Alan Walker will headline Sphere Las Vegas on Sept. 20 as part of Insomniac and Tomorrowland’s collaborative show, UNITY.
With the announcement, the Norwegian producer joins the list of previously announced UNITY headliners that includes DJ Snake, who will play the venue on Friday, Sept. 19, along with Chase & Status, Kaskade and Eli Brown, who will play Sphere on Aug. 29, 30 and 31, respectively, during UNITY’s opening weekend.
The show will also happen Sept. 26 and 27, then Oct. 17 and 18, with headliners for these events yet to be announced. UNITY is the first ever collaborative project from Insomniac and Tomorrowland, two of the world’s biggest dance event producers.
According to Tomorrowland’s longtime spokeswoman Debby Wilmsen, UNITY has roots in the pandemic, when Tomorrowland launched the digital festivals that “really helped us to develop our content on a more high end cinematic level, but also technically we learned how to push things to the limit.” When Sphere opened in September 2023, the company saw that the technologically-advanced venue could be a place to “showcase everything we learned in the previous years, create an amazing show and take people into our magical words guided by a fantastic soundtrack.”
Similarly, Insomniac Events founder Pasquale Rotella says it was “absolutely” a desire for the company to do a show at Sphere, particularly given the company’s deep relationship with the city. “Las Vegas has been our home since we brought EDC here in 2011, and the city has shaped what Insomniac is today,” Rotella says. “From the moment Sphere was announced, we recognized the incredible potential it held to redefine how dance music lives and evolves within that environment.”
While Insomniac and Tomorrowland are both global leaders of live production and festival world-building, they’d never formally worked collaborated. However, their fates crossed when Tomorrowland organizers got approval to do a show in Sphere and learned the Insomniac team was also working out its own Sphere run. “As we’ve known and respected each other for many years, we reached out to each other to discuss,” says Wilmsen, “and in one super positive call we decided our next steps.”
While Wilmsen acknowledges that “in many cases this would have been a conversation with two competitors that don’t want to do this [together], it was the total opposite. Very quickly Pasquale and I thought it was a much better and more beautiful idea to join forces and see this as a [greater than the sum of its parts] one plus one equals three situation.”
“We’ve always had a deep, mutual respect for one another,” Rotella continues of Insomniac and Tomorrowland. “Though we’ve built our worlds on opposite sides of the globe, at our core, we share the same mission of creating unforgettable experiences fueled by a passion for dance music. While either of us could have launched something at Sphere independently, this collaboration is about more than that. By combining our unique strengths, styles, and audiences, we’re able to create a truly one-of-a-kind experience that reflects the global spirit of this culture we all love.”
UNITY has been in development for a year, with Wilmsen saying that the teams of the two companies got to know each other much better than before and “learned how to work together, how to respect each others creative choices, do weekly calls and work together intensively” during the process. “We are creating the most amazing show together, where both brands keep their identity in UNITY.”
They did have a singular example to take inspiration from in Anyma’s Sphere residency, which made the producer the first electronic artist to ever headline the venue during a residency that happened in late 2024 and early 2025. Rotella calls this run “an incredible example of what’s possible when dance music is paired with Sphere’s technology.”
He says a key difference, however, is that in addition to the rotating headliners — Walker, Chase & Status, Kaskade, DJ Snake and Eli Brown, with more to come — “we are looking to create a fully immersive experience that brings performers out into the crowd and takes the audience on a narrative journey.”
As such, Rotella says UNITY will blend “familiar characters and themes from both Insomniac and Tomorrowland, reimagined specifically for this space.” He says the show will also “evolve how electronic music is experienced” with the addition of orchestral elements.
Wilmsen adds that “the show really feels like the level of a high-end fantasy movie accompanied by the best electronic soundtrack. The combination will be something people have experienced before, but will blow them away in a positive way.” She adds that Tomorrowland’s in-house team created all of the show’s 3-D environments, while Belgian virtual production company Prismax did the animation. “I have to be honest that even I’m surprised that we were able to bring the content to this very high level,” says Wilmsen.
UNITY is an 18+ show, and in terms of the target audience, Rotella says it’s “truly for everyone. It’s for longtime dance music fans who’ve been part of the culture for years, newer fans discovering it and even those curious to experience something different at Sphere. It also opens the door for younger fans who are excited about nightlife but not yet 21. In a city like Las Vegas, where much of the nightlife is age-restricted, this offers a unique nightlife-like experience for them to be part of.”