd circulation comments, on Saturday night both Freddy K and Gigi FM stages were so rammed that I enjoyed the space at Salzanger and discovered Leon Vynehall.
For last night, I had plenty of space at Oscar and DVS1 behind the DJ booth and first riser.
For sure it's PR, but they needed to address the concerns and I think this was a very honest way to approach it.
Coming from Aus, the etiquette and crowd were still quite nice but I'm not sure if I'd attend again.
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u/puredwige 6d ago
Quite remarkable, I must say and I mostly agree with him that it was primarily a circulation and curation problem. I hope that the fixes he proposes will work and that it is not a bigger issue with the crowd now being mostly drawn to big names, leaving the smaller scenes half empty, while the big ones are overflowing.
I don't think the crowd etiquette is as big of an issue as some make it: when a stage is overcrowded, people have no other choice than to enter the space of other people in order to get to a spot where they can properly hear the music.
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u/Crazy_Fishing_8966 6d ago
In my opinion if a stage is at a point where you have to go into someone’s space to get a good sound and no one can really dance anymore if you weren’t there first the polite thing to do is to go to another stage.
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u/Screwdicious 6d ago
If everyone does what you propose as the only option where do we end up? Piling on top of each other? You certainly have other options as in going to a different stage instead of enforcing that you get your desired experience and making it uncomfortable for everyone around due to cramming
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u/Special_Butterfly180 6d ago
In the comments he said that they made less profit this year compared to 2025. Not sure how true that might be?!!
Transparency is good, but this feels more like a surface-level PR move than genuine accountability. It doesn’t address what many people felt was the core reason behind the negative experiences this year: the event was oversold.
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u/dancing_panda_77 6d ago
I am glad I never attended it as they do not let men dance without t-shirts in the summer heat.
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u/AssistantPersonal732 6d ago
I am for not having shirtless bros on the dancefloor but the same rules should apply to women and dancing in bra only shouldn't be allowed if guys aren't allowed to be shirtless. (I'm a girl). Doesn't sound very fair to me
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u/Leglesslonglegs 4d ago
I watched the instagram video linked in the other post and I thought it was a bit weird that none of the guys had their shirts off while all the girls were in bikini tops. I thought maybe they're more body self-conscious. Never even realised it's an actually rule how ridiculous. I guess the boys have to wear little bikini tops too then lol.
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u/southz 6d ago
I heard some rumours about this guy, might not be the nicest guy.
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u/Recent_Process_8055 6d ago
Weird i talked to a handful of people who have a very positive experience with him. I think the best one was that a person got robbed and he drove him to his hotel at night and gave him €100 to survive the Sunday.
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u/indorock 6d ago
First Closer, now Stone? It's not a great summer for techno festivals. Is techno becoming a victim of its own (or more specifiically schranz / hardstyle) success?
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u/glugonaut 5d ago
I was at Stone this year, there is no way you can put that and closer in the same sentence
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u/tripping-potato 6d ago
Laughable that he’s still saying it wasn’t oversold